How to detect Craigslist’s rental scams
Most of the room & share scams (but that applies to other sections as well) consist of the same ad posted in different cities, on Craigslist and elsewhere. They usually share these characteristics:
1. The rent is quite below the market for the goods.
2. The description is usually not specific to the apartment, to the building, to the neighbourhood or to the city itself (obviously, as the scammers have never been there). When it is, it may be atypical for the place (e.g., speaking of a “house” in Paris).
3. There are usually distinctive stylistic, grammatical and typographical quirks (most notably, punctuation).
4. The ad is posted almost verbatim elsewhere.
The fourth characteristic is the easiest one to check. Let’s take for example this ad, posted today:
EUR500 Double Room To Let (central PARIS)
I have a beautiful double room in a clean and tidy flat in eme 10The room is bright with plenty of storage.
With regards to the flat, the lounge is very spacious, modern and full of light. The kitchen is separate and again of a very good size and fulyl equipped with all modern appliances..
Ideally I am looking for a like minded clean and tidy, non smoking
The way the area is specified at the end of the first sentence is nonsensical, for anyone who knows anything about Paris. If you look up the first part of that sentence in a search engine, it will show the same ad in Ealing (UK).
Additionally, if you search just for the mistyped words, “and fulyl equipped”, an interesting ad (now gone) comes up, for a higher (and reasonable) rent, with description of the neighbourhood, with specific information about the household, flatmate and facilities, and five photos. This is probably the source the scammer used to concoct his scam.
Three other very similar ads were posted today in the same section:
EUR500 Fantastic double room with ensuite (central PARIS)
I have one lovely double room with ensuite available. It’s a spacious room with bed, wardrobe and a chest of drawers.
The room is available and am a private landlord – so no agency nonsense to worry about.
The flat has three rooms, all with their own ensuite. Our living room and kitchen face directly and we have our own private maintained garden.
First off, the capitalization of the city is identical to the previous one, and that in and of itself is an indication. Then the “Our living room and kitchen face directly” is stylistically incorrect. No wonder, here is the Leeds ad where it was lifted from, where it reads “Our living room and kitchen face directly onto Woodhouse Moor and we have our own private maintained garden”.
EUR500 Large double room with ensuite (central PARIS)
Very nice large double room with two seater sofa. Recently redecorated room with clean bed and desk. If you’re a quiet person who likes to keep themselves to themselves and at the same time wants to live with someone friendly and considerate, then this is for you.
Everything is on the door step: shops, gym, theatre.
This area has so much to offer. The transport links are amazing
with a desk, wardrobe, chest of draws, bed and fridge. The flat is situated a few minutes from the metro station and has a lot of general amenities to it, such as local markets, supermarkets, restaurants and bars.
Bills are included in the rent, I also have Wireless Internet Access.
The cut-‘n-paste lousy work shows up in the transition from the third to the fourth paragraph: the first three come from one legit ad, the rest from another one, with “metro station” replacing “underground station”
Now, if you wonder how those scams work, read here. In most cases, these scammers say they are in the UK (whence you should wire them the monies in advance) and will provide you with their UK phone number, but these numbers are taken from a pool of UK numbers which you can subscribe to through the Internet (i.e., without even being in the UK) and with so-called from divert service at no cost. In most cases, the call ends up in Nigeria.
[...] (il en annonce, si l’on peut dire, des dizaines de millions par mois) notoirement connu pour ses arnaques bénino-nigériennes, on s’étonne de la retrouver aussi, on ne sait trop comment, chez Muamat, autre site [...]
Ping par Miklos » Se loger à Paris ? un choix pas si cornélien que ça, après tout — 28 mai 2012 @ 23:39
Insightful analysis. Thank you for writing it up.
A word of advice we give to members looking for accommodation:
Make sure you have met each other in person and you have a tenancy agreement in place before paying or transferring money for rent and deposit.
Here’s some more tips and a video report.
Commentaire par FlatmateRooms Team — 2 avril 2013 @ 14:37
Thanks for the extra information.
The problem is specially acute for foreigners who aren’t in the country yet and wish to find an accommodation before arrival. It has thus to be done electronically – email, skype… They don’t have any secure way of ascertaining the presumed landlord with whom they negotiate is indeed in their destination country. So when it comes to sending a deposit, the ONLY secure way to do so is via a bank-to-bank transfer, where the destination account is identified via IBAN and SWIFT codes which ensure (if you check the first two letters of the IBAN) that this is a real bank located in that country. If something goes wrong, there is at least a way for the authorities to identify the account owner.
Commentaire par Miklos — 12 avril 2013 @ 8:03