Land scammers

I'm not sure it is widely known but I feel a warning is in order.

In the past few weeks I'm seeing an increase in scamming activety involving estate land.

The way it works is residents buy 1 L$ plots on estates and resell it sometimes at 5000 L$ or more without paying tier/rent and/or landloan for it.

This in itself is not that bad, a landlord can simply reclaim it like he would any non paying resident, the problem is that these scammers make promises about tiers that are not true leaving the victums with a nasty surprice when they find out the real tier and estate owners with angry residents that think they either work with the scammers or think the estate owner should fullfill the false promises the scammers made.

Filing an AR is useless because LL sees it as a resident to resident dispute and won't act and even if they did the scammers use disposable alts.

Been wondering how long it would take before someone started trying that..............

cought one on my island trying to do so, disguised as a police men... instantly banned him

Llanna,

I hope you had everyone on your Friends List ban that individual too. At least you can feel that you're cutting down on their scamming opportunities.

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Isn't it easy to check with the estate owner regarding when and how much tier is due before buying/renting a parcel in an estate region? Most estates have multiple owners/managers, so it's only a question of hours to get hold of one.

Bottom line: If the seller tells you that tier is prepaid till whenever, always double-check with the estate owner.

How can we help?

I saw someone try this on in my sim. he got instabanned.

Had another one try to scam me by pretending not to speak English in order to avoid paying me the tier... then witnessed him chatting in one of the groups we were both in, using quite fluent English. Another ban went out.

Always check with the estate owner, this name is listed under the covenants section of about land, if they cant seem to reply to you within 24 hours, you should consider finding another place. If the plot sells while your waiting for the estate owner to get back with you chances are the estate owner might have more plots, and be willing to work out a deal with you

I had a couple of them try it on my sim too, and become very angry and threatening when they got caught. One of them claimed to be affiliated with Dreamland, so they got banned from all 600 sims there too.

Exactly so. Also, check the EO's profile for other contacts. In many cases the EO has appointed a couple of managers who may be accessible sooner than the Big Cheese™ himself.

This happened to me when I set up a few regions. It is because the RESELL of land was permitted. 2 customers got taken and they filed AR's however nothing was done about it as far as I am aware. I allowed the person to stay for 2 weeks to help recover but it still stunk.

To fix the problem, only I can set land for sale.

Aha....ahaha....hahahahahaha!

Wouldn't forcing the tier to be paid up front fix that? The land I have bought has been for no cash and tier up front. Seems like that would fix that problem! Tier would be paid up for the month anyway.

As for saying more is paid then currently is, I would NEVER believe that was true until verified by the Sim owner.

What happened in my cases was that the people who were trying to sell it were also attempting to collect tier to be paid to them and not to me.

That would only work if the estate owner or one of the managers manualy sets the land for sale to you but a lot of people want to start using the land right away and not wait for the arangements to be made.

Only by somehow influencing LL to stop allowing the scams. The only "help" could come from LL, to STOP the scamming.

the real scam is Island Owners setting parcels for sale for 1 Linden and then when ppl pay for it they try to squeeze more an more money out of them saying it really was not for sale it was only reservation fee doesnt include tier doesnt include down payment etc etc etc

How could a $1L parcel possibly include tier? I think that one is pretty obvious.

What is being discussed in this thread is a real scam.

That's generally more of a gaming the search issue than a scam. "Selling" estate land to a resident in a rental model works really well for all parties. I set my land for sale for one week's rental, it's all described in the parcel name and description.

There can be genuine reasons for someone to use the L$1 reservation though, there could be a rental box next to the parcel and the L$1 is just a transfer issue, you can't set land for sale to anyone for L$0.

Oh noes! I was scammed out of L$1. I'm destitute now!