Victim Location 98144
Type of a scam Travel/Vacations
I responded to a craigslist ad for a Maui vacation rental. I asked if the property was available for specific dates, and what the rates were. The initial responses to me were concerning as the person was not using complete sentences, not signing their emails, and so on. Literally the first response I got was "it is available". Nothing else, not even a name, punctuation, anything. Anyways, I proceeded to correspond with this person who later claimed to be "Dennis Burt", and he asked for my email address, which is odd because he was emailing with me. I then received an email from a new address, [email protected], which was a summary of the property, the dates I requested, and rates, and a note that a contract will be sent to me if I am happy with the rates. After a few more emails back and forth (mostly about whether they would be willing to reduce the rates, which they were willing to do), Dennis said he would send the contract. I then received a docusign contract from "Dennis Burt" at [email protected], which repeated all of the same information, and requested a money order, which was a red flag for me, as no vacation rentals require this. I tied calling the # on the website and got Google Voice, another red flag (what kind of business has no business phone?). SO I started googling and discovered that Dennis Burt has no Real Estate or any other information available online, and that the business goes by multiple names, the other being "Perfect Vacation BLiss", which already has been proven to be fraudulent: https://www.bbb.org/us/hi/lahaina/profile/vacation-rentals/perfect-vacation-blis…⇄