A while back I wrote how I was a “victim” of someone taking one of my listings and claiming it was their own on Craigslist. Several people emailed me or called and stated, “But I saw it at a lower price on Craigslit. What’s the deal?” So from there I needed to ask them if the email addresses matched mine? Or if all the pictures matched? I knew the written “ad” and the front picture of the home matched as the scammer copied it directly from one of the many places that I list my properties.
I talked to Dave Dugdale about this as he’s the owner of the rental listing sites www.RentVine.com and www.PickRent.com. Dave likes to do research on these types of items and blog or videocast on what he finds. So, I provided Dave with the contact information for the scammer so he could see what they were doing so he could write about it. He went even further by creating a Rental Scam Checking Tool so people could check to see if the property they have found is just a really great deal or “too good to be true.”
Dave has put together a videocast describing How to Unmask Rental Scammers. In this video he has interviewed others who have first hand knowledge of scammers. They discuss some of the ways these scams work, how far they have gone, and how they can harm innocent people. You can also learn how to protect yourself by looking the address up in the county assessor’s records (verify the owner’s name) and doing a google search to see if the address is listed somewhere else but listed at a different price or by someone else. Dave also put together a Rental Scam Detection Tool.
The Rental Scam Detection Tool asks a series of questions to help you determine if that home you found is just a great price or too good to be true. By taking your answers to the questions, this tool will provide you with a percentage of the home you are interested in possibly being a scam. At the end of the “check” you can specific addresses against a database of email addresses used by scammers.
Even though I wasn’t happy having one of the properties I work with used in a rental scam, I’m glad that it helped Dave in look at this in a way to help others. Because I think it is a great tool, I’ve added it to the www.AVantageProperties.com web site as well as links to the county assessors in my area to provide people more tools to help them keep from becoming a victim of a Rental Scam.
Tags: craigslist, Property Owner, Rental Scam, victim
