Beware the Gumtree property scammers!

I feel like I'm the last one to know about this scam, but I'm going to post it anyway!

H and I were doing some scouting around on Gumtree to look for flats and houses to rent and came across this one advert offering a 3 double bedroom house, with all mod cons, garden, all bills and furnishings included for £820 per calendar month - in Angel, N1. Now, for those of you who might not be aware, Angel is a very trendy and classy area of North London. Zone 1 = expensive. The sort of place where there is a Waitrose and all the ladies shop in Monsoon or Whistles and "do lunch". The rich daddy of a friend of mine is renting out a one bedroom flat in Angel for £1400 per week. This puts the flat mentioned in this advert into perspective. It seemed like an absolute bargain and too good to be true! Well of course, it was.

Thinking there was a typo in the ad, H emailed the landlord to confirm that the rent really was this low and not £1820 per month, or even £820 per week. This is the reply she got...

"Hi,
My name is Olivia and I have the flat for rent and I’m a private landlord.
The rent is 820£ per month including all bills electricity, water, gas,etc and the concil tax .You can rent for short time or long time as you need to stay even for 1 or 2 years. The payment in advance will be for 3 months(2460£) and you don't need pay the security deposit..In case you want it, let me know so we can arrange the transaction.Rental price is lower because i want to rent the apartment fast as possible.
Everything it's like new in the flat and the flat is fully furnished, newly refurbished and also benefits from wood flooring. You have internet connection, phone, washing machine with dryer,tube station only five minutes,private garden, cable TV and most important parking place.Please let me know what your intentions are....when you intend to move in?how long you want the contract to last for?how many people would be living in it and some other things you feel i should know.
Get back to me"

I feel a bit silly now because when H forwarded this to me, I was like, "hell yeah!!". A pretty steep deposit, but worth a look, surely? H was one step ahead of me. She replied to "Olivia" and asked if we could arrange a viewing...

The scam began to unfold. "Olivia" was based in Liverpool, allegedly, and had had "too many people wasting her time and money spent on train fare to and from the North", so to show that we were seriously interested in the flat, she asked us to deposit £500 into a Western Union account for a family member, and to email her the receipt as proof. Thought: does anyone ever use Western Union for anything legit? At its very mention, alarm bells start ringing. A simple Google search for "gumtree property scam" revealed that this happens quite a lot and if money was in fact deposited into a Western Union account, this "Olivia" needs only to take the receipt to any Western Union outlet and claim the money for herself, probably from Nigeria or wherever he/she is based [scams always seem to come from Nigeria for some reason!].

Not surprisingly, the amazing flat in Angel doesn't actually exist. Nice try, Olivia, or whatever your real name is!