Another Craigslist Scam?

A friend is selling their home without a realtor and posted it on Craigslist. Someone, not a potential buyer or Realtor, called to ask if they can take interior pictures but were really elusive as to why they wanted the photos. The seller felt sketched out and called me for my opinion.

I hate accusing this aspiring photographer of being a con, but i started doing a little bit of digging on different craigslist scams and it seems to be consistent with one.

Scammers target folks that have their house for sale on craigslist. They then post a similar ad under the “rentals” section using the photos and information from the original legitimate ad…but post a very low monthly rental rate. 

The scammer get all sorts of responses…people want more information and want to see more photos. So, they send them more photos.   When it comes time to show the property “the owner” will be unavailable but will encourage prospective renters to wire or paypal money to secure the deposit.  He can run this scam on many people and use your home to deceive people.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 26th, 2009 at 1:36 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.