I receive emails regularly that I can easily identify as scams. We all receive them, the letter from the barrister from england who has money to deposit in your account etc, etc. They just need your account number and your info to deposit the millions to your account. Yeah right! Anyway, I recently got an email from someone named Ivo Akuma (from Japan), and his scam was a little bit more unusual as he was targeting real estate agents with a letter posing as a buyer, asking for listings to be sent to him between $500,000 and $1,200,000. and he would be paying all cash. So I thought this was possibly some type of scam, but I sent him a list of nice homes anyway. A couple days later he wrote back with his choice from the list of homes. He said draw up a contract and email it to him. He signed the contract using electronic signatures. Then I requested proof of funds and he sent me a bank statement that looked legit showing some $3 million in his account. OK, so far but then I requested a $5000 deposit, and he emailed saying he didn't want to use a title company for his money and that he preferred to us an attorney trust account. Then before we got much furthur, I decided to google the name "Ivo Akuma" and found a blog exposing this person's scam on other agents. Here is the link to the blog:
http://zitrof.net/mr-ivo-akuma-real-estate-scam/
I think his next move would have been to access the attorney's trust account number to attempt draining the money out somehow. I hope this person gets caught!
