I finally got one (through Craigslist):

"I'm interested in renting the apartment . My name is Judy Anderson . I was born in France (Paris) . I speak both French & English, am single, fun, loving, clean, loyal and respectful of others, and don't have any pets. More about me, my father is from the US and my mother is from France. I'm 24yrs old, sex female, I attend American University of Paris, and graduated a year ago.

I'm coming to stay for a couple of months or year or more, and am coming for my master's degree. I'm currently in Guam (Sinajana)" on a research work and will be coming soon...I'll loved to call you but here is a remote area calls are very hard to go through, please send me some picture of the room if you can because i will not be able to come over and check on it before renting.

Please tell me a little about yourself...if you are a student? Working?, married or single?, if there is a garage or parking space because i will be coming with my own car. Let me know the total amount for the first month rent, I will be paying upfront so that you can be rest assured that I am really interested in renting the room from you and I will be paying via a Bank certified check. also I will sign all necessary papers/Leases at the point of my arrival.

This is the standard classic certified check scam. At some point, they will explain that because they are traveling, they need something taken care of that costs extra money. Like shipping their stuff or a car or whatever. They will say that they are sending you the check for whatever the apartment is PLUS this other item. Then they need you to just take the other item money out of the check and send it to whoever for that service.

So, for example, the first month rent and deposit is, say, $3000. They will send you a check for $5000, tell you to keep your $3000, and then send the other $2000 to Joe's Storage Shack.

You deposit the check for $5000, send the $2000 to Joe, and then a week later the bank realizes that the check was fake and pulls the $5000 back out of your account. The $2000 is long gone.

Happens all the time.

This scam has been around for so many years. Sometime around 2000, a website was built called 419eaters. People who were approached by the slimeballs trying to trick them cooperated with these thieves with lengthy back-and-forth emails, to get their hopes up that they were gonna get a big pay-out and convincing them to do some ridiculous things and sending photos of them doing the ridiculous stunts. The site is hilarious.

Back in those days, I was selling a lot of products on ebay and I'd get emails from scammers once in a while. I would often just mess with them, leading them on, etc. The scammers often sent me a phony money order from the US post office.....they looked good but were all phony.

"Please tell me a little about yourself...if you are a student? Working?, married or single?, if there is a garage or parking space because i will be coming with my own car. Let me know the total amount for the first month rent, I will be paying upfront so that you can be rest assured that I am really interested in renting the room from you and I will be paying via a Bank certified check. also I will sign all necessary papers/Leases at the point of my arrival."

Landlord of the flies TX I love it! Thanks for the laugh!