scam

[Joster19]

I'm guessing many others have had this happen, I have received contact with someone asking to get an estimate for work at an address. When I look them up on the assessor's page, they are not the current owner. I even had a person list off the number of trees, maybe even some other specifics- I think they may have used Google Street view. I can't remember if I responded in the past, but I just marked this person as spam.
have you dealt with these in any other way? or notified the sellers?
- in my recollection all these houses were for sale...

Sent from my Pixel 6 using Tapatalk

 

[data farm 26]

Happens all of the time. I just ignore mostly. Sometimes if I'm not 100% I ask some questions to verify and they usually go silent pretty quickly. Super annoying though.

 

[ATH]

I've seen it on for sale houses. A bunch several years ago but not for a while.

Best I can tell the scam is they have you do the work. Pay by credit card (stolen of course) and say something about needing extra cash for the move so they wanna pay too much and have you issue a check refund of the difference.

How that can actually work is beyond me.

 

[joshuarov]

I'm guessing many others have had this happen, I have received contact with someone asking to get an estimate for work at an address. When I look them up on the assessor's page, they are not the current owner. I even had a person list off the number of trees, maybe even some other specifics- I think they may have used Google Street view. I can't remember if I responded in the past, but I just marked this person as spam.
have you dealt with these in any other way? or notified the sellers?
- in my recollection all these houses were for sale...

Sent from my Pixel 6 using Tapatalk

I just had the exact same inquiry, also a "Richard Moore." I'm going to contact the realtor who's selling the house.

 

[ATH]

I just had the exact same inquiry, also a "Richard Moore." I'm going to contact the realtor who's selling the house.

First time this happened to me, I actually showed up at the house...and realtor was there showing the house! (that made it really easy to confirm it was a scam)

We talked after. as I wanted to fill him in on the details in case it was a scam against him. I don't think it has anything to do with them. However, I wonder if the same scammer will try that same address on other tree companies? Would be good for realtor to know somebody might show up to cut down a tree!

 

[flushcut]

Lately I get a rando text saying something about being available to do tree cutting. I get the address and it’s a house for sale but I’ll call the listing agent and nobody knows anything about tree work needed on that property. So I just ignore any text asking about tree work unless I know the number.

 

[Spiral of decline]

We get those texts weekly. Sometimes multiple times a week.