In case you were still wondering how many people have heard of home staging, here’s further proof that this is a well established field. It seems the scam artists are starting to crawl out from under their rocks to see if they can con home stagers into sending them money!
This is a twist on the “send money to a foreign country to rescue a dying relative” or “assist a diplomat who needs help getting millions out of the country and you’ll be rewarded” — this time with a script rewritten for home stagers and decorators or interior designers who might do work for home owners who are living abroad.
In this scam the interior designer or home stager is contacted by an out-of-country “homeowner” by email. The sender leads you on about a project and tries to build a rapport all in the hopes of tricking you into handing over your money.
In the specific case I’ve heard about, the stager said the man was very vague around details of the home. He wouldn’t answer the stager’s questions. Instead, he seemed focused on whether or not she had credit card processing abilities. Even though the stager didn’t provide an estimate for staging fees (because she didn’t have enough information from the “client”), he told her that she was to charge $16,000 to his credit card, keeping $8,000 for herself and sending $8,000 to his “artist.”
Thankfully, this home stager didn’t fall into the trap of being blinded by the promised $8,000 fee, and when she questioned this arrangement she never heard from the man again.
Look out for schemes like this because unfortunately, some of people are just too trusting and they will do something like this, trying to help someone out. Otherwise, email scams would not still be so very prevalent.
Has anything like this happened to you in your home staging career? Share your thoughts and/or experiences by leaving a comment below.
Debra Gould, The Staging Diva®
President, Six Elements Inc. Home Staging
Debra Gould’s mission is to inspire people to follow their dreams. She developed the Staging Diva Home Staging Courses to teach others how to earn a living doing something they love.
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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
I did receive this email but fortunately being the skeptic that I am, I deleted it immediately. I didn’t even read the whole thing.
Staging To Sell
Home Staging For Sellers . Interior Design & reDesign
231.690.0398
Jill R. Monczunski
President/Designer
http://www.staging2sell.com
jill@staging2sell.com
Michigan USA
I recently ran into a similar scam, but it was on craigslist.com. I posted an item for sale and someone sent a fishy e-mail response back to me. After letting him know that I knew he was trying to scam me, I also let him know that I reported him to craigslist………….I never heard from him again.
Thanks again Debra for the heads up on this scammer
I really appreciate you sharing this story and I’m curious to see if anyone else will have run into this scam (or am I the only lucky one?!)
Thanks for alerting us to this scam! They’ll try just about anything to get money. We have rental houses and get a lot of these types of scams from foreigners wanting to rent our property. They always have some game about sending us a check or money order and we send them something back. Yeah, right!!
Never, never send money to someone who you don’t know, have not worked with or it seems fishy!! Good advice and thanks again.
Debbie
Thank goodness I haven’t run into this particular scam yet. Many thanks for sending out the warning, though, Debra!
You’re so right Leah – using common sense is a great defense!
What will these scammers think of next! Thanks for the heads up Debra! I have never received an email like this, but I’ll definately keep on the look out. It’s scary to think that anyone would fall for something like this, but it’s sad to say that some people do.
The only online mess I ever got myself into was a nasty Facebook worm. I guess I can say I learned about Facebook security the hard way. Thank goodness I was able to “kill the worm” on my computer and contain the mess it could have caused me and my business. Now I know it all boils down to using common sense, being smart, and being safe.