The rental scam

In middle of the night last night I was checking my email, (no, of course I’m not supposed to be checking my email in the middle of the night. But my story makes no sense without that piece of info, so I might as well confess up front).

So – in the middle of the night last night I was checking my email, and someone had emailed me asking about a discrepancy in my ads – my “for rent” ad on Zillow showed my rental available for a reasonably high amount of rent per month, but a nearly identical ad on Craigslist, with the same photos and everything, showed my rental available for a significant discount. And the contact information on the discount ad was an out-of-state phone number that was not mine.

I puzzled about this for a bit. I attempted (and failed) to get Craigslist to remove the bogus ad. Then I decided to wake John up, because it was 1 AM and I didn’t know how serious the situation was, or what to do about it.

After some google research, we determined that the scammer was probably asking people to send him application fees, or a fee to “hold” the property (since it was supposedly such a good deal), and then he would disappear with their money. He probably is out-of-state, and probably never has (and never will) be anywhere near the actual house. And he probably has lots of fake ads up all over the country.

We determined that there really isn’t much of anything we can do about it. We can continue to try to get Craigslist to take down the scammer’s ad, and they might eventually (in a couple of weeks) do so. We can put up another ad, which people might hopefully see, that refutes the bogus ad. We could call the police, but they really aren’t set up to deal with petty internet fraud across state lines.

So at 2 AM last night, we did put up a Craigslist ad, with the same first photo, explaining the situation. And I just hope no one falls for it.

I also hope I don’t have some irate person coming to me in a week or two, thinking they had sent me money and had rented my house.

Zillow does a good job of cross checking public databases, like county records, to ensure that the houses I claim to be mine, are actually mine. But Craigslist – you can say anything you want on Craigslist. ANYTHING. And if enough people complain for enough days, they might eventually take it down.