Getting Scammed on CraigsList
Craigslist has become a popular tool for home buyers and sellers. However, it it a portal not without controversy. For those who are not familiar with Craigslist - according to Wikipedia, Craigslist is a centralized network of online communities, featuring free online classified advertisements.
Recently Golden Realty posted a home for sale on Craigslist, advertising an upcoming open house. We started to get inundated with phone calls from people who were interested in renting this particular property. We were all very confused until we figured out that we were victims of a SCAM!
Here is what happened. A ’scammer’, apparently from out of the country, created a post on Craigslist advertising a home for rent using the information from Golden Realty’s post of a home for sale and advertised it for a really low rental fee. This scammer provided a fraudulent email account using an innocent person’s identity, making it seem as if all this was legitimate. When interested parties contacted the scammer, they were instructed to mail him a Cashiers check and then he would forward on the keys to the home.
Hopefully most people can recognize a scam when they see one, especially if something seems too good to be true. Evidently this is not the first time - nor the last, that Craigslist will be a feeding pool for scammers. In fact it would seem as if scams and fraudulent activity occur frequently on Craigslist because on every page, there is a link, typed in bold that warns users…AVOID SCAMS AND FRAUD.