Tag Archives: rental scams

Real Estate

Another Craiglist Real Estate Scam

A crook with a computer has stolen an online listing from an Ames real estate company and is posting it on Craigslist as a rental, asking people to wire hundreds of dollars overseas, according to local and state sources.

Hunziker & Associates agent Tabitha Zesch said the property — a single family home priced at $129,900 — has been posted as a rental on Craigslist.

The scam artist put a story on the web page, “saying that the owners had been transferred overseas, that the property rents for $700 a month and that if anyone wanted, they could wire a deposit to hold the property,” Zesch said.

Zesch said her company became aware of the fraud only because a potential renter got suspicious, tracked down Hunziker as the listing agency and e-mailed her office.

She said her company notified state and federal authorities and alerted Craigslist, but that the listing was still there late Tuesday afternoon.

Bill Brauch, director of the consumer protection division for the Iowa Attorney General’s office, said scams like this one “are fairly common.”

“If you’re selling a home or some real estate online, (the crooks will) duplicate the ad and set up a scam of their own,” he said.

Source Ames Tribune

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Real Estate

Craigslist, A New Twist on an Old Real Estate Scam

house-for-rent

In a different twist on an old scam, real estate scammers are using new tricks to try to pull a fast one on people searching for a place to rent.

Although everyone thinks they would never fall for a scam, it can happen to anyone. Recently, the people doing the tricking are getting more creative.

You may know that agents list properties for sale on Craigslist.

Instead of just trying to get you to send money in exchange for a key, sight unseen, now scammers are actually putting victims in touch with legitimate real estate agents.

The individual is being told, call the agent, they’ll show you the property, but don’t say anything about renting because I’m the owner and I don’t want them to know I’m going to take the listing away from them.

Once the potential renter has fallen in love with the house, they’re told to send the alleged owner a security deposit. With one pen stroke, the scammer has tricked both the buyer and agent.

Now that they’re more aware of the issues, most agents are being pro-active and trying to stop any fake rentals before things go too far.

Your best protection is to ask the agent if the owner wants to rent the house. Most listing agreements cannot be cancelled by the owner unless the real estate agent agrees to the cancellation.

The best advice, however, is to work with someone you trust, and remember if it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

It is important to note that there are legitimate listings on Craigslist. The site has become a popular place for agents to post listings. If you are searching on Craigslist, just remember to use caution and do your research if you find something that interests you.

Real Estate

Another Real Estate Scam, Call Me on My Foreign Mobile Phone

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mobile-phone-scam

One of the scam’s that has been going on since at least 2007 is to send an e-mail to you stating they are interested in viewing one of your properties. The e-mails are usually sent to someone who is renting property and Realtors® seem to be a prime target.

The e-mail goes something like this:

