How the scam works.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\nFirst, the scammer will contact the listing agent for the property by either driving by and calling on the sign or sending the listing agent an e-mail.\u00a0 The e-mail will ask for certain things about the property such as the price, move in costs, etc. Below are some tips when dissecting a rental scam email.<\/p>\n
1.\u00a0 Does the email start out with Sir\/Madam?
\n2.\u00a0 Are there misspellings in the email?
\n3.\u00a0 Are there character mistakes in the email? i.e Hello,my nameis Susie.
\n4.\u00a0 Is there excessive capitalization?
\n5.\u00a0 Does the email reference God, UK, Cashiers Check, Doctor, Nigeria, Reverend, etc.
\n6.\u00a0 Is the email from a free email provider. i.e gmail, yahoo, aol, hotmail.
\n7.\u00a0 Does the email refer to another person or agent?
\n8.\u00a0 Does the email reference wanting to move in site unseen?<\/p>\n
If the email has a majority of these in common, chances are very good it is a scammer. If you are not sure, it’s best to not reply.<\/p>\n
The money order\/deposit scam<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\nScammers will try to make the victim feel as comfortable as possible. Here is one way they do it. Once the scammer has all the information about the property, they will then do the following:<\/p>\n
1.\u00a0 Advertises the rental(s) on a large free classifieds site and make the rental price extremely low.
\n2.\u00a0 The victim finds the ad and wants to rent the property. Because it is priced so low, the victim thinks they are getting a good deal and must act right away so they don’t lose this great deal.
\n3.\u00a0 The Victim and the scammer begin communicating via e-mail.
\n4.\u00a0 The Scammer tells the victim he is out of the country on business.
\n5.\u00a0 To ensure the victim has the funds, the scammer will ask the victim to wire a deposit ($2,000) to any of the victims friends. This is supposed to make the victim feel comfortable with the process because they are wiring the money (deposit) to their own friend.
\n6.\u00a0 The scammer requests a copy of the receipt to make sure the funds have been transferred to the victim\u2019s friend through MoneyGram.
\n7.\u00a0 With the information on the receipt, the scammer picks up the money and the victim is out the money as well as the rental. Money orders alow the recipient to pick up the funds anywhere in the world.<\/p>\n
How to avoid being victimized:<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n1.\u00a0 Only deal with landlords or renters who are local;
\n2.\u00a0 Be suspicious if you\u2019re asked to only use a wire transfer service;
\n3.\u00a0 Beware of e-mail correspondence from the \u201clandlord\u201d that\u2019s written in poor or broken English;
\n4.\u00a0 Research the average rental rates in that area and be suspicious if the rate is significantly lower;
\n5.\u00a0 Don\u2019t give out personal information, like social security, bank account, or credit card numbers.<\/p>\n
If you suspect a scam, have already been victimized, or know someone who has fallen victim to a scam, please report it to the FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center <\/a>to help them determine the extent of the problem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A few months ago I blogged about the rental scam that was cropping up in the South Florida, well it seems it back or perhaps it’s a variation of the old one. The FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) recently put out a consumer alert regarding rental scams. If you suspect a scam, have already been […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1401,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_expiration-date-status":"","_expiration-date":0,"_expiration-date-type":"","_expiration-date-categories":[],"_expiration-date-options":[]},"categories":[59],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.myewm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13565"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.myewm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.myewm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.myewm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1401"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.myewm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13565"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.myewm.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13565\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.myewm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.myewm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.myewm.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}