A Finnish friend of mine moved to New York in January. A few months later, he told me about his old roommate who refused to return the deposit from his previous apartment. I gave him my best advice and told him that this was a huge difference between the U.S. and Finland, in my mind. People in Finland are more honest and wouldn’t try to cheat another person out of a measly $800. “That doesn’t happen in Finland!” I recall saying.

Yap, well it does. And it happened to me, but under other circumstances. I never got to live in my apartment, and I still didn’t get my deposit back. I just moved from New York to Helsinki, arriving in Finland on Sunday, May 31st. I don’t have a job yet, but I had arranged for an apartment in Töölö and it seemed perfect: it was 36 m2 for one person with electricity, water and Internet included in the price.

The guy who rented it out to me – “Jukka Heiska” – sent me pictures, signed a contract with me, and even offered to pick me up from the airport. In New York, I would have been a little bit more wary about just a simple email exchange, but I figured that this guy, this Jukka Heiska, was not trying to cheat me. Oh, but he was.

When I got to Helsinki, I tried to call him, only to find out his phone was a prepaid (read: untraceable) number. I had never called before because I couldn’t afford the long-distance. I thought that having a prepaid phone number was rather weird, and decided to visit “my apartment” to make sure everything was legitimate. It was not.

The building existed, but the apartment did not. I even called the business that runs the apartment, and they said there is no record of a Jukka Heiska living there, or owning one of the apartments. My first reaction was to freak out a little bit, and then to curse the person who cheated me, and then to do everything I could to make things right. So, I went to my bank, then to the police, and then to Iltalehti to tell them my story. (If you know Finnish, you can read the story here.) How can human beings treat one another this way?

I hope I can get my money back, and now I need to look for both a job AND an apartment, but otherwise, I’m okay. This guy stole my money, but nothing else. I’m still alive and healthy. Why fret? I hope I get my money back, still, but until then, I’ll figure things out. At least I can stay at my cousin’s place until I find another apartment. In fact, I think the whole situation is kind of funny.

We found other ads by similar scam artists (or at least ones that look like scams):
Beware of weird email addresses like Helsinki.apartment@gmail.com. And call to see if the number is prepaid or not. If the person is “out of the country,” it could be a scam. And most of all, try to find someone you know to check if the apartment actually exists! Internationally, that is much harder, but just don’t get caught in the same situation!