BRIDGEPORT — A woman looking to rent a house is out $1,400 after she wired money to the out-of-state “owner.”
The woman, who asked not to be named, said she responded to an ad on Craigslist offering a Pond Street house for rent. The ad was riddled with misspellings and clearly was not written by a native English speaker.
Still, she said, heat and utilities were included, and the “owner’s” story about being sent out of town on a mission trip by his church sounded reasonable, so she sent a Moneygram and was supposed to get the keys in the mail. They never came.
“This has truly made times hard, especially with a 7-year old child,” the scam victim said. “This has left me with nowhere to go; my only option was to move in with family until I am capable of raising my funds to be on my own again.”
The rental scam has been around awhile, and there are warnings about it on Craigslist’s fraud alert page, and on every ad page where the seller asks for money.
Last March, a Milford man nearly lost more than $3,300 trying to rent a house on Walnut Beach. Joseph Tomasso had responded to a Craigslist ad from someone claiming to be on a mission trip to Africa.
Sophia Stoller, a Moneygram spokeswoman, said Thursday that once someone wires money, “it’s like you opened up your wallet and handed over the cash. It’s gone.” The Dallas-based company works with local law enforcement, Stoller said, with the focus on trying to catch the fraudster.
Last year, Moneygram received 67 complaints from Connecticut residents involving Internet scams totaling about $60,000, Stoller said. Already this year the company has received 26 complaints from state residents about frauds with a total value of more than $30,000, she said.
In both the Bridgeport case and the Milford incident last March, the house in question was actually for rent. The scammer sent the targets a list of amenities and other information that turned out to be cribbed from the legitimate listing.
The would-be victim in the Milford case, Joseph Tomasso, was also sent interior photos of the house.
“That’s why this almost worked,” Tomasso said. “It all sounds legit. If you call to check, you find out that the house is for rent. And the guy says, `You’ve seen pictures of the inside. You know what it looks like. But a lot of people are interested.”
In the most recent case, the victim was in contact with a “Donald Braithwaite” by phone and email before receiving and signing a lease. She sent the lease and $1,400 for the security deposit and the first month’s rent, but when “Braithwaite” demanded another $800 for rent, she balked and demanded her money back. She’s been unable to get in touch with him since.
“Any time people are dealing with their money and a stranger on the Internet, they should exercise a little extra caution,” said William Kaempffer, Bridgeport Police spokesman. “Certainly, there are scammers out there and the successful ones can be very convincing. It pays to be a little wary and skeptical.”
There were at least two bogus ads for the same Bridgeport house on Craigslist. The legitimate ad by a local real estate agent is for $1,700 per month rent.
“I realize that I am probably out the money, but if I can stop someone else from getting scammed, even if it is just on this one house, I’ll feel better,” the victim said.
fjuliano@ctpost.com; 203-520-6986; http://twitter.com/FrankJuliano