A thrash of apartment rental scams that seemed to begin popping up in 2009 and 2010 have reappeared, and this time, scam artists are targeting luxury Boston rental apartments.
A reader contacted us recently inquiring whether the rental dialogue that they were having with a purported condo owner at Trinity Place, the luxury condo development located at 1 Huntington Avenue adjacent to Copley Square, was legitimate. The reader was kind enough to forward one of the emails they received from the scam artist, which advertises a penthouse duplex available at Trinity Place for rent. The only catch, the owner requests upfront cash through Google checkout before the potential renter can even so much as see the unit.
For some many reasons this is wrong, however, one interesting note is that there are no duplexes at Trinity Place, and further, the penthouse level of Trinity Place, is composed of two separate grand units that are owned by the same individual.
To make readers aware what this scam looks like, we are publishing the email thread between the potential renter (name has been removed) and the scam artist below.
Trinity Place Boston Craigslist Apartment Rental Scam
From: Christy Patton
Date: Tue, Jun 14, 2011 at 5:36 PM
Subject: Re: 3 Bedroom 3 Bath Super Luxury Penthouse Duplex – $2899/month (Boston)
Hi, My name is Christy, I am 32 years old and I’m an interior designer.
I apologize for the delay! The apartment is ready for moving in. The address is 1 Huntington Ave, Boston, MA 02116.
About the viewing, I am really looking forward to meeting you and to get to know you better before renting the apartment to you, but before that I will need to be sure that you are committed to rent it and that you can afford to pay for the rent. Please don’t get me wrong, but I have been disappointed a couple of times before by people who made me arrange a viewing and in the end proved themselves to be nothing but time wasters as they tried to convince me to lower the monthly rent and stuff like that. Every time I made the trip to Boston for nothing wasting both time and money. I will be taking care so that won’t happen again.
Because of that I have decided to go on with this only through GoogleCheckout. They have a program called Letting Protection. It was created especially for these types of situations, like ours, when it’s difficult to meet. They can take care about the viewing and the payment and they are offering assistance and protection for both, landlord and tenant.
If you decide to go on with renting the place I will need some information in order to set up the rental transaction with GoogleCheckout. Please let me know your full name, full address – I will be needing this for the contract – your age, married/children, occupation, car/pet, how many people will move in, when are you planning to move in and how long do you want to stay. As soon as I will have this info I will forward it to GoogleCheckout and they will get back to you with all the necessary details to follow in order to proceed with the rental process.
Let me know if there is anything else you want to know about the apartment.
Looking forward to hearing from you!
Keith Munsell 