“I am interested in viewing one of your properties, could you please call me on my foreign mobile +882 135 502 99 to setup a time. As I am travelling at the moment I am unable to pickup emails regularly so please call.
Kind regards,
Liz Casey
———
Mobile: +882 135 502 99 (of course do not call!)
Email: lizcasey@zapak.com”

~~~~~~~~~~
It’s obvious that if you receive an e-mail like this that it’s a scam. There is no mention of what property they are referring to, or if there is, the next thing they will do to get your money is send you a bogus check as a deposit to hold the property, most often in the form of a certified check. Next, they will e-mail you and say they have overpaid you, or they decided they did not want the property and request a refund.

I Googled this scam and came up with someone who had experience with this and here is what they wrote:

“They will eventually get around to talking you into discontinuing the ad then they will send a counterfeit check. Next comes a request to refund some of the money from the bogus check claiming they overpaid. It’s amazing that folk’s fall for these scams. We played one along and got a $25.00 reward for turning the check over to the bank. If you play along with a scammer and receive a check. don’t handle it, the FBI may want to lift prints from it.”

I’m not sure the FBI is interested at all. The last time I tried to report a scam they were not interested and really did not even want to talk about it..
.

Real Estate

Craigslist Rental Scam II

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Paul Salamone
Paul Salamone

Home may be a man’s castle, but in Paul Salamone’s case, the entire fiefdom was allegedly fraudulent.

The Medford man is facing a Suffolk County, Long Island, jury this week after being accused of breaking into seven homes in various states of foreclosure and illegally renting some of them out in a scheme to capitalize on the failing local housing market. In his defense, his attorney points out that 28-year-old Salamone, who prosecutors say had renovated some of the vacant houses before he advertised them as for rent on Craigslist, truly believes what he was doing was right. Despite Salamone’s supposed good intentions, at least two families that rented from him were caught in the crossfire and evicted after the alleged scam began to unravel.

Accused felon Paul Salamone is charged with renting foreclosed homes he didn’t own.

“Confusion and misunderstanding, not guns or knives, were Mr. Salamone’s weapons,” said Marc Lindemann, the assistant district attorney who is prosecuting the case, in his opening statements at Suffolk County court in Riverhead on June 22.

Salamone allegedly told realtors that they no longer had ownership of the houses and backed his argument with what Lindemann described as official-looking documents. But many of the houses were actually owned by Deutsche Bank, said Lindemann, a prosecutor with the Suffolk District Attorney’s Office’s Economic Crimes Bureau.

It took police several months to connect the dots. A grand jury had indicted Salamone on five counts of burglary, but two more counts were added when additional houses were discovered. He was also charged with grand larceny for the “rent” he received, and criminal possession of a forged instrument for filing more than a dozen fraudulent liens.
Salamone’s attorney, Eric Naiburg, admits that his client made a serious mistake, but insists he is not a crook.

“He had no right to be in these houses,” the Smithtown-based attorney said in his opening statement. “That is conceded. That he went into these houses with the intent to commit a crime, that is not conceded, not conceded at all.”

“If this was a scheme, it was dumb,” Naiburg said, adding that if Salamone was trying to scam people, as prosecutors allege, then “he is the worst scam artist this nation has ever seen.”

Source: The Long Island Press

What do you think of the defense attorneys statement? Salamone rented the homes out that wasn’t his, but Salamone did not intend to commit a crime? Huh?

Real Estate

Craigslist Classified for Rent Scams

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sceme-picture

Although millions of transactions spawned by Craigslist are completed without a problem, there is always someone out there using it to steal someone’s money. So goes the tale of a West African scammer who took the address of a home in Lexington that was listed for sale and advertised it on Craigslist as one of his rentals. Saying that he was in West Africa on a land deal, he gave instructions the prospective renter to send a deposit and first month’s rent to a specified address and the keys for the house would be sent by mail.

People who wanted to rent the property, saw a for sale sign and called the listing agent telling her that they had seen the house for rent on Craigslist. The listing agent became aware of the scam and contacted Craigslist. She discovered that that the con artist had used her listing photographs and details of the property from her listing information and had used his contact number instead of her. The listing agent contacted Craigslist and told them of the scam and she hopes it is gone. The twist in this story – the property had been sold even before she got any calls for renting the property.

Here’s another one, how about a Nigerian “pastor” who was trying to collect rent on a Delta Township home to which he had no connection?

The homeowner’s were not amused when all of a sudden, their house which had no activity all of a sudden had tons of people driving by and looking at their home. They were picking up flyers and people were getting out of their cars and looking around their home.

One of the browsers approached the homeowners and wanted to confirm that the house was for rent. Available for WHAT? Was the astonished reply by the homeowners. It seems the home was listed for rent by the good pastor for $1,300 a month, including utilities, dogs and cats were welcomed. Now for a 2,000 square foot home in a good neighborhood this is really a good deal. And we all know if it’s too good to be true, well, it’s not true. The bogus ad had gone up the previous night on Craigslist and the next day the home was bombarded by lookers. The ad on the Internet classified ad site: $1,300 per month plus a $500 deposit.

The agent acknowledged that Craigslist was among the many places he listed the house, but never as a rental. Somebody simply lifted the text of the ad and created a new ad in the hope of collecting as much money as possible before being exposed.

The man who posted the ad called himself “Pastor Heller,” and he tells a story about having to abandon the Delta Township home for an emergency trip to Africa. He asks for $1,300 – one month’s rent, plus a $500 deposit, to be sent through Western Union. He promises to Fed-Ex the keys after receiving the money. I wonder why he picked the name Pastor HELLer?

You know that most of the ads on Craigslist are valid, but if you see one where the ad states that you are to send money by wire or mail, beware, it might be Past HELLer.