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Anatomy of a Rental Phishing Scam

jeffreyladish.com

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Re: Anatomy of a Rental Phishing Scam

#31

Post by jakear »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #13
kirubakaran wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, if you don't care about the false positive rate of your prediction function.

What are the downsides to missing a legit listing on Craigslist versus falling for one of these scams? I think in this case, having a prediction function with high low false negative rate, but high false positive rate for scams is better than the inverse.

What are the downsides to missing a “looks to good to be true” listing that’s real? You miss the great listing... obviously. And great listings are not at all easy to come by in that area.

Re: Anatomy of a Rental Phishing Scam

#32

Post by chatmasta »

cissou wrote: post #11

What I'm left wondering is: what is the payoff for these scams? These aren't easy to scale, as you need to be manually writing plausible looking, personalized emails, waiting for someone to take the bait, "nurture" them over days or weeks, etc. Also you need specific, valuable skills: between the social engineering, the actual engineering, the perfect grammar, the creativity, someone who can pull this off can definit…

There is also an identity theft vector. I’ve encountered scams from NYC CL apts that targeted PII for “credit checks.” I’ve had a man give me a very innocuous looking form to fill in all my sensitive details including SSN, previous addresses etc. It’s easy to fall for something like that, especially when you’re desperate for an apartment you can afford.

(Btw, KYC laws don’t help in this regard, as they condition us to give our PII to anyone who asks for it — so long as they have sufficient leverage over us, we won’t ask any questions.)

There are professional organizations running operations on Craigslist in major cities. Identity theft can be a foothold into much greater schemes, and PII is always a valuable commodity regardless.

It’s potentially a twofer: steal 3 months rent and your identity!

Re: Anatomy of a Rental Phishing Scam

#33

Post by pmiller2 »

walrus01 wrote: post #23

The very first email from the "landlord" would tell me it was a scam. Maybe it's just because I've been doing things on the internet from before the web was a thing, but that's a pretty obvious scam. The whole "I'm working away from my usual home city on oil/mining/gas projects in (HARD TO REACH LOCATION)" thing is at least 20 years old now for scams.

Were it not for them saying they would be in town to sign the lease and accept payment, I would agree with you. If not for that, I would call this an unusual arrangement, but not 100% a scam.

My rule though is to never put down money down, except for a reasonable application fee, on a place I can’t physically see the inside of, in the company of someone with a key. That would have stopped me from going ahead with the deal altogether, and it stops 99% of all rental scams.

Re: Anatomy of a Rental Phishing Scam

#34

Post by Gibbon1 »

Spooky23 wrote: post #10
outworlder wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even if they let you see the place, IT MAY BE A SCAM. Proceed with caution and make sure the person actually own the place/has the right to rent the apartment. This part was mind-blowing. I would never considered that someone would show an apartment they don't actually own.

Real estate is a very fragile system with all sorts of crazy scams. Deed fraud is a thing — people buy houses and incompetent banks write loans on houses that aren’t for sale. There were a bunch of cases in Brooklyn a few years ago, some were related to corrupt officials in the Surrogate/Probate court and deceased persons property. Others were grifts affecting unoccupied properties. The system isn't really designed t…

Friend of mines neighbor lives in a rental with an absentee landlord. Someone stole the landlords identity, took out a homeowners loan on the place, then wired the money to a bank in South America. They found out because real estate vultures started knocking on their door.

Re: Anatomy of a Rental Phishing Scam

#35

Post by pmiller2 »

Pharaoh2 wrote: post #3

This scams are very common and fairly easy to detected even without contacting the person. I have been looking at apartments since november and finally found a place in January, and this is the third apartment I have rented in SF over the last 5 years. I believe this one would have been caught by point 2. Detecting a SF craigslist rental scam: 1. Is it too good to be true? Its a scam. What's too good to be true you a…

Points 2 and 3 are not sure signs of a scam. Some landlords use “stock” photos that may be the same as the ones on Redfin/Zillow/MLS. And, there are “management companies” that amount to an 80 year old guy, his 2 sons, and one of his grandsons, that don’t have a website because they only manage their own properties. These 2 scenarios describe my current and previous apartments, respectively.

