I had an incident that happened to one of my sellers this past weekend that I think the rest of the realtors need to know about. As part of my advertising, I upload listings to Craig’s list under housing for sale. My seller received a phone call from a lady that said that her home was listed on Craig’s list for rent. The ad had all of the information from my ad; pictures, address, description, etc. The perpetrator searched the web to get the seller’s name and created an email address using her name at yahoo.com. The background story was that the husband was being relocated to Africa and they needed to rent the house. In addition to the phone call, my seller had two couples show up at her doorstep wanting to rent the house. I also was contacted by an agent in my office, who had a client interested in renting.
Here is the contact information that I received from her buyer client: my contact with him was via email....email address is (I have deleted the email address that he used, as it is my seller’s name) and he sent me phone numbers of: +234-702-963-2643 (Nigeria) or 011-234-805-803-9541 (this number is the number for a Nigerian puppy scam).
He stated he was out of town on business....
My seller contacted the State Police and they believe that it is similar to the email scams that we get all the time about someone dying and needing help getting their inheritance. The only thing that they can do is contact Craig’s list and have them take down the ad.
I intend to check all of my listings on Craig’s list to see if they are listed for rent as well as for sale. I suggest that all of us contact our sellers and let them know that this is happening and that they need to contact us and the police if someone contacts them. It was very unsettling for my seller to have someone show up at her door wanting to rent her home.
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