The Online Rental Ad Scam
You have been hunting for months to find the perfect rental within your area. It needs to be close to work, close to family and still within good distance to the gym. With your intensive online search, you cannot believe your luck when you find that perfect rental property and even better – it is offered at a discounted rate. Too good to be true? Well it just may be.
The Nigerian Letter Scam or the 419 Scheme has now begun to attack online rental advertisements. These advertisements will post the perfect property with a low rate and the owner will state that they had to quickly leave the country for Nigeria due to some form of emergency. They will require that the individual interested in the property fill out paperwork and wire them two months rent as a “security deposit”. What is the problem? These are not the real owners and when you contact the real owner, they have no idea where your money went or any agreement you have signed for their property.
How It Works
With more and more consumers unable to purchase homes, the rental market is beginning to grow; therefore the potential pool of victims for these scam artists is growing as well. These criminals that are located in Nigeria will skim websites such as Craigslist to find legitimate rental ads that are posted. They will then copy these advertisements word-for-word and repost it on the site, but this time change out the contact information with their own. Just to ensure that they have enough consumers take the bait, they will then offer the property at a below average rate.
Interested renters will contact these scammers through their listed email and request more information. The owner will typically reply stating they had to relocate to Nigeria for an emergency or even have the nerve to state they are in Nigeria performing missionary work. They will require the potential renter to fill out a rental application and agreement, and then provide the first and last month’s rent in order to secure the property. They are required to wire transfer the funds to the “owner”.
Once these renters complete what they are asked, they never hear from the owner again and certainly do not receive keys to their new rental property. Often these Nigerian criminals will now also have the consumer’s date of birth, full name, social security number and even their bank account information to further commit fraud under their name.