Jessica Hill|Cape Cod Times
Dennis resident Karen Clifford has been looking for a year-round rental since January, ever since her landlords decided to sell their property.
When she saw a three-bedroom house for $1,800 a month in West Yarmouth on Craigslist, she reached out to the owner, who responded via text message. The owner said a code was sent through Google to confirm she was a human and asked that she send a code back.
She said she quickly realized this person was trying to log into her Google account and that the rental was a scam.
Clifford tried another Craigslist advertisem*nt for a house on Dolphin Lane in Hyannis. The owner emailed her and said he worked as a petroleum engineer on the Knotty Head oil field in the Gulf of Mexico, so he did not have service to talk on his cellphone. He sent her photos of himself, dressed in a fluorescent uniform and posing on what looked like an oil rig.
He asked Clifford to send the first month’s rent, the last month’s rent and a security deposit through Airbnb. The total: $6,058.
But when Cliffordsearched online for the address, it did not show up on Airbnb. She found the real owners who purchased the Dolphin Lane house in January, and it wasn’t the same person who was contacting her.
She had found another scam.
“It’s so easy for scammers,” Clifford said. “There are so many people out there that are innocent and naïve and are going to fall for it." She said she thinks Craiglist needs to just offer legitimate housing opportunities because so many people on Cape Cod are desperately seeking housing right now.
Scammers make a lot of money promising rentals through Craigslist and tricking people to wire them thousands of dollars, police say.But there are some red flags to look out for and ways to prevent falling for the scam.
Reconsider Craigslist rentals
The No. 1 way to avoid rental scams is to simply not rent anything off Craigslist, said Mark Mellyn, public information officer for the Barnstable Police Department. Rent instead from legitimate websites such as Airbnb, he said, or local vacation rental companies and real estate companies.
Scammers go to legitimate websites and find properties that are for rent, then they copy the images and the advertisem*ntto Craigslist, Mellyn said. You might find a summer vacation rental on Airbnb for $5,000 a month, he said, but then you might see the same rental on Craigslist for only $4,000 and think you’re getting a deal. Chances are, that's a scam.
Can you make a call?
A huge red flag is not being able to get the person from an ad on the phone, Mellyn said. A scammer tries to avoid phone calls and will instead rely on email or texts, often because phone numbers are easier for police to locate than an email address.
Barnstable police have seen multiple reports of scams from someone claiming to be working on an oil rig and seeking tenants for a Dolphin Lane house in Hyannis. In Clifford’s case, the scammer identified himself as Dennis Campbell, according to the emails provided by Clifford. In another, the scammer said his name was Mario Parella, according to Barnstable police reports.The scammer even had an email address associated with an energy company, appearing more legitimate, Mellyn said.
Clifford caught on to the ruse before she sent any money, but others have not been so lucky. One victim lost $21,000, and believed she had rented the house for the summer, and another person lost $6,846, Mellyn said. The victims had shown up to get the keys in person, but the residents were home and said the house was not being rented out. The victims were out of luck, and their money was gone.
Test the story
Scammers will often tell you a sympathetic story about why they cannot talk on the phone or cannot meet you in person. They will say that their mother is dying, or that they are concerned about COVID-19, said DetectiveSgt. Andrew McLaughlin with the Orleans Police Department, who teaches scam and fraud classes.
Some scammers will say they left the house keys under the doormat that you can just pick up, he said, or they might even send you some phony keys.
If the person you want to rent from does give you a phone number, Google it, McLaughlin said. Other people might have had a similar experience and posted the number online, stating it is a scam.
McLaughlin suggests asking the person to see the house beforehand — even if you live too far away and couldn’t actually come — just to see what the person says. Scammerswill make an excuse about why they cannot go there. In one case, a family thought they had rented a vacation home in Orleans, and was heading down there, when the supposed owner said that their father had just passed away so they had to leave town unexpectedly, McLaughlin said.
Check the details
Look up the address of the property on Google Street View and see if the photoand the address match the advertisem*nt. Sometimes the scammer will give a house address that is actually down the street or a number that doesn’t exist on the street, McLaughlin said.
Pay attention to the language the person is using and see if it is just a little off. Many scammers originate in foreign countries, he said, mentioning Nigeria, Laos and South Africa, and they might use expressions such as “greetings” and “cheers” that you might not be used to hearing.
And if the house seems too good to be true, like a three-bedroom ocean view house that costs $150 a night during the peak of summer? Then it probably is too good to be true, McLaughlin said.
Is the money gone for good?
In most cases, money wired to a scammer is not recoverable, Mellyn said, as scammers are difficult to track down.
Local police departments often cannot do much to help, other than write a report and refer victims to the FBI, which will only use the incident for statistical purposes unless it is a large sum of over $100,000, Mellyn said.
Usually the victims of scams are not living on Cape Cod, but out of state, McLaughlin said. Because the crime did not occur on the Cape but instead wherever the family wired the money from, there is not much the local police department can do, he said.
It is also difficult to find unique IP addresses (that identifya device on the internet) for emails, and if a scammer does use a phone, it is usually a burner phone and difficult to track. And if a scammer is found, it is hard to prosecute them in some courts, McLaughlin said, since the victim did intentionally wire the money.
Should you report a scam?
But it is still worth reporting the scam to police, Mellyn said, and there is a slim chance of possibly getting your money back.
“A lot of times, we have people who are reticent and hesitant to report the scam immediately out of embarrassment,” Mellyn said. “However, the sooner it is reported, the sooner we have an opportunity to find out and possibly recover the money.”
The Barnstable Police Department is one of the few on Cape Codthat has been able to recover some people’s money and that has been able to file some charges against people, Mellyn said.
Barnstable Detective Steven Barrette was able to locate scammers in a couple of cases. In one, hefollowed the money and foundthe scammer was a woman living in Jamaica, New York. He wrote a search warrant for a bank account that the money was sent to, and he figured out who she was.
But the district attorney’s office is not going to allow for an out-of-state warrant to get the woman back here, Mellyn said. The in-state warrantis still in place, so if she ever gets pulled over in Massachusetts, she would be arrested and brought to Barnstable County, Mellyn said.
And scammers, if anything, are relentless.
Said Mellyn: “She’s probably still continuing to scam.”
Contact Jessica Hill at jhill@capecodonline.com. Follow her on Twitter: @jess_hillyeah.
