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Industry News, Social MediaPA REALTOR® scammed on Craigslist
It seems like someone’s always coming up with a new way to scam unsuspecting consumers. The Internet is a breeding ground for creative criminal minds. But the scam is more believable when the criminal uses the identity of someone recognizable in a community.
As a REALTOR®, your business depends on your integrity and the professional reputation you’ve spent years, even decades, building.
Recently a Central Pennsylvania REALTOR® discovered someone had used her identity to try to “rent” properties. Beverly Attkisson of Village Realty, Inc. of Northumberland started receiving phone calls inquiring about rental properties she had available. This 31-year real estate veteran doesn’t handle rentals so she chalked it up to some confused consumers. Then she received a fax from someone who knows her, with a copy of a listing on Craigslist.com and her friend questioned whether she was renting the new condos she recently listed for sale.
That’s when the red flag went up and Attkisson knew something was wrong.
She discovered that someone had set up a fake e-mail address using her name and had listed properties she had for sale as rental properties on Craigslist. The listing gave phone numbers for consumers to call, however, they weren’t Attkisson’s phone numbers.
One consumer sent e-mails to the scammer questioning details of the transaction. The scammers were originally offering the property for $900 a month but had generously reduced the price to $800 a month, including utilities. All the consumer had to do was wire $1,600 to Nigeria to cover the first and last months’ deposits.
The consumer says that’s when she became skeptical. Calling Nigeria “scam capitol of the world,” the consumer said the contact she had with the scammer seemed legitimate at first – even down to photos the scammer had lifted from Attkisson’s web site. The scammer seemed very trustworthy, writing kind-sounding e-mails and promising to pray for the consumer. And when the consumer balked at wiring money before ever seeing the condo, the scammer claimed that Attkisson was on a mission trip which would take her through Nigeria, which is why the money needed to be wired there.
The consumer did her own Google search of Attkisson and discovered Attkisson’s legitimate real estate business. She called her and found out that she had been talking with an imposter.
This situation has come as a total shock to Attkisson. While she uses a computer in her real estate business, she’s never used Craigslist or set up a generic e-mail account.
Attkisson has called Craigslist, Yahoo, the state attorney general’s office and the state police. In the meantime, consumers in her area are thinking she’s offering condos at a great rental price and her reputation is being maligned.
The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), a partnership between the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C) is tracking such scams, which its refers to as 419 schemes, named after the Nigerian penal code section under which this kind of fraud is prosecuted. These scams all usually involve some Nigerian criminal trying to convince U.S. consumers to wire money out of the country where it cannot be traced.
You may want to check Craigslist occasionally to insure that your name is not being used or that properties you have listed for sale are not being falsely represented online. If you suspect that you have been a victim of an Internet crime, you should file a complaint at the Internet Crime Complaint Center.
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About Kim: Kim Shindle is the Communications Specialist at the Pennsylvania Association of REALTORS®. |
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