A deaf friend of mine received quite a strange offer some time ago: A pretend nursery school offered him to pay 18,000 Pound Sterling if he would rent out his house to them for a week. They also sent him a certified cheque with the said amount.

The reason that I call them a "pretend nursery school" is that they did not care to give their physical address and that all this happened very quickly and in almost no time. My friend actually received the cheque but I warned him not to cash it and be ready to return it when he would be asked to do so. That friend of mine normally rents out his house in Switzerland to tourists and has ads for that in the internet and local journals and tourist agencies.

My friend does not know English, and so I wrote to these people on his behalf and warned them that they should stop immediately bothering him with their emails and that he does not want to do any business with them because he does not know them and because there was no proof of their real identity. I also asked them to provide an address to return the cheque. And if they would fail to comply, we would have their case investigated by police and we would have them blacklisted by Swiss immigration in case they would come to Switzerland to bother him.

There was an interesting last reaction by email: They asked my friend to destroy the cheque and - were never heard of again.

This seems to be a more recent scam variant, and I cannot yet understand the real background of such a scam story. However, several things caused me to see the red flag of alert: (i) They did not provide a physical address which they should do if they really were running a legitmate nursery school. (ii) They were too fast in sending a "certified cheque" of an enormous amount of money (18,000 Pounds Sterling) to my friend before he actually had declared his consent to do business with them. (iii) Why such a high amount of money for such a short period of one week?...They are some more questions to ask because several things do not seem to fit their story.

Anyway, it is a matter concerning homestay offers and may therefore be of interest to readers here. Whenever you receive a similar mail with more or less the same details, be extremely careful, and do not provide your personal address unless you had been able to verify their real address and identity. These guys might even suddenly turn up at your address and cause you a lot of trouble. Beware! And contact your local police office about it if they continue bothering you!