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New vacation rental scam I heard about

largecow

largecow

New member
Scammers are getting smarter. I was looking for vacation rentals for spring break and ran across an article about this scam. Sorry don't have the link any more but here's what they do:

They take images from a home for sale listing and put the images on VBBO, Homeaway and other sites. They list home as a rental with the price lower than most to quickly attract a renter. You send them the payment and when you show up to the rental it's either a locked empty house you can't get into or the real homeowner has no idea what you're there for.

They said to look out for anyone claiming to outside the US on business or pleasure travel. They want payment with a money order, Money Gram or Western Union. Look out for prices way below other market prices.

Only pay for the rental with a credit card so you can dispute the charge if you're scammed. Also before booking it look up the home's owner in that county's property records to make sure it matches.
 
What the heck is it these days? Every time I turn around I hear about some new scam and it gets old having to double check everything, watch your back, check URLs, and research. Ultimately it seems the only fallback is using a credit card, but the scammers rip those off too!
 
I think the sites have a responsibility to verify ownership of the property. Digging through property records to verify every property I'm interested in makes it not worth my time to rent through one of these sites. The whole point of those sites is to make vacation property easy to rent!
 
This reminds me of that scam that was going around like 6 years ago where someone asked to cash a check and when you cashed it and got the money, you kept some and mailed the rest to an address. It would take the bank 3 to 10 days to catch that it is a bad check and then you end up giving away your own money.
 
I will pass the word along. Seems like sucha scummy thing to do. I will never understand how people can do this to strangers and not feel bad about it.
 
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