A Scammer Hijacked My Lease Listing - Beware!
I've read about it happening to other people and never expected it to happen to me. I spent part of Monday morning at the police station sharing the details with the police in the hopes that the perp can be caught and prosecuted.
I listed a home for lease two weeks ago. I entered the information in the normal places, like MLS, and created marketing materials on Postlets.com. This 2100+ square foot home was priced at $2,100 per month.
I live in the neighborhood. In fact, the home is directly across the street and I can see it from the window in my home office. I could see the nice young couple pull up, get out of the car, and call me from the husband's cell phone. And that's when things got weird.
The prospective tenants asked me who Guy LeGrand is, why they had been talking to him about renting the house, and what was my sign doing in the yard. I don't have a clue who Guy is, but is it too much of a coincidence that the street name is Le Grande and his name is LeGrand?
They told me they first saw the listing on the Internet (street name only, no street number) and they very much want to move into this neighborhood as they have friends nearby and they come over to the dog park at the end of the street all the time. They were anxious to rent the place for the $1,500 advertised on the Internet. They drove up and down the street looking for Guy's sign, but I have the only property for lease on the street so they called me.
These wonderful people gave me all the information they had on Guy. In addition to his name (bet it's not his real name), they had his email address (proudly555@yahoo.com) and phone number (914-595-5158). After showing them the house and getting them lease applications, I retreated to the computer and searched for my hijacked listing.
I couldn't find the bogus listing until I Googled Guy's phone number, but when I did, so many listings came up, I had to search for his number and the name of the city to narrow it down. I printed out the information I found on enormo.com (he did a masterful job of taking my description and photos) and began the process of getting him shut down. Since the website made mention of Postlets, I found my listing and his listing for the property on Postlets.com. One email message to Postlets got Guy's listing removed. Postlets was very responsive.
I engaged Guy via text message, pretending to be interested in renting the house. I asked him to send details and photos. He responded by asking for my email address. Since I didn't know if he knew whose listing he stole and my name is in my address, I gave him a friend's email address and he sent my photos, my description and his own home made rental application.
He also sent this "story": I just relocated with my family to Philippines because my company has won an auction for a big construction project. I'll stay here for the next 4-5 years or more so I won't come back soon. I'm looking for someone to live in my House from here,I don't have a problem if you are a student or if you would like to keep pets there, all we require is a super tenant to look after our home like its theirs. The minimum lease available is Long and also Short Term Lease, very important, the utilities are included in the price per month. I'm 50 years old and as I told you, I'm a project manager and my job even if is paid very well, requires that I move a lot with little or short notice. You can move in the House in the same day that you will receive the keys. The only problem is that I'm already in Philippines because we started the work, but you don't need to worry because I've made all arrangements to rent the House from here. I would definetely like to know a little more about you. Kindly fill out the rent application form below.
Once I got his email, I texted him again. You can see the end of the text stream above. Sure, send the deposit ($500) and the first month's rent ($1,500) and the keys will magically appear in the snail mailbox.
So, I brought all the "evidence" to the police station and shared all this with two officers. A few days later, the detective assigned to the case called and he told me he's working on it. Meanwhile, that nice young couple who tipped me off about the scam, well, they're going to be my new neighbors!
What can you do to nip these scams in the bud? Try setting up Google Alerts and check out the If This Than That website. Beware of the scammers!
Comments(63)