New Scam Alert for Rentals - See if anyone has heard of this

[Michael C.]

New Scam Alert for Rentals - See if anyone has heard of this. We have a rental property in Texas. We were trying to rent for modest amount $1000 per month. Someone applied. Made plenty of money so we decided to proceed. The next day, she said that her African Continent boyfriend that was still in African (you can guess the country) is still there but him and his daughter would like to live there also. We told them that we would have to run a background check on him but since we couldn't, we couldn't proceed. We did ask other questions about his ability to work because of covid and 2 incomes are better than one if one person gets sick. But since he only had a visa and not a work visa, it was not possible. Of course, they wanted to move in within 6 days or so. Since we couldn't run a background check, we decided against it. The agent said they have been looking for a place for 3 months.  We then pulled the property from the rental market as we always planned to do and prepare to sell it. 2 weeks later, we put on market to sale.  We found a buyer. No issues. Note, 2 days after we said "no", the girl signed a lease for apartment in a distance city about 200 miles away where we know she worked but also lived.  Again the boyfriend and daughter are still back in a distant African country.  This is important later.  Now 10 weeks later, the potential couple filed a complaint with the texas worforce commission (govern rentals in some texas cities) saying that we are racists and we didn't rent to them because of race (she was white and he was from Africa).  That is 100% not the case as we have 6 rental properties and we have rented to 6 minorities out 13 possibilities.  We only care if they can pay. Anyway, long story short. The title company will not give clear title and now we cant close.  Anyway, we can't figure out the motivation here unless they are letting texas worforce commission do the work here in prep for a lawsuit. Now I am sitting on property I can't sell and have to try to rent now with a lot of carry costs per month.  Anyway, this is always didn't seem right but were trying to do the right and fair thing as all humans should without being scammed.  I always wondered.....what any of this legit? would the money orders been legit if they had moved in?  Anyway, would love some opinions on this. Note Texas Workforce Commission investigates which take a long while and will sue on their renters behalf if they truly believe we violated any rules