Mudah.my House Condominium Rental Scam Scammers from overseas 📞 💸 SMS and email scam to scam landlords

When it's too good to be true, it's always a scam.

For landlords who list their property/real estate on ecommerce/listing sites like Mudah.my, Carousell Locanto, themselves (instead of going via agent), do be super aware of this scam operated from overseas. Scammers thrive on these sites as property owners can list their own property for rent and sale for free.  Scammer occurrence on sites like iProperty and StarProperty are less as advertisements require REN (real estate negotiator) number and also listing fees.

The perpetrators of the scam usually will target owner listings as owners do not have many properties to list and hence have not seen this scam before. Usually property owners list so that they can save on agent commission if they manage to find tenant.

The scammers will message the owner enquiring on the property and then offers to pay 1 whole year of rent. The primary hook of the scam is the offer to pay 1 whole year of rental upfront. This kind of arrangement is extremely rare and unheard of in Malaysia. The secondary hook is the scammer will normally mention that they work in some big corporation (oil and gas, tech) to portray as well paid expat.

Once the hook gets the owner's attention,  the owner agrees to the arrangement. This is when the scammer will come out with the "sad" story on how the local shipping company in Malaysia is demanding payment for moving in his "furniture" to Malaysia. The scammer explains that as he is not in Malaysia, he needs the landlord's assistance to foot the shipping bill 1st and then this amount will be repaid together with the rental.

If the unsuspecting landlord is not quick witted enough, he will go and pay for the scammer. Once payment done, scammer will then disappears then hence a successful scam. The payment method requested by scammer is always via Western Union or PayPal.

This scam is not new and mostly operated from overseas and it is believe by syndicates from Europe, Africa region. The operational scam signature of the scam is very similar to "Love Parcel" and "African Prince" scam. Generally these scams are quite harmless if we don't respond to them and make any payment.

The characteristics / modus operandi of the scam are :

1. English/US white person sounding name (eg John Smith, Jonathan Alexander, David Rudd)
2. Expat job in big corporation (oil and gas, IT) or sometimes NGO (non government org) or United Nations XXX.
3. Phone not contactable/reachable
4. Payment method used is PayPal, Western Union, Cryptocurrency (USDT, Bitcoin, Ethereum)
5. Have a urgency (eg need to move in immediately) and attach passport picture without being asked

📍Links

https://www.mudah.my/