NBC-17 Investigates: Spotting a rip-off rental

It seems simple enough -- go on the Internet, find a home to rent, sign a contract and put down a deposit.

But what if that contract is bogus and the person who rented you the house doesn't even own it?

Scammers, sometimes an ocean away, are taking North Carolinians for hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars. However both Raleigh Police and the Attorney General’s office say their reach is limited because the scammers often move frequently or are in other countries.

Helena Oakley was a victim of one of these scams when she got caught up in a nasty divorce, and she and her four children were desperate to find a place to live. Luckily – or so she thought – she found a three-bedroom townhome in a quaint Cary neighborhood. The property was listed for just $900 per month.

“When this apartment came along, it was too perfect to be true,” Oakley recalled. “Everything just fell into place. [The landlord] even sent me an application, [and] told me I was approved.”

She added, “Things in my life weren't great, so this was one thing I was hoping was perfect.”

Since the owner said he lived overseas, he asked for the first month’s rent in exchange for the keys to the house. But Oakley never received the keys to the home, and now holds only a $900 receipt for a Western Union money order.

“They had given me a password and everything,” Oakley said. The password to wire the money was “In God We Trust,” a detail Oakley found “kind of ironic.”

She lamented, “That's a month and a half worth of work for me at the time. That's a lot of money. … When you're already in a bad situation and someone takes your money just like that -- it was really hard.”

“They don't care who you are, what you are going through or who they're doing it to. They just don't care; they're just thinking about themselves and how they can live for free, and this is the way they do it.”

A Prevalent Problem

Attorney General Roy Cooper says scammers like the one who robbed Oakley have been working the local real estate market since 2009. He says the problem was first noticed on Craigslist, but it has since spread to websites like apartments.com and rentals.com.

“We get six to 10 calls per week into our office from people who have issues with this,” Cooper explained.

Cooper says the scammers hijack a realtor's online listing, slash the price, pose as the owner and re-post the listing as their own.

NBC-17 found a three-bedroom home for rent in Raleigh listed in two different places. One listing had the home renting for about $2,000 and a Craigslist post showed the home for rent for $700.

After reaching out to the Craigslist poster, “David F. Brown” responded, claiming to be the “owner of the home.” He also responded with detailed photos of the interior of the home.

However, the poster also said he could not give a tour of the home because he “work[s] as a volunteer ... in West Africa, Nigeria.”

After filling out an application, “Brown” responded with an email stating that the application was accepted; but to secure the rental, he required a $700 security deposit. With that, he provided a wire address and a familiar password – “In God We Trust.”

Unable to verify the address “Brown” provided or even contact him through his phone number, NBC-17 reached out to Joshua Furr, a realtor with Block and Associates Realty out of Cary. Furr’s number was listed along with the $2,000 listing of the same home “Brown” claimed to own.

Furr said he had “received probably 30 calls in the last two days” about the listing.

‘I Felt Very Invaded’

The scenario is one that Lisa Pace with Pace Realty knows all too well. She says, at one point, all of her listings were hijacked on Craigslist.

“It's mainly frustrating because you're getting all these phone calls and people are so upset,” Pace said.

Pace says the scammers often went after higher dollar homes to “make it seem like it was such a good deal for somebody.”

“I think the whole point of that was to create a sense of urgency so that these tenants would think, ‘If I don't move on it right now, I'm not going to get the house,’” Pace explained. 

Allyson Knott is one of the home owners victimized by a scammer on the other side of the market. A scammer set up a fake email address using her husband’s name and posted a listing using Knott’s home.

“It scared me,” Knott said. “I felt very invaded, like they had come into my space. They had pictures of my home, they knew our names [and] had pretended to be my husband.”

Although she and her husband did not lose any money, Knott says she still felt victimized by the scammer.

Protecting Yourself

Cooper says the best offense is a good defense, and his office spends “quite a bit of time trying to educate people and let them know that this is a problem.”

 “I'm angry because here's this person that takes my belongings,” Oakley said. “But I'm also disappointed in myself that I fell for it.”

The Attorney General’s office offered these tips to protect yourself:

• Never agree to wire money overseas in response to an online post.
• Be careful about renting properties you haven’t been allowed to see. If possible, have a friend or family member go inside the property if you are not local.
• Beware of anyone asking for a deposit before you’ve reviewed and signed a lease.

To alert the Attorney General’s office of a potential scam, call (877)5-NO-SCAM. A complaint can also be filed with the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center at http://www.ic3.gov/default.aspx. If you have lost money, report it to local law enforcement.