What happened after I sent £1,375 to a fictitious landlord

[If you're new to my website, please read my previous blog-post, it will help you understand this part of the story]

Immediately I sent the money to the fake landlord, I sent her a confirmation of payment. Then she thanked me and said she'll inform me when she received the money.

Luckily for me, my friend came visiting that night for us to pray, after we had finished praying and she was about to go, I informed her that I had gotten a house. She then probed further as to where the house was located and if I had seen the house. That was where the real story started, lol. Of cause I hadn't seen the house but I had paid. She then said 'Lizah you've been scammed'. I said no. She asked to check the emails I and the landlord exchanged. As soon as she saw 'get the house from 'booking.com', she confirmed her suspicion that it was a scam.

Now, if not for my friend, I would never have thought it was a scam, because the landlord was quite good in written communication. They also played the victim and played on my emotions by saying that they had been disappointed by previous unserious tenants. This moved me to make the transaction to prove that I was not an unserious tenant.

After this finding, I went to the bank to complain the next day. Since it was an international transfer to Germany, it would take 3-5 days, to get to the landlord. So my bank promised to stop the transaction. This was a Friday.

Fast forward to Monday, the landlord sent me another email saying she tried to withdraw the money but was blocked by her bank for security reasons (scroll down to see screenshot of the conversation). She wanted to find out if the money had returned to me. At this point, I was at rest knowing that the money hadn't gotten to her. However, I hadn't heard from my bank if they had finished the investigation, neither had they refunded my money.

Few days later, the landlord sent another email, asking me to call my bank, because she hadn't received the money. Meanwhile this was after the intended date of her arrival in the UK to show me the apartment. You can tell she was obviously after my money.

Well, I was still bothered as I hadn't heard from my bank until the end of the month. I just kept praying that God would rebuke the devourer. Guess what? ...... I got another apartment, a legit one this time. But I needed to do some credit checks and pay some money before I could get the keys. However, my account was still suspended because of this fraud. At this point, push came to shove. I walked up to that bank on the 1st of August and asked them to remove the suspension from my account. Then I asked them about the progress of the investigation and my money.

Lo and behold.. the bank manager said 'I'm sorry but unfortunately we can't refund the money'. She then printed out a well written letter that explained why they couldn't refund the money. Haaa! My 3 months savings gone like that! I sat in that bank and cried. She comforted me and left.

Oya now, if you can't refund my money, at least remove suspension from my account, let me take the remaining money that's there and pay my house rent. They said they couldn't do it in the bank. I had to call their customer care line. While waiting for them to pick, the robot asked me if I wanted to know my balance, I said yes. Then it called the balance... enhh... the tears dried up. I said whhhaattt.. It's like they've refunded the money o. I went to a real bank attendant to tell me my account balance, maybe the robot was lying. She wrote it down for me, I couldn't believe my eyes.. I said, sister please give me bank statements let me fully understand what's going on (of cos I didn't say sister, this was all in my mind, lol). She then gave me the bank statements, I quickly flipped to see why my account balance had increased... Interestingly, my £1,375 was sitting pretty in my account. I couldn't contain my joy. After they just gave me a letter saying they couldn't refund the money, then on the same day they refunded it; this could only be God.

So that was how I got my money back. I am just among the lucky ones. Some people never get their money back. In fact, after it took two weeks and I hadn't heard from my bank, one would have expected that I would never get the money back. So when they gave me the letter of no-refund, I could understand because it had taken long. But God turned it around for me. I eventually used the bank statements to do the credit checks for my new apartment and voilaa.... I am sitting pretty in my new house drinking water and writing this article.

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