Re: Anatomy of a Rental Phishing Scam

#36

Post by pmiller2 »

jimmaswell wrote: post #17
Pharaoh2 wrote: post #3

This scams are very common and fairly easy to detected even without contacting the person. I have been looking at apartments since november and finally found a place in January, and this is the third apartment I have rented in SF over the last 5 years. I believe this one would have been caught by point 2. Detecting a SF craigslist rental scam: 1. Is it too good to be true? Its a scam. What's too good to be true you a…

> or sensitive personal info Shouldn't be confused with requiring SSN etc for a background and credit check which is standard now.

I don’t give my SSN to anyone I haven’t met, unless it’s a legitimate property management or background check site.

Re: Anatomy of a Rental Phishing Scam

#37

Post by nkozyra »

nkurz wrote: post #22

The Craigslist ad is still up (or up again): https://sfbay.craigslist.org/eby/apa/d/berkeley-two-story-3b... The house appears to exist as pictured at the claimed address on Google maps. Oddly, although Jeffrey's emails about the place were from a couple weeks ago, this current ad says "Posted a day ago". It also says "Call Laurence", although as before there is no phone number. Personally, I'm still not completely s…

As for edit 2, might that not leave too much of a paper trail for the scammer?

Re: Anatomy of a Rental Phishing Scam

#38

Post by imglorp »

walrus01 wrote: post #27
JoBrad wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many times they are a copy of a legitimate ad.

Copying photos and the body text of a legitimate ad would certainly be a lot less time and effort on the part of a scammer than writing new custom scam ads every time.

Oh boy, story time. I encountered the opposite scam.

I was selling a house myself. I took photos, paid to have it listed, posted a sign out front, and posted ads in various places including CL.

Someone contacted me to say they responded to an ad on CL for a rental house. The prospective renter was told by the scammer he was out of town and that they could go to the house and look around the property. He would transact the rental remotely and mail them the keys if they liked it. They were also told to ignore the For Sale sign out front! They did go see the house but saw the For Sale sign and called the number - me - at which point we figured out what was going on. They had also spoken to the guy on the phone, who sounded foreign.

I found the CL fake rental ad, it was all of my photos from my sale posting, simply copied onto the fake rental ad. I responded to the ad and almost instantly got a long response from a Hotmail address. It was clearly a prepared response and included some clumsy standard rental application forms. Anyone who fell for this would have lost their rent/deposit/security as well as all their private info.

Local police couldn't do anything about it but traced the phone to a VOIP, dead end. CL pulled the ad.

Be careful out there.

Re: Anatomy of a Rental Phishing Scam

#39

Post by nkozyra »

walrus01 wrote: post #23

The very first email from the "landlord" would tell me it was a scam. Maybe it's just because I've been doing things on the internet from before the web was a thing, but that's a pretty obvious scam. The whole "I'm working away from my usual home city on oil/mining/gas projects in (HARD TO REACH LOCATION)" thing is at least 20 years old now for scams.

Maybe. Real estate is weird, full of odd personalities, third parties, bizarre business practices.

My first NYC apartment I left the broker feeling 90% sure I had been scammed. But all of the things that seemed weird to me were actually fairly normal and indeed I had the place. In big cities where rentals are big business, the unusual is pretty usual.

Re: Anatomy of a Rental Phishing Scam

#40

Post by nkozyra »

pmiller2 wrote: post #33
walrus01 wrote: post #23

The very first email from the "landlord" would tell me it was a scam. Maybe it's just because I've been doing things on the internet from before the web was a thing, but that's a pretty obvious scam. The whole "I'm working away from my usual home city on oil/mining/gas projects in (HARD TO REACH LOCATION)" thing is at least 20 years old now for scams.

Were it not for them saying they would be in town to sign the lease and accept payment, I would agree with you. If not for that, I would call this an unusual arrangement, but not 100% a scam. My rule though is to never put down money down, except for a reasonable application fee, on a place I can’t physically see the inside of, in the company of someone with a key. That would have stopped me from going ahead with the…

This is a great rule but there are rental scams where they rent the place to show you, eventually give you a copy of the key and the place was never for rent.

Check broker's credentials, do property records searches, be diligent, particularly when dealing with an independent owner.

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