Rental Scam Information – Protecting the Public from Rental Scammers

From the MyNewPlace blog:

Local alleged lump of human garbage Rachael Marie Smith has been arrested for using Craigslist to scam potential renters out of their deposits. Ms. Smith advertised her apartment on Craigslist, accepted deposits from several renters and then postponed their move in date, claiming that her mother was sick with cancer.

The scam was uncovered when one woman who signed a lease with Ms. Smith but could then not get in touch with her new’ landlord.’ She mentioned her troubles to a coworker, who, lo and behold, was having the same difficulty with the same woman and had heard the same sob story. The two women hired a lawyer, who also had clients complaining of the same scam and the police were called.

Ms. Smith is accused of stealing a total of $20,000 from at least four renters. Police also think that others may have fallen prey to the hoax and encourage anyone who has been defrauded to call Inspector John Monroe at 415.553.1936.

We collect a lot of data on rental scams and we find there are correlations between rental scams and large cities.  A likely explanation of this is because of the substantial amount more renters and traffic that are in these larger cities. For scammers, it is a numbers game. The more renters they can get to respond to the ad, the higher their chances of completing the scam.

Below is a list of the top cities with the highest level of scam activity.

Houses for rent in New York, NY
Houses for rent in Los Angeles
Houses for rent in San Diego
Houses for rent in Miami
Houses for rent in Phoenix
Houses for rent in Chicago

Finding cheap apartments for rent is a major priority for many renters in these hard economic times. Unfortunately, scammers are preying on these types of searchers.

Some tips to ensure you are not being scammed:

1) Is the price to good to be true? Use Rental Rate tools to help.

2) Are they just communicating with you via email? Red flag if they don’t want to talk to you on the phone.

3) Are they asking for a cashiers check? Don’t pay via cashiers check.

4) Have you seen the place and walked around with the Property Manager or owner.

According to our most recent rentBits.com survey of 1000 renters, 64% of them said they came across an ad or received an email that they suspected to be a rental scam. 4% of the renters said they were a victim of the scam.

The rental scam video for homes for rent and apartments with the most views so far has been “The Real Hustle (US): Apartment Scam”. The video is embedded below: