We recently came across a situation where a tenant was scammed thousand of dollars by a fake leasing company. We had a property for rent in Stockton, CA, during our first showing, we were surprised to see people we didn’t schedule to come or communicated with showed up to the showing. Turned out scammers put up a listing of his own online, and listed it way below market. Prospective tenants have thus been coming to the property to check it out, and we happened to be doing a showing when some of them showed up. We informed them the ad they saw was a scam, and directed them to our legitimate listing online.
To our surprise, a few days later, we found a lady moved into the property. Initially, we thought it was a squatter. Upon closer examination, the person who moved in without our knowledge was able to produce a lease and even receipt for payments. However, this person was never in communication with us, we did not sign a lease with her, we did not show her the property. We inspected around the house, we found out someone broke into the property from the backdoor, changed out the lock of the front door, and pretended it was his property to lease. He pretended to be the owner, showed the property to the lady, and scammed her of over $5,000. While we as landlords and renters, have seen our fair share of scammers, the length this scammer went to make the scam appears legitimate was astounding.
In this lady’s defense, this scammer actually have a key to the front door after he broke in and changed out the front door lock. He had a professional lease with him and even issued receipt for the move-in cost he received.
Sometimes, it is really hard to tell legitimate renters from the scams.
Here is a few tips:
- If it sounds too good to be true, or the rent is way below market, it is too good to be true. At PREI, we receive 300+ inquiries for any one listing we have. We never needed to go cheap to attract tenants, we only work with quality landlords and quality tenants.
- Look for verified listing, all of the listings PREI has on the internet, carry the verified by Zillow badge with them. That tells you the listing is legitimate.
- Never send someone the move-in money until after you have seen the place. If they are not able to show you the place for any reason, more likely than not, they are a scammer.