by Jack
The ad says something like this, “Now renting, beautiful two story home, modern, 2200 s.f., 4 bedrooms, 2 baths, nice neighborhood, close to schools, shopping, only $975 a month. I need someone to care for my home as their own. All repairs can be deducted from rent. I require only a 1st month rent and a security deposit of $975.”
Sound to good to be true? WELL IT IS!
These fake listings are popping up all over legitimate home rental sites and Americans are being fleeced for millions. There’s almost zero chance they will ever get a dime back because these cases are international scams. Here’s a little more…. the suspect claims he is a wealthy person (professional person, perhaps a doctor) who has already relocated out of state and he needs to rent the home right away to a nice person, money is of little concern. He just wants someone that will take good care of his home.
DON’T FALL FOR IT – REPORT FRAUD TO THE FBI. In most cases the crook has obtained pictures from some real estate site that has listed the home for sale. He typically has a co-conspirator located out of state that ONLY does the check cashing for him, while he is safely hiding in Nigeria or some other remote location, untouchable by the law. The co-conspirator is usually some innocent, but stupid, person who thinks they are employed by the primary suspect to help him with his checking business in the USA.
From Trulia (rental site): How Do Rental Listing Scams Work?
Is someone asking you to send them money via Western Union or Moneygram? Have the owners moved to another state and can’t show you the property? Found a deal that’s too good to turn down? These are possible signs of rental listing scams used to defraud users into wiring money or giving up personal information.
Scammers use a variety of tools and methods to post fraudulent listings on many internet listing sites. One method includes manually listing available properties by copying existing listings and posting them with new prices. They also take existing for-sale properties and post it as a rental listing. Lastly, they use listing management tools and syndicate the fraud across many different sites.
Once you’ve contacted a scammer, they usually ask for a few things — information, urgency, and money through Western Union or Moneygram. Stop there. Flag the listing on Trulia beneath the title and property address and continue your search.
What is Trulia Doing to Remove Fraud?
At Trulia, we understand how important it is to have a higher standard of excellence in eliminating fraud. Thus, we have taken immediate action and continue to enhance our process in order to improve our listing quality and eliminate fraud. Although some fraudulent listings can make it through our fraud filters, many scams are detected before being displayed. While we need to keep the specifics of our initiatives confidential in order to outsmart scammers, we’ve listed some of our public initiatives here:
Happening in Phoenix, too. TV stations are warning folks, but there are always those that think they’re getting a “deal.”
PT Barnum was right.
That is the most common scam jack. it is well known. Also any of get something for free ads on TV are collecting data on you to sell.