SUNDAY, JUNE 13, 2010
Wire $1,000 and he’ll throw in the Brooklyn Bridge
scams continued from F1
fordable places to stay. I wasn’t having much luck. So I turned to Craigslist and found Deron Mil- ton’s ad and a host of other gor- geous vacation apartment sublets for cheap, cheap, cheap. Now, I suppose, is when you all want to scream, “Don’t be so stu- pid! Just walk away! Don’t do it!” Oh, there were plenty of signs : Deron Milton answered my ini- tial e-mail almost immediately — at 3:43 a.m. one night. But in- stead of seeing a red flag, I merely thought, “These New Yorkers are as crazy as I am, staying up so late.” The phone number he gave me was always busy. And he wanted me to wire the payment to some guy named Hank in New Jersey. Now, I’d heard of Craigslist scams — the apartments or cars that turn out not to exist. But I’d done my due diligence. I’d looked up 72 Irving Pl. in
Emporis.com, a New York real estate Web site, and seen that it was a real build- ing. I’d found this Hank in New Jersey and left him a message. Standing at the Western Union
counter, I hesitated. But true to the lengths some human beings will blindly go to in order to de- lude themselves when they want something so badly, I pulled out my BlackBerry and sent a note to Deron Milton. “Should I do min- ute transfer or overnight?” At this point, it will hardly come as a surprise to you to learn that Deron Milton — whoever he was, if that was even his real name— was running a scam. Just a few hours after I left the West- ern Union counter, he began ad- vertising another New York vaca- tion apartment rental on Craigs- list at another address using the same photos I’d been taken in by. And there were many others.
People calling themselves Angela Gomez. James Pascale. Robin William. Joe Collins. Herbert Mouscardy. All offering too-good- to-be-true places at unbelievably low prices. Herbert Mouscardy even sent references. This one, bad English and all, is from some- one named Tom Bruce: “Herbert’s place really made our trip to New York unique and I would defi- nitely choose to stay here next time visiting and about the De- posit, you shouldn’t be worry about that.” Yes, vacation rental seeker, you should “be worry.” Or at least be
careful. Though there are plenty of legitimate offerings on Craigs- list and Vacation Rental by Own- er and HomeAway and a host of other sites, the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center reports that sham vacation home offers are only the latest in a long list of online fraud operations it tracks. The center began noticing the scams last year, said Charles Pave- lites, the special agent who heads the complaint center. Then they started hearing so many stories of travelers showing up with their luggage to locked doors, non- existent apartments or surprised families sitting down to dinner who had no intention of renting to vacationing strangers, that they began to gather them on a new Web site: Lookstoogoodto-
betrue.com. And the crooks, Pave- lites said, are masters of social en- gineering. “They’ve got it figured out —
what will you fall for?” he said. Some put their prices right in line with other, legitimate offerings, he said. Some steal legitimate rental listings or photos off legiti- mate sites. Or even legitimate brokers’ names. Some set up fake companies, create fake e-mail ac- counts. “Anything that appears to give them more legitimacy.” The signs of a scam, Pavelites said, are pretty clear: They ask you to wire money. Which, he said, you should never do. Paying by credit card at least ensures that you’ll get your mon- ey back if you’re scammed. Once you wire it from your bank ac- count, it’s gone. They pressure you to act fast, warning that others are inter- ested and you’ll lose out if you don’t decide quickly. (“I want to finalize this reservation pro- cedures [sic] with you soonest. I have got lots of inquiries here and wouldn’t want to disappoint,” Milton wrote me in one e-mail.) Another big giveaway: bad English syntax. Milton’s silly- sounding Craigslist advertise- ment should have been my first clue: “Manhattan Classy Private Apartment Rental!” Who uses words like “classy” anymore? It’s not as if the fine people at
Craigslist hadn’t warned me. At the top of their vacation rental page is a link to a detailed page on some very common sense steps to take to avoid being scammed — every single one of which I had nearly broken. Among them, deal locally when you can and meet
When renting a vacation home online, watch out for red flags: Does the advertiser ask you to wire money? Is he pressuring you to act fast? Is his English broken?
with people in person; never wire funds via Western Union or MoneyGram (ahem); never give out financial information. They also make clear that
Craigslist is not involved in any transactions and bears no re- sponsibility. Though there are links to fraud reporting sites, the message is clear: Buyer beware, you are very much on your own. I did notify Craigslist via the re-
port-abuse link about the two dif- ferent Gramercy Park listings us- ing the same photos, and they were promptly removed. On The Post’s Story Lab blog, I
revealed my idiocy to the world and asked for others to share sto- ries of getting suckered or nearly suckered by vacation rental scams. One, shockingly, wrote that he wired money sight unseen to someone in Italy and found a key and a wonderful villa await- ing him on the Amalfi Coast. But the far more common story peo- ple told me was about falling for what looked like a great deal and either wiring the money and los- ing it or nearly wiring it before coming to their senses. “I saved $1,000 in the last min-
ute,” Asaf Yoselevski, a law stu- dent who lives in Israel, wrote af- ter Googling Angela Gomez and finding my post. He had hoped to get an apartment on 55th Street near Lincoln Center for $110 a night. “The money was already transferred via Western Union services, but I withdrew it at the last minute.”
