Advertising a rental property on Craigslist can be a bit dicey. Scammers often copy your legitimate ad, photos and all, then repost it as their own. When a prospective tenant makes contact, the person posing as the owner, says they are in the process of firing their management company and want to rent directly to them. Some people may fall for the ruse and send personal information or security deposits in expectation of a lease.
The FBI has received numerous complaints about this type of scam but the local Norfolk office explained several months ago that this type of crime is low on their list of investigative priorities. The best thing you can do if one of your properties gets caught in this scam is to visit www.IC3.gov and report the crime. The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) is a partnership between the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C), and the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA). IC3's mission is to serve as a vehicle to receive, develop, and refer criminal complaints regarding the rapidly expanding arena of cyber crime.
Craigslist has reduced this in some markets by charging a nominal fee for real estate ads, thereby reducing the profit motive of scammers and establishing a paper-trail for the money to enable tracking them down. If your ad is the victim of this type of scam, you should also notify Craigslist by clicking on "Prohibited" in the upper right hand corner, or using the "spam/overpost" option.
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