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Updated over 8 years ago, 08/29/2016
craigslist scam
Hi all! I just bought my first property and have gotten lots of responses from various online sites like zillow and craigslist. What I am wondering is if anybody has ever dealt with people working a scam on their ad.
Here is what happened. My listing is for $1200 rent, but I kept getting phone calls about rent for $785. They were seeing this on Craigslist. Then today, I happened to be at the house and a couple was waiting outside to meet someone. They said they talked to someone who had asked if they would be able to bring the deposit.
I texted the number she had for the guy and have not heard back nor have I been able to find his "ad" on CL. Very odd and creepy...
Would love to hear if anyone has dealth with something similar or how to safeguard against that. Thank you!
Yes, it's a scam and happens in the Seattle area a LOT. Someone will copy/paste your pictures and description to a craigslist ad, ask for potential tenant to meet them and pay a cash deposit or wire the money to someone. The potential tenant is out the money and no keys. Not sure who would send deposit money without having seen the inside, but evidently it happens quite a bit.
You should find the ad on craigslist and report it.
@Jean-Marie Poth, The best thing to do is not give the EXACT address in your listing, but the nearest cross streets. Also, do not use a photograph of the outside front of the house.
It is so unfortunate, but a reality.
You could also post a sign on the inside of the front window, stating the rent. Maybe even give YOUR phone number and say any other number is a scammer.
I'm sorry you're going through this.
Happens QUITE A BIT on Craigslist. My local TV station just did a consumer segment on this (I got to be interviewed) as my 4 bedroom, 3 bath, $1150 ad got stolen and relisted for $700 (!). At least 12 people called either wanting to rent it or wondering what the confusion was between the two ads.
Recommendations....Don't give out the address (scammer will often tell people to drive by, view the outside of the house and ignore the phone number on the For Rent sign (mine)). If you do give out the address, do what I did and post a warning on the front door.
Don't use a photo of the outside of the house; scammers can track the address from this. Watermarking the photo didn't stop ads being stolen. I've had then stolen and reposted without pictures.
Don't use your name on the ad; I've had my name stolen along with the ad.
Isn't that great? I have a house for rent but I can't tell you where it's at, who i am or what the outside looks like.
Bottom line; I'm stopping using Craigslist and focusing on Postlets which sends ads to Zillow. Trulia and HotPads. At this time, there seems to less problems with stolen ads on these sites.
And these scams are popular because they work. Had a tenant in a place for two months; got a knock on their door and found a woman standing there saying she just sent someone $750 as a deposit on the place. On one of my landlord forums one landlord reported his tenants had a couple show up with a U-Haul loaded having paid a scammer $1000 as a deposit. You'd think people would not be dumb enough to fork over funds without seeing a place but that's obviously NOT the case if the price for a rental is cheap enough or folks are desperate enough looking for a place to rent.
Gail
Gail, OH MY GOSH! It makes me sad that this happens and sadder that people will pass over money that easily with no verification. I do like your input about not putting the address on the ad to help deter scamming. When I started real estate, I knew I had much to learn and this is definitely one of the first and craziest!
This scam just happened with one of my properties. I posted it to Zillow (I hate everything about CL). A couple of days later a coworker asked me why the rent was so cheap on my unit. Sure enough someone copied my Zillow ad to CL and set up a bogus email address. I notified CL and it was removed the next day.
CL might want to charge some kind of fee for house listings as they do with job listings. It doesn't have to be high (a few dollars would do) but it would force you to put in your CC info and therefore can be traced. This could weed out some of the criminals.
Very common, has happened to us, watermark your pictures going forward.
@Jean-Marie Poth Yes, very common. This happened to my listing last month. They stole my pics off of Zillow and offered my rental for $800. I wouldn't have known except people started showing up and bothering my tenants. My tenants asked me to change my ad to say not to bother the tenants. I told them the ad stated that first. I told them to get the name of the next person who shows up and I won't rent to them. That is when I learned of the scam.
Protective measures I have taken: Watermarked all my pics with my name and email so people can't pretend to own the property. Posted a notice of the scam on the mailbox. Alerted the neighbors to shoo away any people peeking in the windows.
I monitor Craigslist every day looking for scam listings. I search for rentals for under $1000. Many fakes are listed and I flag them all, even if they aren't mine. I wish Craigslist would make it a little harder to list rentals.
I had a couple of prospective tenants tell me that someone listed my unit for much less. I could not find the listing when I looked. I like the idea of watermarking the pictures. Will do that going forward.
