With school out and summer around the corner, more people are on the move, and so too are scams artists trying to take advantage of them.
Bogus ads on Craigslist, Facebook and other forums offering rentals that really aren’t for rent tend to rise with the temperatures outside. The ads, which can stay up for hours before getting flagged as fraudulent, usually show appealing pictures pulled from other online postings and offer an alluring lease rate.
Almost always, the poster had had to move away because of an unforeseen situation that solicits sympathy. And while common sense says never wire money to rent a place you haven’t seen in person, the posters insist they are completely trustworthy. Just wire the money and the key will be on its way.
“Rents are high and people are desperate,” said Hope Grandon, who ran across more than a half dozen bogus ads in her search last month for a studio/one-bedroom rental in Denver.
At first she was suspicious, then frustrated, and then angry when ad after ad all involved people who couldn’t show the property.
There was a nurse who had to quickly leave Denver for an assignment at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in New Hampshire. There was a missionary in training who had to move to Carson, Nev., and would soon be overseas doing God’s work. And there was someone who claimed to be a deaf homeowner who had to leave the state for a contract position, and the wife of an accountant who had to transfer to Ohio.
“You know I made mentioned in my previous email that My new contract came as an emergency. So as it stands now I will not be able to arrange a showing to you,” the person posing as a nurse offered in an email as why Grandon couldn’t see the apartment.
Then there was the house at 3065 Jasmine Street in Denver, which was an active listing for sale. Someone pretending to be the owner, even using the owner’s name, said he would pull the listing and rent the home direct, and advised Grandon to not talk to the agent on the listing.
“Just to let you know before we move any further. my initial plan was to sell the house but the agent was not honest with me, he cheat on the tenant by getting higher rent from them and never deliver the money to me. The sale sign board will be removed from the house as soon as I get a tenant, so that people will stop contacting the number on the sign board,” the scammer said in an email to Grandon on May 12.
The house sold on May 21, and Zillow estimates a fair rent for the property at $2,200 a month, not the $850 listed with utilities included. The scammer claimed he couldn’t show the house because he had taken a contract out of state. And he was deaf, meaning no phone calls. And he wanted $1,650 in advance between rent and security deposit.
While most posters were typically stingy with details and didn’t want to talk on the phone, one shared too much information.
“We both are honest people with good intentions, so we need trustworthy people. Our daughter, Sarah is a fun loving girl that loves to play,” said the person posing as the accountant’s wife renting out a unit at 3038 Umatilla St. in the popular Highland neighborhood.
The poster took the name of a woman in North Carolina, but appropriated a local cell phone number linked to a hair salon in Westminster. And he or she made an odd request — would Grandon collect the family’s mail until they came back for a visit in October.
To get the key, Grandon only needed to wire a security deposit of $750, but not the first month’s rent of $750. Apartment List, a listing website, shows other units at that address renting for $1,950 a month.
Grandon didn’t fall for any of the scams, but she was dismayed at how many ads were not legitimate. She said her guard was down because her prior landlord had to leave the country for a teaching assignment and offered her a great deal.
In a market where median rents exceed what median incomes can support, many people are anxious to find something affordable, and that can leave them vulnerable.
The Denver Post highlighted the problem of online rental scams back in 2009, but authorities haven’t found a way to stop them and enough people are falling victim that perpetrators continue the ploy.
“It can be a difficult crime to track, especially if victims or potential victims don’t report it to authorities to be able to investigate,” said Annie Skinner, director of communications with the Colorado Attorney General.
She said rental scams are common across the country, and that authorities typically see an uptick in the summer months, when more people are moving into new places.
“There is usually something that engenders trust and makes you want to help them,” said Damon McCoy, an assistant professor of computer science and engineering at New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering.
McCoy, two years ago, led a research team that examined more than 2 million rental ads posted on Craigslist and dove in on 29,000 that were suspicious, using automated conversation engines to respond.
One common scam asked prospective tenants to clink on a link and pay for a credit report to qualify to rent a nonexistent rental property, which generated a referral commission to the scammer.
Another rejected the person responding, claiming the place had already been rented but offering to provide them a proprietary list of potential properties to rent or buy for a fee.
And pretty much everywhere there were “clone” ads, where people were asked to wire large sums for the initial rent and security deposit, the kind of ads Grandon ran across.
Craigslist had the hardest time detecting and shutting down clone ads, with 40 percent remaining active for 20 hours or more, enough time to draw in multiple potential victims, the NYU study found.
One of the fraudulent ads Grandon provided to The Dener Post was still up a month after its initial posting,
“We found the scams fairly prevalent everywhere. Everyone commonly runs into these. By design, they are the most enticing ad,” said McCoy.
Even when people don’t fall for the fake ads, they are sometimes tricked into providing scam artists with the information needed to create a Craigslist account, which in turn is used to post even more fake ads, he said.
So who is behind the scams? Damon said two domestic operators that pulled in millions of dollars were shut down as a result of information the NYU study uncovered.
But domestic scam artists tend to be cruder in their approach and they face higher odds of getting caught, he said. U.S. authorities, however, have a harder time stopping scams that originate overseas, one reason they keep going.
McCoy said his research suggests that the rental clone scams are one of several more sophisticated descendants of the Nigerian letter scam, where people were asked to wire money in return for a cut of a large and secret store of wealth.
Both use elaborate story lines lines and claims to build trust, like references to God or military service. They often contain phrasing that can be a bit off. And the NYU study found proof — many of the IP addresses and wiring instructions associated with the clone ads were linked to Nigeria and a small number of “fraud factories.”
The common red flags in clone rental ads are as follow: a rent that seems too good to be true, a poster who can’t show the property, a backstory designed to engender trust or sympathy, and a request to wire money.
Over the past 12 months, Western Union has received a relatively small number of fraud complaints related to rental scams, and the company’s fraud team has been able to keep about half of those who reached out to the company from falling victim, said Claire Treacy, a spokeswoman with the world’s largest money transfer firm.
“We actively provide both consumer and agent educational materials to help combat this activity,” she said. The company provides tips for detecting fraud on its website maintains a fraud hotline at 1-800-448-1492 for people to file a complaint.
Like Western Union, the attorney general’s office has focused its efforts on educating consumers so they don’t fall victim. But it will also investigate cases, both where a person has wired money and lost it or where they are concerned.
“We encourage any consumer who feels they may have been a victim or potential victim of a scam or fraud to contact our office at 1-800-222-4444 to file a complaint,” Skinner said.
But consumer be warned. Once that wire transfer goes out in response to a fraudulent rental ad, that money most likely is never coming back.
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