Mathew Bennett and Charlene Bennett are a Scam!
Scammers phone#: (404)793-3596
The scam is as follows.....I found a nice 1/1 rental unit online at trulia.com. I even drove by the property and saw a "for rent" sign up in front of the house. I received the following chain of emails and responded thinking it was a legitimate.
Mathew Bennett dtsrent1@gmail.com
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"Hello, I'm Mathew the owner of the House you are renting. Let us know how soon you are willing to move in. Email my wife charlene,on (
charlenebennett101@gmail.com) and she will attend to you better.and make sure you put the address in the subject when emailing my wife,for quick response."
So I emailed "Charlene" and she emailed me back the next morning with an elaborate story saying that her and her husband were living in the home until he had to transfer to GA for work, and she tried to leave the keys with an agent before they moved, but she couldn't find one in time and was worried about leaving her house open yada yada yada. She emphasized how important it was that someone take good care of "their home" and asked about my rental experience and asked how well I could take care of their home.
I emailed back a long email and asked if the unit had a washer and dryer and then asked if they could send more pics of the room because the description said loft bedroom.
I then got a blanket response asking me to fill out an application that requested my personal details. That's when I got suspiscious and asked if the unit had a washer and dryer.
Then I got a quick response saying yes.
I then asked the person to call me. I got a text from saying they tried calling but no response. I called the number back and got a generic voicemail greeting.
I then found out they were on the list of known scammers and tried to fraud other people as well, by finding real properties for rent and posting their own fake listing related to the same address, same details, but for a cheaper price and scamming innocent victims out of personal information and first month rent and security deposit.
Then a minute later I received a phone call from a private phone number, and some guy with a british accent who sounded like he was calling me from a loud call center, claimed to be Mathew Bennett. I let him know that I knew he was a scam and he, was surprised at first, and got angry with me and said, "then why'd you call me".
I'm glad I had someone to warn me about this particular scammer before I became a victim, and I'm glad there's a system tracking known scammers' activities to help protect us from these theives. Crime never pays and it'll always catch up with the criminals in the end.