Another reader wrote that she was about to wire money for an apartment on Broadway when she traced Herbert Mouscardy’s e-mail address to a Nigerian Internet service provider. Daniel Best, a comic book artist in Australia, lost $4,000 on a rental apartment scam, “which caused us to have to cancel our trip entirely — mainly because we had nowhere to stay and no mon- ey to afford to rent even a hotel
room. It was very distressing.” His blog post on his experience has now become a worldwide and ever-growing collection of the stories of the scammed. Catherine Dandel of Seattle wrote that she nearly sent Deron Milton money for a vacation home in Gig Harbor, Wash., that he was advertising on Craigslist. “I would be honored to provide your family accommodation in my house,” he wrote her. None of this is a surprise to Jes- sica Ader, an agent with CityReal- ty, an online real estate consult- ing business in New York. “We get calls like this at least
two to three times a week, usually on the ones that seem just too good to be true, and they are,” she said. “We’ve had people say, ‘Oh my God, I just sent my Social Se- curity number!’ or, “I just sent a check for $2,000!’ And we say, ‘Sorry, you’re screwed.’ ” With Ad- er’s help, I did some sleuthing. She pulled up 72 Irving Pl. on her database. “Nothing has been sold or rented here for several years,” she said. And penthouse Milton advertised on the sixth floor? “The building has five floors.” Herbert Mouscardy was offer- ing Apartment 1A, a 1,400- square-foot, three-bedroom space at 36 W. 35th St., with a gorgeous chandelier, for $150 a night. In his ad, he notes: “This flat is located on the tenth floor. The building has two elevator banks and one of
the elevators will drop you in front of the flat.”
So I called Greg Darden, presi- dent of the building’s co-op board. “There is no 10th floor,” he said. “This building has seven sto- ries. There’s only one creaky el- evator. And Apartment 1A is on the first floor.” No one named Herbert Mouscardy owns it. I found a Herbert Mouscardy
on Facebook. He said he was an accountant in the Bronx, that he doesn’t know anything about the scams, that his wallet was stolen four years ago and the police keep calling asking what he did with all the wire transfers. “I keep tell- ing them, I never got any money.” In the end, after wavering at
the Harris Teeter Western Union counter — going off to buy rasp- berries, or to try calling Hank from New Jersey or Deron Mil- ton, then coming back, like a moth to a flame, I ended up walk- ing away and not wiring the mon- ey. But I attribute that more to the common sense of the guy behind the counter than to any partic- ularly good judgment of my own. “You haven’t talked to the per- son?” the Western Union guy said, shaking his head. “I wouldn’t do it.” The next morning, Hank from
New Jersey called, urging me not to send my money. Hank, who asked that I not use his last name because he’s embarrassed about all this, was traveling in Romania
KLMNO
F5
a few years ago. He met some col- lege students and wanted to help them. They said they were trying to get an import-export business going in the States and needed his help picking up wire transfers at the Western Union. Good-hearted Hank was snookered into becom- ing what the FBI calls a “mule” — picking up scammers’ cash. “I feel like a fool,” he said. “I have a PhD. You’d think I’d know better.” About an hour later, Deron Mil- ton himself called, wondering why I hadn’t made the money transfer. The caller ID showed the number as 0000012345. In heavi- ly accented English, he asked if I needed any questions answered before wiring the money. I said I had just one: How could he, knowing that I was a mother with two young children, know- ing that I would show up at 72 Ir- ving Pl. and find no apartment and no sixth floor and be out $1,000, “How could you leave me out there on the street with my kids with nowhere to go?” Click. After I decided to write about
my experience, I tried calling and e-mailing Deron Milton again to see what he had to say for himself. The number I had didn’t work. I have yet to hear back from him. Undeterred in my apartment hunt, I went back to Priceline and yes, Craigslist. All of a sudden, it was crystal clear which listings were bogus. The lush photos looked like they were ripped from architectural magazines. The English was off. And the prices were too enticingly low. I found a legitimate listing that
connected to a legitimate Web site, talked to a real live human being and wound up renting a cute one-bedroom with a loft for the kids on the Upper West Side, for a fair price. Charles Isaacs, who runs
AtHomeUs.com, had to talk me off the ceiling to convince me that the apartment was real. When he said he took credit card deposits, I breathed easier, but I truly didn’t believe it until we had the key in hand. “With every single e-mail I get,
I have to prove myself, prove that I’m not going to scam someone. And I don’t always win,” Isaacs said. “Craigslist used to be so beautiful. There was so much trust. But now . . . . You really have to be careful.” And that means, sometimes, walking away from the deal that really is too good to be true.
