Ok, but this world has now officially gotten crazy.
Just in the past week alone I've received 3 phone calls from potential renters that have told me about fraudulent transactions related to them trying to rent a home. Two didn't get taken, but one did and said their vacation for the year was gone because they sent money to an unscrupulous "landlord" for a home the "landlord" didn't even own!
Here's what someone had to do recently to verify that my property was in fact being legitimately rented by the owner of that property. And I believe the reason they did this additional investigation was because something sounded fishy from the beginning. REMEMBER THIS: If it sounds too good to be true, or if your gut is telling you something and you're not listening, then you could be the next victim... read on to find out how to combat this.
So it turns out my property was being advertised on a website I DID NOT pay to have it advertised on. Here is the website: www.world-rentals.com . And the prospective renters, after suspecting something, decided to investigate who the real owners of my property were.
First, they went to the local government property tax appraisers office online for my city and looked up the address to my home. They saw my wife and my name there, not the person claiming to be the owner. So they looked up my wife's name and got her phone number and called her. Imagine my surprise when she called me one day and said someone had called her interested in renting our home we have for rent on other sites, but "without" my wife's name anywhere to be found on those sites. I wondered why they called her phone number and not mine.
So I called them up and asked how I could help them. They said they saw my site advertised on www.world-rentals.com and were interested in renting it but said they person advertising it was the owner and wanted them to send him the deposit to book the home. I told them I had never heard of www.world-rentals.com and didn't know how my property got on there.
That's when they told me how they got my wife's number and traced backed to me who the real owner of the property was they were interested in renting.
While on the phone I asked them to wait so I could see for myself my property there. Sure enough, it was listed there, but for a price that was ridiculously low (too good to be true). And it was listed by a Miguel Sanchez with a phone number that had the correct area code, but was missing all the digits for a full phone number (2nd clue that should have alerted someone - what owner in their right mind would make this kind of mistake).
I told them this was a fraudulent listing, and of course they believed me because my name was on the property tax records. When I told them the correct price and whether they wanted to rent it they said they couldn't because it was out of their price range (after all, my home is a luxury rental that was being offered at Kia-like prices).
After I hung up I did some further investigation into the website where my property was fraudulently listed. I contacted the website and told them of the fraud someone was trying to perpetuate on their website and they need to remove this listing immediately. Guess what kind of response I got? Zero, zilch, nada. Now I'm not saying anything, but after a month of no response, I'd say this website was the actual perpetrator of these kinds of fraudulent transactions, what do you think?
If you scroll down to a previous post entitled "Beware of Vacation Rental Scams!" I wrote about some things you should do to help assure the home you rent is from the legitimate owner. I recommend following those steps to help assure you too don't get taken.
Gook Luck and have a great vacation!
