We placed our home for sale on a online real estate for sale directory. After a while we had a response from a couple that wanted to come and view our property that coming Saturday. Two days before their visit they reconfirmed that they were coming at the agreed time. One day before the visit they send us another email and stated that they could not come because of sudden illness of one the partners. They said however that this would not delay a possible purchase of our house since our description and photos of the house in the for sale directory was so complete and beautiful they had decided to buy the property without having seen it in real… They confirmed they would mail us a cheque down payment to secure the purchase and that they would visit us as soon as possible to finalize the purchase. On Monday we received a cheque by mail representing 10% of the purchase of the house. We did hold on to the cheque for a couple of days thinking what to do with it. Meanwhile we receive another email from our buyers asking us if we did mail the cheque to the bank to cash it. We confirmed, not yet. They came back by email and encouraged us to cash the cheque. We mailed the cheque to the bank and the money was released. When our prospective buyers contacted us we could confirm to them that the bank paid us the down payment. Our buyers requested us to return half the deposited amount to them because they urgently needed some money. The next day the bank withdrew the entire sum from our account because the cheque appeared to be corrupt. Our buyers mailed us a few times that our story was incorrect and that we probably had the money and did not want to give anything to them. Their communications became very strong and forceful. After some time we did not hear anything anymore and we sold the house through a real estate agent.