For years, scammers have posted fraudulent listings to extract cash from unsuspecting would-be renters.
Last year, an MLS threatened to stop syndicating its listings to Zillow after someone scraped a listing on the portal, reposted it there at a cheaper price and then, in an online correspondence, attempted to get a respondent to the listing to send money in exchange for keys to the property.
A recent case involving Craigslist casts light on a bolder version of the scheme.
According to DNAinfo, a scammer posted a listing for an apartment that he wasn’t representing and then took respondents on actual tours of it. Over the span of two weeks, the phony agent managed to persuade nine women to hand over $22,000 in what they believed were deposits.
Source: DNAinfo
