Virginian-Pilot correspondent
© August 3, 2013
DESPITE FOREWARNING, the would-be tenant packed his truck for the cross-country drive to Jim and Linda Dickerson’s Virginia Beach rental home.
From Seattle, he accused the couple of fraud and threatened to occupy the property that he’d secured with a wired funds transfer.
Linda Dickerson assured him that he’d be arrested if he tried.
“He was furious,” Dickerson said.
Conversely, she and her husband were fed up.
“This was Jim’s childhood home,” she said, “and it really bothered me that people were messing with it.”
The Seattle hopeful was one of multiple victims who’d lost money to a stranger overseas posing as the landlords of the Dickersons’ rental.
In line with how this scam typically works, the con artist had lifted details of the home from a legitimate ad that Dickerson had posted online. The thief then reposted the ad as her own, dropped the price and changed the contact information to redirect prospective tenants to her via email.
By the time Dickerson had discovered the fake rendition, based on a tip from a savvy neighbor, “people had already been answering it for a week,” she said.
Dickerson posed as an interested renter to investigate, inquiring via email about the property. The scammer had established an email address containing the Dickersons’ name and had a sweet story about being in South Africa on mission assignment. Email was her only means of communication.
Dickerson eventually discovered that she’d been instructing people to wire deposit and rent money in exchange for the key to be mailed. The trick had been working – on people who were willing to believe, sight unseen, in a too-good-to-be-true deal and an absentee landlord with a charming tale.
The scammer caught on to Dickerson’s investigative inquiry and begged the couple to help her pull it off, promising to share the profit. “They knew our home phone number, they knew where we were and they had our information,” Dickerson said of the con artist. “That’s scary.”
In turn, Dickerson removed her ad and posted a scam alert to warn prospects that her property was being used as a front. The Seattle man’s sister, who’d been researching the property from a suspicious perspective, discovered the warning and contacted the Dickersons. Her brother was ready to leave for Virginia; he’d already paid; he’d rearranged his life for this move; he wanted to believe he’d found the perfect deal.
Like the others, he didn’t want to believe he’d been victimized, Dickerson recalled.
“I felt sorry for them,” she said. “There’s no recourse (in this situation). They felt robbed.”
This scam, and other versions of it, has been around awhile, according to Miranda Perry, staff writer at Scambook, a Web-based forum for scam reporting and resolve.
The thievery becomes more prevalent in summer, when families strive to get settled before school starts and, as trusting college students, make long-distance living arrangements.
Unfortunately, Perry said, there’s no legal recourse or resolution because the perpetrators live outside the United States. Once the money is wired, she said, there’s no way to reverse the transaction.
Prevention is the best course of action, experts urge, and diligence paves the way. Recognizing the warning signs and knowing how to handle them saves money and heartache.
Beware of rents that seem too low and of landlords who aren’t serious about vetting a tenant and planning to meet in-person, Perry warned.
Know that most scammers prefer to conduct business via email, and always be suspicious of those who say they’re out of the country. Perry recommends typing a property address into Google Maps to confirm that it’s not a vacant lot.
Cover all your bases, if the rental does exist, by meeting on site with someone who can verify that he or she is an authorized representative of the property before money changes hands.
Other red flags include a landlord or representative not having a local phone number and/or skirting the legitimate rental application process, said Amy Rhodes, a Realtor and managing broker with William E. Wood and Associates in Norfolk.
Scammers sometimes lift the ads of real estate agents’ for-sale listings, passing them off as rentals, she noted. Rhodes, who also manages several of her own rentals, recommends that both landlords and prospective tenants establish Google Alerts on property addresses and key words used in the ads for automatic notification of potential duplicate – and phony – online postings of listings.
Typically, Rhodes said, deposits are due at lease signing, after the application process has been completed, in legitimate tenant/landlord situations. Often rent is not due until the key is received. She warns against mailing payments to a post office box and suggests that people consider dealing with a reputable real estate company because agents can access the multiple listing service databases for legitimate rentals.
Dickerson advises out-of-town renters to call a real-estate professional near the rental and offer payment to confirm the legitimacy of a property and its landlord. Rhodes likes that idea and added that some might even do it as a courtesy if they’re not too busy.
Dickerson also recommends searching municipal real estate records for the names of property owners or their neighbors, who may be able to verify or debunk the details of an ad.
According to Clark Howard, consumer advocate and host of radio’s “The Clark Howard Show,” scammers also have conned their way into vacant foreclosures, staged them as rentals, met tenants on site for entry and collected rent until the banks evict the unsuspecting occupants. Advice at www.clarkhoward.com includes asking the landlord to see a copy of the deed and making payments by check, which most frauds try to avoid.
The Dickersons had been using Craigslist.org when thieves lifted their ad, but scammers operate in all forums of opportunity. Craigslist lists guidelines for scam avoidance.
They include: Never wire money to a landlord; beware of “guaranteed” transactions and online escrow services; and never give financial information to, or submit to, credit or background checks by someone who’s not been verified as an official representative in the process of a legitimate application.
Signage and word of mouth have worked for the Dickersons since they stopped using free forums to list rentals. They also use Rentals.com, a fee-based service with more regulation for better protection.
“You want to believe in the best in everybody,” Dickerson said, “but scams do happen, sadly.”
Be on guard as a landlord or renter, she urged. “You don’t want to be naive.”
Nora Firestone,
nfirestone@verizon.net
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