I originally posted this for advice seeking, but there's nothing they can do. Instead, I thought I'd repost as a PSA.
My sister (28F) and her girlfriend (33F) were desperate to find a rental house in the PNW. They ignored the telltale signs of rental scams: too good to be true pricing, unable to see the inside of the property, poorly constructed emails from the "owner" (who claimed to have recently transferred to Chicago for his job and was "just looking for someone to keep an eye on the property"), and the most glaring issue - he would only call them from a number with a 675 area code...which isn't an area code in the US.
Long story short, their desperation clouded their judgement. They called me yesterday afternoon in a panic, saying that the "owner" told them he was in a contract with a property management company and they needed to provide an additional 6 months of rent before he would "mail the keys".
Trying to get them to see the light (they didn't believe me when I told them they got scammed), I did the following to build my case (in addition to mentioning everything above):
- Look up the name of the actual owner of the house - surprise, surprise, the names didn't match up. The house had recently sold to a different couple
- Urge them to try calling the phone number the "owner" was calling from (knowing that it would say the call couldn't be completed)
- I googled the listing agent and reverse image searched the photo that was on the Redfin page - they only results that popped up were on Redfin. Testing my theory, I did the same with a friend that's a realtor and the pictures showed up on multiple listing sites
- Brought up the fact that the "owner's" email address wasn't any iteration of their name - on its own, this wouldn't be a red flag, but he told them that he was an executive at his company (thus the "transfer). An executive business professional would most likely have an email that has their first and last name in it
- In the same vein, told them that a business professional would not be sending the types of emails he was
They provided copies of their ID's and SSNs on their "application", so I had them freeze their credit and contact Wells Fargo to report the fraud. Outside of doing that, I told them to absolutely not send any more money to this person.
They're embarrassed and still aren't convinced they got scammed, so for now I'm just going to offer emotional support to them and be kind. They're absolutely the last people I would expect to fall for a scam, so it really is true that it can happen to anyone.
Submitted August 03, 2021 at 10:31AM by largecolonialdolls https://ift.tt/2VgOwPe
