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221 Cannon is Not For Sale

fredbenenson.com

191–200 of 278 posts

Re: 221 Cannon is Not For Sale

#191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the dark old days before Apple Pay, where it was common in America to hand your credit/debit card to some rando at a restaurant and have them disappear with it for a few minutes, about once a year my bank would call me to ask if I'd been using my card in some far-off locale: "Hi! Are you in Tijuana?" "Not since 1993. Why? What's up?" "So you didn't just try to buy gasoline at a PEMEX there?" "Nope, I'm in San Fran…

Handing your credit card to pay is still such a foreign concept to me

Back when computers were actually expensive and wireless networking technology wasn’t as good/common, they would take your card to the back office and run it on the single, hardwired card terminal.

Nowadays it’s less of an issue as those terminals cost peanuts and WiFi is ubiquitous so they have many of them and can just bring one to your table.

Re: 221 Cannon is Not For Sale

#192
post #154
post #6

What about sinking 3 2x4s into the ground and nailing a 4x8 sheet of plywood with a tastefully painted sign indicating the property is not for sale? It won't stop everyone but any realtor doing due diligence will likely see it. If is lasts long enough, it will show up on Google street view as well.

I think these days the easiest thing is to take a HELOC loan backed by the property. Do not withdraw money from HELOC and pay the $125/year fee. This puts a lien on the property. (The article alluded to this solution by noting these scammers avoid properties with a mortgage).

great

now you made banks interested in supporting these scams

Re: 221 Cannon is Not For Sale

#193
post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Texas about a decade ago there was a criminal enterprise out of Houston that was putting swimmers on gas station pumps all over the state. Little towns, big towns, country gas stations. My now wife got hit that way.

Swimming at a gas station pump would be uncomfortably lethal.

Gasoline fight!

Re: 221 Cannon is Not For Sale

#196
post #2

> He also provided a fake email for my brother: alexanderedwardenenson@out-look.com. Notice the subtle misspelling — “Benenson” without the second “n” in the email, and the hyphenated “out-look.com” domain. Surely you meant "'Benenson' without the “b” in the email, and the hyphenated 'out-look.com' domain"?

It is so bizarre that I start to think this is a non-human mistake.

(No I'm not looking at that em-dash)

Re: 221 Cannon is Not For Sale

#197
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, but paying someone $300 is cheap when you hope to get a check for several hundred thousand in a few months. (even if the scam is only to get the earnest money that is still a $300 investment for the final thousand or two you make - with very little work)

That's a lot of work plus money transfer paper trail for something like this.

Presumably the money trail leeds to the Caymon islands or other country where they won't assist investigation.

Re: 221 Cannon is Not For Sale

#198

1. Author lost me at his first sentence: "Like most people, I’ve had my identity stolen once or twice in my life." I am careful and aware of this possibility, but AFAIK I have not experienced this, nor have "most people" I know. o_O Crazy times. 2. I don't even understand how a title transfer could happen without verifying ownership. Is the title system in the USA decentralized or that much different than elsewhere?…

> Is the title system in the USA decentralized or that much different than elsewhere? As with most things both law-related and US-related, it depends. This type of scam would not work in the majority of states due to various laws, regulations, and bookkeeping (it would be nearly* impossible to sell land you don’t own in California for example). There are other states (and countries - I’m looking at you Canada) where…

So the scam here doesn't seem to be ACTUALLY selling the land--it's basically engaging a realtor long enough to get earnest money on the table, then to disappear. Although if they could go far enough to get an entire amount wired to them I'm sure they'd take it.

Since a lot of people are doing all cash (non-financed) deals lately, I could see how a scammer and a lax realtor could possibly scam an overzealous buyer out of the full amount.

Re: 221 Cannon is Not For Sale

#199
post #2

> He also provided a fake email for my brother: alexanderedwardenenson@out-look.com. Notice the subtle misspelling — “Benenson” without the second “n” in the email, and the hyphenated “out-look.com” domain. Surely you meant "'Benenson' without the “b” in the email, and the hyphenated 'out-look.com' domain"?

This is actually a really weird mistake. It's a completely different spelling mistake than in reality, and I wonder if it's an artifact of polishing the post with AI that "corrected" something that was right (or only a vague bullet point) in the original?

(ETA: Another one: referring to "hi good morning" in the images of texts when it's actually "hi good evening").

Re: 221 Cannon is Not For Sale

#200

1. Author lost me at his first sentence: "Like most people, I’ve had my identity stolen once or twice in my life." I am careful and aware of this possibility, but AFAIK I have not experienced this, nor have "most people" I know. o_O Crazy times. 2. I don't even understand how a title transfer could happen without verifying ownership. Is the title system in the USA decentralized or that much different than elsewhere?…

In the dark old days before Apple Pay, where it was common in America to hand your credit/debit card to some rando at a restaurant and have them disappear with it for a few minutes, about once a year my bank would call me to ask if I'd been using my card in some far-off locale: "Hi! Are you in Tijuana?" "Not since 1993. Why? What's up?" "So you didn't just try to buy gasoline at a PEMEX there?" "Nope, I'm in San Fran…

Remember when credit cards required your signature on the back?
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