schulteb@washpost.com
laos continued from F4
school in Bulgaria. He lost track of his sister. In 1970, Mr. T returned to Laos to work for what is now the Min- istry of Agriculture and Forestry. After the Pathet Lao overthrew the royal Laotian government in 1975, communist leaders prac- ticed political repression on what historian Grant Evans calls a “huge and vengeful scale.” Some intellectuals were sent to prison camps, but Mr. T, who boasts of being on the “winning side” of the communist takeover, kept his for- estry job until 1989, when he quit to work on rural development projects for international non- governmental organizations. Mr. T liked NGO work but dreamed of returning to Vang Vieng. In 1993, he reconnected with his long-lost sister, who, af- ter living in Thailand and the United States, had moved to Ja- pan. She told her brother that she wanted to revive silk production near their home town. In 1996, he purchased about
five acres in Phoudindaeng vil- lage for $10,000 and planted more than 2,000 native mulberry saplings. The plants were a per- fect choice: Mulberry leaves and berries can be processed into tea and wine, and the leaves nourish silkworms. The farm, which Mr. T esti-
mates is about 40 acres, has grown with help from volunteers. Some stay for a week to garden and build mud-brick houses (which house future guests). Oth- ers give more: One volunteer do- nated milking goats; another started a Belgian nonprofit group, Let Laos Learn, to fund English lessons in Phoudindaeng and neighboring villages. “I’d like to show something simple, but with meaning,” Mr. T told me one morning, “so I appre- ciate that many young people and foreign visitors, long-term and short-term, stay here, learn and give us some help.” Volunteers free him up to pur-
DETAILS
Vangvieng Organic Farm Phoudindaeng village, Laos 011-856-23-511-220
www.laofarm.org Vang Vieng is four hours by bus or minivan from Vientiane and six hours from Luang Prabang. Take a tuk-tuk taxi to the farm for about $2 per person. If you want to immerse yourself in a farming, building or teaching project, plan to stay at least a week. Double-check your reservation or show up early on the day you want to stay. If farm lodging is full, it’s easy to find a room in Vang Vieng. Unlike neighboring China and Vietnam, Laos does issue visas on arrival. The price for Americans is $35 for a 30-day tourist visa. For more information on Laos:
www.tourismlaos.org.
— M.I.
sue other projects. When he’s not turning compost, taking wine or- ders or greeting tour groups, the trained biologist teaches Laotian farmers how to make “value-add- ed” products such as wine, tea and dried bananas. Mr. T also saves seeds and plants native trees. Until last year, he fed mul- berry leaves to silkworms. Local villagers, in turn, spun the worms’ silk into clothing and sold it to tourists. Mr. T’s sister approves. “Each time she comes to visit,” he said, “she cries of happiness.”
It’s not easy running an organ- ic farm in the communist Lao People’s Democratic Republic. Mr. T said he struggles to raise funds. (Until last year, citizens couldn’t register NGOs.) These days, ramshackle bars catering to boisterous backpackers — he calls them “echo tourists” — are springing up along an adjacent
stretch of the Nam Song. And Mr. T is relocating his silk operation to another village because his silkworms stopped producing. He suspects that noise and pesti- cide drift from rubber planta- tions disturbed their peace. One hopeful constant is the
Laotian farmers who flock to Vangvieng Organic Farm for in- spiration. Some are neighbors or agriculture students from the Na- tional University of Laos in Vien- tiane. Others are high school stu- dents who come for hands-on study tours.
On our last day at the farm, I
met a group of high schoolers from the Sai Nyai Eco-School in southern Laos. They had traveled about 540 miles by minivan. Af- ter touring Mr. T’s goat house and organic vegetable garden, they took notes as he demonstrated ways of making mulberry tea and “star fruit” (carambola) wine. Sophavanh Phommixay, a co-
director of the school, said her students come from poor farming families. When rice and peanut prices are too low, she explained, the students’ parents pick corn and coffee — for $2 or $3 per day — to make ends meet. We were chatting after dinner in the farm’s outdoor restaurant. The Nam Song was sparkling un- der a gibbous moon. At a far pic- nic table, Australian expats clinked glasses of mulberry wine. Sophavanh’s students were head- ing to bed. Beccy was paying our tab: $159 for a week’s worth of meals and lodging. Sophavanh, 25, looked at the
Nam Song and smiled. She said Vangvieng Organic Farm had taught her students an invaluable lesson. “They are starting to dream,” she explained. “Before, they didn’t want to be farmers, but when they come here and see Mr. T making fruit wine and goat cheese, they say, ‘It can be done! We can do this!’ ”
travel@washpost.com
Ives is a freelance writer living in Hanoi.
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