A Chinese man claiming to be Dr. Philip Turton of Leeds, England contacted me to find a home for him in Athens, GA USA. I did a search on Google to make sure he was a real person. I found many links that reported Dr. Turton as a breast surgeon in Leeds, England so I started to send him listings of homes in Athens. He called me 3 times but I had trouble understanding him so asked him to email all his inquiries. I told him that when he wanted to make an offer he would have to provide financial information to prove that he could afford to buy the home. He gave me the name of Karen Jamieson as his financial advisor and said he would have her send me documentation of his assets. I got an email from her with an attachment showing him to be credit worthy. He asked me to give him the name & contact information of an attorney to review all contract forms for him. I provided a local attorney with a good reputation. I also asked the attorney if he wanted to work for Dr. Turton. The attorney made contact with him and the imposter called him 2 or 3 times plus emailed him. All contract forms were sent to the attorney and Dr. Turton. We finally completed a contract to purchase a property. He sent the attorney a check for $256,900 as part payment and said he would be here on March 16 to close. I was to have a home inspection and appraisal on the property and be paid from the funds sent to the attorney. I paid for the inspection yesterday and met the appraiser today. When I got home the attorney called and said that the check was cleared by his bank but there was something strange about the check so he called BB&T the bank that the check was written on. They asked him to fax a copy of the check to them. They said the check was from a BB&T bank in North Carolina and the signature was bogus. They said that it would have taken 6 weeks for the check to have come back and be taken out of the attorney's Trust account. If we had closed this sale the attorney would have lost the total that had been sent to him. I have lost the cost of the inspection report. I was able to stop the appraiser before he finished his work so he is not charging the full amount of the appraisal.in addition to my loss there is the listing agents time and effort to get his listing under contract and a very disappointed seller who had started to do work requested to be done on the property in the sales contract.
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