Does Yahoo offer rental payments through Western Bank i.e. pay WB, inspect apartment, agree to rent?

Question

I'm trying to rent an apartment in NYC from someone in Europe. He wants quarterly payments made through Western Union Bank. Everything appears to be set up through Yahoo Real Estate. The way I've been told it works is that I submit the first cycle's payment to Western Union, fax the receipt to a Yahoo Real Estate representative, and then I will get contacted by the lessor to inspect the apartment. If I decide to rent, I indicate so on Yahoo, where they will release the funds to the lessor. He cannot touch the funds unless I indicate that I wish to rent. My question is whether this is even offered through Yahoo. I'm a bit more suspicious because the lessor lives in Europe, so I'd like to know that I'm not part of some scam.

Answer 1

This is definitely a scam, do not send any money to anyone who claims to be a representative of Yahoo! Real Estate.  If a deal sounds too good to be true, and sounds like a circuitous process, it's generally a scam.

Answer 2

This is a scam!

The reason that the scammer says that he is a "Yahoo" Real Estate representative is because he uses a yahoo email address.

Just because he uses something like "[e-mail]" does not mean he is connected to yahoo.It just means that he is using a free email address.

The scammer asks you to send the money by Western Union.This money can be picked up by anyone in the world as long as they know the security question and answer..

This is a variation of an "advance fee" or "419" scam.

I am guessing that any phone contact you have been given is either an anonymous mobile or a non-geographical redirect number beginning +44 70 (these numbers direct to any mobile phone in the world at cost to the caller)

The email address you have been contacted by is x*[e-mail] is free,anonymous and disposable.

You have been asked to send money by western union(again,this can be picked up anonymously) he says that "He cannot touch the funds unless I indicate that I wish to rent." That is a lie.WU is used to send money from one person to another.If you send money and it is picked up then it is gone.WU does NOT hold money.

What you need to do is trace the email.You can do this by extracting the IP address of the sender from the email header.

I work with a lot of scams and victims of scams and have never seen this variation before...A friend of mine put it simply...

"This one is simple though.  Buyer says "I'm not sending anything anywhere until I have seen the apartment and signed a contract in person." -- Lad (scammer)will scream like a stuck pig."

As this is a seemingly new scam I would be very interested in which website you were contacted on...You can either mail me at eire_1970(at)yahoo(dot)com or YIM me at eire_1970 .

I can then show you how to trace the email and any other info you might want.

S4amf13n