I get daily e-mails from scammers who target Realtors and I generally ignore them.  Sometimes I’ll read through one of their e-mails in order to figure out what the scammers are up to and how they planning on walking off with their financial prize.  Sometimes I just like reading the sob story.

About 5 years ago I received an e-mail that caught my eye.  This one was from Dr. Jóhannes Sveinbjörnsson , a millionaire from Iceland who was looking to spend about $2,000,000 on a property in Portland.  This message made me laugh because two of the main criteria for this property is that it had to have a pool and Dr. Sveinbjörnsson didn’t want to be in a neighborhood with any ethnic minorities.  I assumed that (being a foreigner) Dr. Sveinbjörnsson wasn’t acquainted with our US Fair Housing laws and Portland’s character.

I decided to do a google search to see if any one had flagged the scam already, but when I googled the good doctor, the only thing I found was that he is a member of the Nordic Association of Agricultural Scientists and his specialty is in dairy cow milk production.  The poor guy had his name hijacked but I couldn’t find any contact information to let him know – not that there’s a whole lot that he could do about it anyway.  So, I left it at that and deleted the message.  Little did I know that I had come across the Aaron Spelling of real estate scams.   

Since then, I’ve received 1 or 2 messages from Dr. Sveinbjörnsson every year.  Each letter builds on the previous message and fleshes out more and more of the details.  I’ve received follow up letters from Johannes and his barrister “Cole Rothfords” in London.  I’ve received copies of his banks statement from an English bank showing that he has over 10,000,000 British pounds in liquid assets.  At one point, Dr. Svendborgesson’s wife started writing me about her desire to move to “my area”.  Unfortunately, she was battling an illness which kept her from travelling to Portland to look at property.  A lot of her time was taken up with trips to Japan for experimental medical treatments. 

This week I received a letter from the Sveinbjörnsson’s son, letting me know that his mother recently passed away from “the big C” [sic] not allowing our transaction to go smoothly.  I’m not sure how I missed it, but Dr. Sveinbjörnsson apparently passed away as well.  [These letters aren’t very well written.]  However, Martins (their son) is ready to complete the transaction that his father and mother started with me in order to complete his mother’s legacy, which he refuses to let die.  Martins wishes to continue with the purchase of the same property, the purpose of which was “for orphanage and motherless babies”.  All I need to do is to answer the e-mail and the barrister, Cole Rothfords, will help me finish things up. 

I’ve never once answered any of these messages but I’m pretty sure I know what the scam is.  Five years later, I still haven’t found any warnings on the internet about this scam.  Because of that, I can’t imagine that it’s very successful.  I love the idea of this scammer sitting somewhere abroad and writing the next installment of the story just for me. 

I think that the scam would involve Martins sending me a $200,000 earnest money check for the purchase of a $2,000,000 property.  I expect they’ll want the money to be deposited in our office’s escrow account.  Before the check has time to clear, the barrister, Mr. Rothfords, will contact me and tell me that the money was sent improperly and that we need to wire the money back ASAP so that they can re-send the money the correct way.  They would then take the money from the wire and run, while their check bounces.  

This is a pretty obvious scam, and I don’t expect anyone would fall for it.  There are, however, a lot of clever sorts out there preying on people who are in trouble with their mortgages, and they’re using some pretty slick schemes.  If you know someone who is in trouble with their home, please give them my name.  Consultations are always free and confidential.