Last week I received many phone calls in regards to a single family home I had listed for sale in Coconut Grove. Sounds nice, doesn’t it? Except that the calls were not from people interested in buying the home, but from people wanting to rent it. The reason they were calling me about this property is that they had found it on the internet, advertised as a rental, for the price of a one bedroom condo! I had clearly not posted the house on any websites as a rental, but someone else had, using the remarks I had written and the pictures I posted.  What is even worse, the crook was posing as me, with my first and last name, and a yahoo e mail address clearly created for the purpose of deceiving to-be renters and taking their money.

This is how the scam works: The impostor finds a nice home listed for sale, and using the cut and paste features, advertises the property for rent in a few websites, for a price that will attract a large number of interested people. Next to the description of the property there will be a link that will connect the would-be tenant to the would-be landlord, and once the connection is made, the would-be tenant can be the victim of rampant fraud and lose a lot of money. Luckily the calls I got were from people who had been in contact by e mail with the person posing as me, and had become suspicious.  They looked up my name online, or, if in Miami, they drove by the property in question, and called the phone number listed on my sign. Once they contacted me they immediately realized I was not the person they had been in contact with in regards to the house they wanted to rent. That person, posing as the landlord, was allegedly out of the country on a business trip, so she wanted to have the money deposited in an account, or mailed somewhere, in exchange for the keys to the house. I don’t want to think of what happened to those who, unaware of the scam, followed the instructions of the impostor, but I am concerned of what would happen if someone shows up at my client’s home with a set of keys, alleging they paid someone 3 months in advance to rent the property? Will the police be looking for me then? Hopefully not. I did call the FBI, at the advice of my broker, and filed a complaint on identity theft and fraudulent online advertising. My advice: You can definitely avoid being the victim of a scam like this by hiring a reputable real estate agent to help you find a rental property.  It is free, and it will actually save you time and money.