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Updated about 4 years ago on . Most recent reply
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Rently and FB Marketplace SCAM? Have you encountered this?
My rental listings are being spoofed on FB marketplace and the scammers are posting them at significantly under the real price, advertising them as ABP and other "too good to be true" terms, and collecting first month's rent and security deposit before taking the listing down and disappearing.
The duped tenant inevitably reaches out to me (once they get off FB and look on Zillow and see me as the PM) and then we uncover the con they've fallen prey to.
The last person unpacked what happened with me in enough detail that I now see that the scammers seem to have been able to GRANT ACCESS to the home using the Rently lockbox system. My initial assumption was that they simply understood how the platform worked well enough to guide people through the steps and SEEM like the PM, but after reading the text transcripts of the last victim it seems far more sinister . . . the person was issuing lockbox codes.
Has anyone else seen or heard of this happening recently? Any version of this ring a bell?
Most Popular Reply
Hey Will, I've heard quite a few of these scam stories on BP occurring on both FB Marketplace and Craigslist. If you search "scam" in the forums you'll find some similar stories. I tried to find the one I read sometime in the past few months from a tenant who was let into a property by a fake PM who somehow got access to the property, but I'm not easily finding it. I'm sorry this happened to you - it's pretty crazy the lengths that scammers will go to.