It was the perfect storm, and it nearly scammed a Middletown resident out of hundreds of dollars.
Jeffrey Curry King, 51, on disability from his job as an American Airlines flight attendant, was desperately looking for a house to rent in Middletown since he was homeless and living with a friend. He searched Craig’s List, an Internet classified ad service, and saw a two-bedroom home on Queen Avenue was available for $450 a month, and that included appliances and utilities.
“A great deal,” he said of the offer. “I got excited at first.”
He contacted the person listed in the ad, and in an email, was told to send the first month’s rent and a deposit, then a key to the home would be mailed.
Only one problem: The home was occupied.
He was that close to being a scam victim, one of about 1,200 Ohioans who reported to Attorney General Mike DeWine's office this year they were targeted by scam artists. Those included scams made by phone, on computers, and through the mail, his office said.
After contacting the man who said he owned the property, Curry King drove by the home twice late at night and both times the lights were out. On his third visit, made at 10 p.m., it appeared someone was home, which he thought was strange since the place was for rent. He looked in the window and saw Kimberly Carroll lying on the couch. He knocked on the door and told Carroll he was interested in renting the home for $450 a month.
“I told him nothing in here was for rent for $450 a month,” she said.
Carroll, 46, said Curry King was the fourth person to stop by her home and say they wanted to rent the property. She has been in the home since Nov. 1 and pays $675 a month.
After all the visits, and because the ad is still listed on Craig’s List, she’s concerned for her safety. As a precaution, she didn’t want her face shown in the pictures for the newspaper.
She and Curry King also were upset by the lies the scam artist told in his email correspondences.
He wrote that he wanted to sell the home until his “lovely wife advised that we keep it for future purpose.”
The man wrote he was transferred to Texas to continue his missionary work. He also said he was in a government program that sponsored his utility bills, so that was one reason the rent was only $450 a month.
Curry King said the man told “a real good story and a real good line.”
In his email, the man also wrote: “Please note that, we are a kind and honest family, that spent a lot on property that is available for rent, so in one accord, we are soliciting for your absolute maintenance of this house and want you to treat it as your own. We want you to keep it tidy all the time so that we shall be glad to see it whenever we are around on a visit.”
After a series of questions about Curry King’s background, the email closed, “Thanks and God bless you.”
After reading the email, Carroll said: “I don’t know what God you serve but I wouldn’t want to be a part of that. Everybody reaps what they sow. It’s terrible that you would put God in the mist of your mess. The God I serve doesn’t operate that way.”
Curry King agreed. “He said he was doing God’s work. That made me even madder. Thank God He was looking out for me. I just felt completely violated.”
What lesson did Curry King learn?
“If it’s too good to be true, it probably is.”