Victim Location 94611
Total money lost $4,190
Type of a scam Rental
On Wed. 7/29/31 I received a text from Pravin Chandraswekaran regarding his condo for rent at 77 Fairmount Avenue, #103 Oakland, CA 94611. I went to the address, he provided access code and I saw the property. That evening I shared the information with my roommate and we both agreed to apply for this apartment. The whole time Pravin was in communication with me via text inquiring about past rental history, credit report, expected move-in date, etc. He also mentioned his assistant, Grace will be emailing me to proceed with the application process. My roommate and I filled out the online application with our email addresses and other important personal information. We did not hear back from Grace Martins until Friday morning via email stating we were approved for the apartment. They provided details of an account to send the deposit of $2095 and first month’s rent of $2095 to a cashapp $Evelyn461 or a Bank Account name of Belle’s Catering with Renasant Bank account #8014290828 routing #084201294. I tried several times to process the deposit amount via cashapp it did not work and Pravin
provided another cashapp name $ileanatabies and unfornately I was able to send $500 and $200 separate transactions on Friday, 7/31/20. My roommate was able to send the whole amount of $2095 via cashapp to $Evelyn461 on the same day. The following day, Saturday,8/1/20 I went to my bank at a Wells Fargo and wired money to Renasant Bank with the Belle’s Catering account information. That evening and all through Sunday both my roommate and I felt a sinking pit in our stomachs as we surveyed what we just did and blindly sent money via an app. On Monday, we both spoke to Pravin and both said we do not feel that this is legal and would like to not go through with moving in and would like a refund. Simultaneously, Grace emailed us a receipt of funds. Pravin verbally acknowledge our skepticism and agreed to refund our money but he mentioned that it would take a couple of days. From Monday, August 3 – Thursday, August 6, 2020 I was in text communication with Pravin and Grace regarding the refund. They kept mentioning, tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow you will get it. I was patiently and still stupid enough to believe that they will give us our money back. Unfortunately, they did not when Friday, August 7, 2020 came my phone calls and texts went without responses by either Pravin or Grace. I have all the email communication, text communication, cash app funds transactions as well as my roommate.