Tenants who applied provided false info

[Mark Forest]

I just had a husband and wife who seemed excited about my house fill out my credit application. They each paid me $30.00. When I got home I noticed one of them had not entered his social security number so I called them with the supplied phone numbers. I got a recorded message that the phones were not in service. The female had entered an e-mail and when I tried that I got a message back that there is no such e-mail address.

I don't get it. They are out $60.00 and have not made any effort to call me. Am I missing something here?

Coincidentally, my Zillow entry for this home was compromised by someone using the picture and address of my house with low rent and someone else’s number. I don’t know if this is connected to the other incident but both things seem weird. I of course flagged the entry and reported it to Zillow.

[Rob K.]

This kind of horse(bleep) happens all the time. I've had people fill out apps and give a fee and they are lying about everything. I don't know if they are just compulsive liars, or if they figure most landlords just won't check. The biggest problem that I run into is they will stretch out the time they lived somewhere to hide an address that they were evicted from. They will probably call you tomorrow or the next day. That's when you can let them know that their phone numbers and email are bogus and they left out the SS#.

As far as the Zillow posting, I have seen this too. The biggest scam is someone will post your house on CL for a much lower price and thentry to have prospective tenants send money to them. It's a bummer if you have a sign in front and now they want to call you and argue with you about why the price is higher and why some guy in a third world country wants them to send him money.

I have also seen a scam where a fake landlord will get a throw away phone from Walmart and start advertising vacant houses that he doesn't own. He will collect a security deposit and rent from some unsuspecting person and never be heard from again. It's a shame.