Gail Marie Vaughn, Kathy George, Lakeysha Chambers, Jeffrey Lambert
Queja 240959 Detalles

On May 6, 2013 I responded to a San Francisco Craigslist Ad for a vacation rental at 965 Sutter St in the AVA Nob Hill Apartment Building.

The Craigslist Ad was connected to the email: [email protected]. Kathy claimed to be a rental agent, representing the "owner" of the unit Gail Marie Vaughn.

I was required to pay half the rent now plus a $300.00 deposit, which came to $1,042.50, and I would pay the balance upon arrival in mid-June.

I was told I could deposit the money into Gail Marie Vaughn's bank account or a PayPal account. I opted for PayPal because I didn't feel comfortable just putting cash in someone's bank account.

Bank of America Account:
(Routing Number: 121000358 and Account: 0283173540

PayPal Account:
[email protected]

I was feeling weird about it so I asked if I could send a local friend to come by and see it and Kathy said sure, send them now. My friend went and checked out the building, which he gave a huge thumbs up and waited for her in the lobby. She never showed and later said she was out on business and apologized. I even checked YELP and there were lots of reviews about them renting temp vacation rentals so I went ahead and made the payment.

After I got the PayPal confirmation I was surprised to see I had ACTUALLY made a payment to Lakeysha Chambers NOT Gail Marie Vaughn.

This morning I decided I had better dig even deeper to see if this was a scam. So I called the apartment building and they said no "individuals" own units there, there was no "Unit 2" and no one by any of the names I provided had ever lived there.

In the past I had looked up Kathy George to see if she was really an agent and found her on Google but never called. So this morning I called "BHG Mason-McDuffie Real Estate in San Francisco" and they have never heard of her.

I called the number she gave me and "my call wasn't allowed" because it was a "Magic Jack" phone number.

I looked up Lakeysha Chambers and she was last active on Twitter in 2009 and has a current Facebook account.

Jeffrey Lambert's signature is on the contract.

I filed a police report this morning. I filed a dispute with PayPal. I tried to file a claim with Bank of America but they pretty much said they could care less.

I contacted the 3 major credit bureaus and put a fraud alert on my credit (even though it probably wasn't necessary).

I went to file a claim with Craigslist and someone had already flagged the same ad.