I received the following emails from a vacation home owner: "I listed our vacation rental on craigslist.com. We received a reply from Steven Lampard, with the same e-mail like you showed from Garry Lampard, sdame phone number. Thank you for the warning. How is this a scam? What does this person hope to gain from offering to rent our vacation rental? Thanks for any help you might be able to give us."
This scam is quite simple and unfortunately very common on the Internet today: It works like this..... Let's assume that your vacation home rents for $1,000 per week. Mr. Lampard will send you a check for a higher amount such as $2,000 and then ask you to refund him the difference because the company mistakenly sent you more money for whatever reason he may make up. As a vacation home owner you will think that it is ok for you to send Mr. Lampard the $1,000 difference because your bank has already "temporarily" posted the $2,000 into your account. However, the $2,000 will eventually bounce and you will be left with $1,000 less in your back account. There are many variations to this scam...but this is just a general idea on how it works.