My wife is helping her bother find an apartment in NYC during an internship. She told me that they had found a nice apartment, and are making arrangements to see it. Then she told me the owner wanted to ensure that her brother could afford the apartment by having him send a Western Union payment to someone he knows and trusts in the city.
I thought that sounded odd, so I told her to respond that he would like to see the apartment and will come with cash in hand. She responded that she had been scammed and would only do it that way.
I told my wife to google a few of the keywords that came up in the scam(Western Union, trusted friend, apartment) She said she searched and didn't think it was a scam, or maybe she didn't want it to be a scam. Sure enough, I Googled, it's a common scam.
As soon as you send proof that you transferred the money to a "trusted" source, the scammer takes the proof and gets the cash. The whole time, it is implied that only the person who sent or received the money can get it from Western Union. That is not true. Anyone with a photocopy of a receipt can get the money.
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Just about anyone wanting you to use Western Union as a monetary vehicle to push payments is going to be a scam. Read this link when it comes to doing business with anyone wanting to use Western Union. http://www.scams.flipshark.com/westernunion.html
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It would be interesting to know where they found out about the apartment. I'm a Realtor in the DC area and about a year ago in this area a big scam was going around. What was happening is people were hijacking agents craiglists ads that were for properties that were for sale. Somehow they were changing them to rental ads and also the contact info. People would contact them to rent the house and be told pretty much the same thing about wiring the the money first. There were quite a few sellers who had knocks on the door from someone who thought they rented the house but actually just lost there money instead. It didn't make many news outlets but it happened 3 or 4 times just in my office alone. So it's good they were careful.
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I think he said Roommates.com, but after I Googled, I saw that it's all over the place. Craigslist and others as well.
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Variations of this scam have been going around for a while. they love to go after people buying/selling cars and renting or looking to rent a room. A famous one is they offer to buy your car from autotrader or cragslist and send a check for too much money telling you to money order the overage back to them. Buy the time your bank finds out the check is fake they are gone with the money order and you now owe the bank. If they ask for you to send a money order, run away, run far away. :-)
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Unless you're sending to someone you know, Western Union should send the flares off right away. No way of tracing where the money goes once it's picked up. :-)
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That's the rub. You do send it to someone you know. But most people think that only the person you send it to can pick it up. That's not true.
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