This just happened to some people I know. They just rented a house or duplex, and have been moving in over the last few days. Today they found a bunch of their stuff had been stolen from the new unit, and while they were dealing with it the owner of the property showed up and said “Who are you people and what are you doing here?”
Someone had posed as a prospective tenant or agent and been given the lockbox code. They took the key, duplicated it, and put their own ad in the paper advertising the rental. They showed it to the people, gave them a lease, took their deposit and first month rent, then came back with their key Fri night and stole much of what had been moved in so far. Now the tenants are out the cash they had for moving, a bunch of their possessions, and can’t return to the place they are moving from.
Is this a common scam? It seems pretty gutsy on the part of the scammers and depends on the owner not showing up at the wrong time.
I think I’ve heard of something similar, but not exactly that one. Do landlords really say “Sure, go on over and take a look, here’s the lock box code” or is it more likely that they were looking over the shoulder of the person who entered the code?
Either way it sucks and the victim is probably pretty well screwed.
A friend of mine almost got burned by that but was done much less artfully - they claimed to be missionaries in Africa and therefore had to do everything by mail. I told her - are you fucking stupid? This is obviously a scam.
This one seems much better executed and I can see someone falling for it. From what you’ve said, it’s not obviously bogus.
To answer your question, I think it is a very common scam but I have no stats to back me up.
good point. odds are if they took it to your friends bank then bank wouldn’t have cashed - but can’t know for sure. If deposited, there should be a string of account numbers that it went through - including the Federal Reserve for your area.
I would go online immediate or use the bank’s bank-by-phone system and cancel that sucker post haste. If you can go online and your friends’ bank has cashed it, you should be able to get the check image.
If those aren’t options and you have to wait until monday, be outside before the bank opens. That might not technically be necessary, but it’s what I would do.
Something that’s going to be important is who the check was made out to. If it was made out to cash or the name of the person your friend handed the check to, the bank probably won’t be able to do anything about it, at least until the courts get involved since they (the bank) did nothing wrong. If it was made out to a fake name (or the rental agency or the landlord’s name) and it was cashed by Bad Guy (most likely without the proper ID) the bank will probably eat it and give your friend their money back.
There are other possible ways to track them. The scammers got the lockbox code to make a duplicate of the key. Do they just give that code out to anyone, or was there at least an ID check or paperwork to get that. Also, if the scammers ran their own ad in the newspaper, they must have paid for it somehow.
Or maybe I’ve just been watching too many reruns of The Rockford Files lately.
You should be able to cancel ANY check regardless of the payee - cash,blank,whatever.
As for bank liability, paying over a forged endorser’s signature leaves them liable,but for a fictitious company with a real bank account, I don’t see that happening. However there are probably other rules it violates as well, so consult an attorney if you get to that point.
In the Seattle area there have been people taking over foreclosed homes then renting them out. They go in and change all the locks then advertise them on Craigslist below market value. A few times it has taken months before the “renters” find out they have been scammed.
Some do. I’m looking for a place to rent now, and occasionally when I call to arrange to look at a place, I’m just given the lockbox number. Sometimes I’m just told to use a door that’s been left unlocked.
I would go with the picked lockbox. That’s one less place to leave tracks. Renting a foreclosed house seems like an even better idea, but would require some investment in fixing it up, because none will be rent-ready. It would be easier to run the scam long enough to collect enough rent to cover the expense, especially if you manage to top it off with some theft.
Wow, I feel really bad for your friends. That sucks so bad.
The only new advice I have is to have your friends call their bank’s customer care line. They can put a freeze on the account until Monday, some can put stop payments on over the phone, etc. Get it done earlier and get it done without having to go to the bank? Win-win.
The first time I heard of it was in the early 1980’s. Primary tenant had supposedly been transferred to London office for a year and didn’t want to relinquish his good deal apartment, so he was subletting it for a year. Friend of mine responded to the ad, went to see it, and paid cash (got a receipt too! lol) for the first months rent and one month security. Signed a lease with a London address that the rent had to be sent to (turned out to be bogus) and got the keys. On the first of the month, he is moving in and soon finds that two other people also rented the apartment from the same guy. The building owner had no idea who the guy who rented the apartment out was because they had been warehousing the apartment for a couple of years pending a conversion. Whoever this guy was, he had working keys to the building, the mailbox and the apartment.
I’ve seen various other versions over the years. I have made it a habit to check the tax records against the supposed owners name if I am dealing with an individual, and then make sure that the individual is who they say they are.
As far as stopping the check, I have never heard of a landlord accepting a check for the first months rent and security. Here, even if your credit score is 850, first month and security is cash or wire transfer only. Same thing for the brokers fee. Maybe in small towns they do it differently, but there is no way you are going to get an apartment around here using a check.
Really? I’ve never heard of landlords requring cash or wire transfer. Every apartment I’ve rented, first in Seattle and now in NJ I paid 1st month rent and security with personal check. If they don’t trush me enough to accept a check for 1st months rent why are they going to trust me to pay the subsequent months rent by check.
When I got the place I have now, he wouldn’t accept a check for first month/security deposit. People could scam their way in, then it could take months to evict them, and they would have been living there the whole time without any payment at all.
The more I think about it, this (the Op scenario) is like the perfect scam, if the neighbors were clueless and the owner not local.