Internet Apartment for Rent Scam and Over Payments
Belleville Police are reminding anyone searching the internet for an apartment to watch out for online scams.
In some cases, a person posing as a landlord says he or she is out of the country or Province and requires a deposit on the rental. Once the money is paid, usually through a money transfer, the victim discovers there isn't actually a rental.
The scam isn't a new one and police spoke to the media in January 2009 after a local woman lost a thousand dollars to a person holding himself out to be the landlord of fully furnished apartment for rent.
It has recently become more prolific and harder to spot because fraudsters are cutting and pasting text from real ads and using real photos. The only thing that is different is the contact information.
In the past several months the Belleville Police Service has noticed an increase in these types of occurrences. In some of these occurrences people have been victimized out of large sums of money and in other occurrences the potential renter has caught on very quickly that this was a scam and no money was exchanged.
· Insist on physically viewing all potential apartments and do not accept a ?drive by.?
· Proof that the person is the landlord or property manager
· Google the name of the people you are dealing with as well as the address (quite often the address is listed on another site with a different contact name)
· Limit personal information you give over the internet (in a recent occurrence a person?s SIN number may have been comprised when the person was attempting to secure an apartment over the internet)
· Beware of anyone wanting to do business using untraceable money transfers
· NEVER accept over payments
Most important?.. If it sounds too good to be true then it probably is.