Victim Location 71105
Type of a scam Fake Check/Money Order
Dave Ragusa if that is his real name. First texted me and asked if I did decorative concrete work. I promptly replied and said I do not and you have the wrong number. He then immediately replied "Sorry I meant Architectural work". I am and architect and responded "Yes I do architectural work". From there he said he would like me to design a $2,000,000 (6) bedroom house for him and asked what I would charge for the deposit and fee. I ran the numbers and the deposit end up being $8,000 for the project. I text him my deposit and fee amount for the project. He said the numbers looked good and he would like to send me the deposit immediately. He then asked for my credit card merchant information. I have a small architecture firm and do all of my billing through QuickBooks and told him as much. He said that is fine and send him an invoice for the deposit. He gave me the email address above and before I could create the invoice he sent another text saying that he needed a favor from me prior to sending the invoice. Long story short, the favor was for me to invoice for $9,200 and then send $5,000 via cashiers check to his so called surveyor/local representative and then keep $4,200 for my deposit. I had been suspicious the whole time and at that point my suspicions were confirmed. I said I was not interested and politely ended the text conversation and block the number. Needless to say this was not a legitimate business transaction. Also the text messages had a broken English quality about them which leads me to believe this person might not be located in the USA. I would recommend avoiding contact with this phone number and the so called Dave Ragusa person.