I don't know if you heard about this, but last week a furious real estate developer stormed into the offices of an advance fee scammer in New Jersey. The developer had just been scammed out a $200,000 "application fee."
The brawny developer pounded the face of the con man into bloody ground beef. According to the paramedics, they could barely identify the face of the con man as human.
"Killer" Pug. Haha!
Okay-okay, the above story never happened. I just made it up to demonstrate a point. The featured image of a pummeled person is actually just a "victim" wearing makeup. Ha!
But given the very real possibility of a beating, if you were an advance fee scammer, would you prominently display your actual office address?
Or would you simply use a P.O. Box? Or perhaps - and I have definitely seen this before - would you provide no address on your website at all? After all, who wants to to be pounded by an angry customer?
The advance fee scamming industry is huge. Developers and commercial real estate borrowers get conned out of millions of dollars in "good faith deposits" or "application fees" every year.
These con men issue term sheets for very attractive commercial real estate loans. The borrowers, desperate for a loan, steal from their mother's grocery money jar, to raise the immense application fee required by the "lender."
Once the money is in the hands of the grubby little con man, the "lender," of course, stops returning any phone calls and emails. No loan is ever forthcoming. It is all a con.
Go ahead and steal from your mother's
grocery money. The below training is that good.
Over the next few weeks, I hope to teach you other ways of these spotting these con men; but for now -
Any time a "lender" issues a term sheet with darned attractive terms, look at his website. Does his website have a street address? Does he even have an address at all?
"Danger, Will Robinson, danger!" -- the Robot in the original Lost in Space TV series.