Rental Scammers Using Craigslist to Target Landlords - No More Names
December 5, 2007
Here a link to is my most popular post - Rental Scammers Using Craigslist to Target Landlords.
I’ve received over 70 posts in response to my initial piece, many listing names of people or e-mail addresses of people who had e-mailed posters to Craigslist and are suspected to be scams. I firmly believe that, collectively, we helped many people across the country identify rental scammers on-line and avoid being duped.
Unfortunately, I have decided to delete most of these posts for legal reasons. There are more and more stories circulating about bloggers being sued for not only what they post, but what is in their comments. In particular, I was concerned about people posting names and that coming back to haunt me.
If you suspect you are being targeted by a rental scammer, as I think I was in the e-mail in my original post, contact Craigslist. Use common sense and read my original post for signs that the e-mail is a scam. One more tip - Google the name and e-mail given.
And, please, no more names. You can post copies of the e-mail only if you delete all identifiable information such as names, addresses and e-mails. I’ll delete everything else.
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1. Georgia New Homes | December 7, 2007 at 12:39 am
This is a very interesting post. I use craigslist alot and this is really scary how people can manipulate the system.
2. b. kordick | May 4, 2008 at 7:24 pm
We had a recent close encounter of the scamming kind in regards to a house we had for rent. The e-mail came from England and supposedly came from a pharmacist with a wife and daughter or two kids,he wasn’t sure how many children he had. It was written so poorly and he needed a place too quickly. I did some checking and sure enough his story was “cloned” many times on the internet under rental scams. These guys can’t even be creative. Craig’s List suggests you only deal with local prospective tenants, which I think is a good idea. We have received a few more of these, all the same story, except it might be a doctor or dentist instead of a pharmacist. We read them and laugh and ignore them.
3. Jeff | May 5, 2008 at 6:03 pm
avoid renting a house that is too good to be true…always do a search with the address of the house on google first…rented a foreclosure and was scammed alot of money…found out on google that the landlords had like 10 foreclosures and ripped people off thousands of dollars BEWARE OF CRAIGSLIST