How to Stay One Step Ahead of the Sacramento Real Estate Scams

Nobody is really safe from Sacramento real estate scams.

In 1980, I won a trip to Jamaica and thought it was a scam. I called HBO and asked if they knew some scam artist was sending out letters on its letterhead telling victims they had won an all-expense-paid trip for two to Jamaica for a week. They promoted it as a collaborative effort between HBO and the Jamaica Tourist Board. And even though it was the early days of HBO when anything goes, I was still suspicious. Perhaps it’s my Midwestern upbringing or living on the streets as a child. In any case, HBO assured me that I had indeed won a trip to Jamaica. Hurricane Allen had devastated Jamaica the year before, and this PR event was supposedly a way to reinvigorate interest.

Which wasn’t entirely without its scam-factor as it had turned out. At the end of the year, I received a 1099 for $10,000. This was only 7 days, and it wasn’t luxury. In fact, I had to endure a midnight ride over tiny bridges suspended by ropes in a Jamaican taxi driven by a guy drinking Red Stripe and smoking Ganga. It terrified me to look down at the gorges. My white-knuckled taxi ride happened because the plane out of Kingston to Ocho Rios had been sitting on the tarmac filled with passengers for four hours by the time I climbed aboard.

Hey, was I not a guest of the Jamaica Tourist Board and HBO? I am not sitting on the tarmac in a plane without air conditioning. That $10,000 income proposal was an insult. Because it didn’t cost $10,000. I had been to Jamaica many times before. My own mother was asking me why I didn’t fly to Europe instead. Sure, I’d fork out $3,000 if I could deduct $10,000 off my corporate taxes. I tallied the cost of the hotels. Checked out the airfare and submitted a request to HBO to issue a revised 1099 for about 1/3rd of that cost. I guess they wanted to shut me up because they revised the 1099.

But you can see how my initial instincts were fairly correct. No free lunch.

Other people often cannot tell when a scam is about to happen. Maybe they’re not expecting it. One of my sellers texted to say people were knocking on their door, inquiring about renting his house. He thought the buyer was prematurely advertising the place for rent. I had to explain the hard, cold facts about the rental internet scams. The crooks swipe my professional listing photos, whip up an ad for a place to rent an unbelievable price, demand immediate wired funds, and then they just sit back and collect free money.

When my husband and I closed our own escrow last summer, I didn’t even bother to consider wiring funds. Too many scams involving wired funds. The crooks hack your email and send bogus wiring instructions. Once the funds are in their account, it’s over. You lose. Nope, I went to the bank and obtained a cashier’s check.

People fall for all sorts of scams. The callers start out with “I’m with the fire department” or “I work with veterans” or they use scare tactics like “your bank account has been hacked” or “we’re shutting off your electricity.” Stuff is so weird nowadays involving the White House that it’s hard to tell what is real and what is not. You say to yourself, it is not possible that a guy who is in the pocket of fossil fuel giants and believes climate change is a hoax is running the EPA. Or, that a person against educating our children is our Secretary of Education and would like to teach Bible classes in schools. Or, that our Attorney General plans to return the country to a pre-Civil Rights era.

It’s no wonder people get scammed by the crooks.

Crazy scary crap happens every day in our real world.

You see the absolute worst options in power and you say, no, you do not live in the Philippines. This is not North Korea. This is the United States of America and this is not happening. But it is.

It is not normal.

I used to talk to people and be polite when I received a telemarketing call. Not anymore. In fact, I almost hung up on an agent the other day who was referring a client to me because his voice was overly energetic. Hang up and block the call is my method. I’d rather lose a potential listing than fall victim to a scam, I guess. The bottom line, though, is if it seems too good to be true, then it is. Unless of course, I’m telling you we’ll get multiple offers and sell over list price, because that part, actually, is often true in Sacramento. Don’t worry about offending an agent if you ask her to prove it.