These have been such great responses! Thank you all. I have not found the scam ad, but texted the number I got from the lady who was supposed to meet there. He replied and now I'm wondering what my next step should be. Most of my responses have been from online other than CL. Really makes me wonder if I should continue to use CL.
@Jean-Marie Poth If you have the cell phone number for the person and you suspect the person is local, it might not hurt to call your local police department. Like me, you are in a large city, so they may not do anything. My police department did not encourage me or anyone else to engage with the person. But YMMV.
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@Jean-Marie Poth
Thanks for the headsup....Scary stuff indead
@Jean-Marie Poth best advice here as given here by @Mindy Jensen is don't put address in the listing and as @Kimberly H. suggested, watermark your pictures. I will add to that, watermark with your phone number across the center of the photo. There will be no way to steal your photos without your phone number traveling with it. The scammer will move on to someone else.
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Honestly, I don't really worry too much about it. Without trying to sound too cold, if someone is stupid enough to hand money over to a complete stranger without touring the house and without having some way of that money being tracked, it's really not my problem. Unless the scammer breaks into my house, so that he can show the house, anybody could do this with any house, even ones with people living in them.
- JD Martin
- Podcast Guest on Show #243
@JD it becomes your problem when the scammer tells the people to hire a locksmith and move in, I have heard that has happened.
i'm glad i read this because i've never run into that situation on CL before but i'll definitely know now to watch out for it. thanks for posting!!
@Jd Martin I have heard of scammers telling their targets to go ahead and enter and re-key the property. I don't think this is common, but it is certainly a possibility. It would be an expensive headache for anyone to deal with after the fact.
These scams target the poorest and most desperate of our communities and it can be financially devastating if they fall victim to this crime. So I will do what I can to at least protect people from being lured by my property.
Finally, in my situation, my tenants gave me a large lead time to find a new renter. It became a safety issue for my current tenants.
Just had this happen to one of my rental properties. Only found out because one of the people I'd been in contact with via Trulia ad (Postlets) asked me what the deal was with the cheaper rent advertised on Craigslist. I flagged the ad, and it came down, and i put up my own explaining the other was fake in case it resurfaced. But the neighbor told me that as recently as the day I was showing the place people were walking around looking in the windows.
Is this more common with a particular class of rentals or type of rental?
@Sarah D., I don't think this is relegated to any particular class of rentals. I found out about this scam happening on CL almost 4 1/2 years ago, when I was looking for a short term rental for myself, and also looking for a new place to buy once my house sold. I couldn't understand how properties that I was seeing on the MLS (for sale) were also being offered for rent for really cheap. These weren't investment rental properties that someone was selling. I was looking in the solidly middle class neighborhoods.
I rent my guest room in my current house to traveling professionals, and I'm on several Facebook groups, and the (travelling nurses, etc.) report this scam regularly.
I will say that anyone who things that they are getting a great bargain on CL, beware.
"Is this more common with a particular class of rentals or type of rental?'
Not really. We have issues with our largest house (4 bedroom, 3 bath); original rent was $1150; stolen ad listed it for $700.
After that one I had a second, much smaller house (3 bedroom, 1 bath) going for $700; thought this one was "safe". Nope. Scammer kept the same rent but lowered the security deposit to $500.
Someone sent me his phone number and I called and left a message on his voice mail using not very nice language on what body part I'd like to kick over to the next state if I ever found him.
The next morning there was a text from the scammer asking if I was "interested in this rental?" What the heck??? So I said yes to get more information on what this scam was about.
Although I had NOT posted the address of this property they were able to tell me the address. When I said I'd like to see the house the scam was that I'd have to send them the $500 deposit as "good faith" money before they'd even show me the place.
Hard to believe someone would send a stranger money like this but it obviously happens. And yes, my partner does feel if people are dumb enough to do this perhaps they deserve to be taken. But he doesn't have to deal with the phone calls explaining the difference between two ads or wasting time trying to educate folks on this scam. And to date NONE of the folks who wanted the cheaper rent have shown any interest in renting my places at the accurate rate.
Gail
You can set up an IFTTT monitor on your address for your property(ies) using IFTTT. I haven't tested this particular recipe, but it could alert you if you are ever in this situation:
https://ifttt.com/recipes/506-call-me-if-my-address-is-posted-on-craigslist
People work so hard to devise schemes to hustle others. If they would put their creativity to honest work, they could be really successful.