__________________________________________Ask the DA
 

I was inquiring about an apartment in Brooklyn, and I received an

E-mail from a person claiming to be living in London who was offering an apartment for rent.  The person requested that a $900 security deposit be wired to him in advance.  Is this a scam? 

You may well be correct in suspecting that the sender of this E-mail is engaged in a scam.  My office gets many complaints regarding this type of scheme, and often the elderly are targeted.  The wording of the E-mail that you received is reminiscent of a popular scam originating in Nigeria.  Such “advance fee frauds” are confidence tricks, in which the target is persuaded to advance a relatively small sum of money in the hope of realizing a much larger gain.

We frequently see these schemes originating in such places as South America, Belgium, Germany and England.  One of my own staffers recently received an E-mail from Africa stating that one of her relatives had passed away there, and in order for her to collect a substantial inheritance, she was required to wire money to the sender to defray his incidental expenses.  The staffer immediately turned the information over to my Rackets Bureau, which ascertained that this was in fact a scam.

Sadly, the elderly are often victims of these schemes.   Lottery scams in particular appear to target senior citizens.  My office has seen a number of cases in which seniors have drained their bank accounts in the hope of winning a jackpot.

Be on guard against any E-mail solicitation promising big payouts.  Should you fall prey to such a scheme, you can file a complaint with the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), which is a partnership between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National White Collar Crime Center.  IC3 accepts online Internet crime complaints from either the person who believes they were defrauded or from a third party to the complainant.

For more information about TADD, please visit my office’s Web site at www.brooklynda.org. To have your questions answered in a future column, send them to asktheda@brooklynda.org.