My property was used in a scam and I'm livid

[WaterWipee]

My current tenant is moving out in a few weeks so I placed an ad online looking for a new tenant.

In short, scammers replicated my advert and booked a viewing. However instead of attending the viewing themselves they sent a couple who had replied to the scam replica of my genuine ad.

The couple were then persuaded to pay a lump sum.

Last night at 9pm, they freaked out my tenant by trying to get into the property claiming that they had paid for it and had signed a fake contract.

I don't even know how to help this couple get their money back. Does anyone know if a bank will help recover the transferred funds?

This is awful. People are shit.

People work shifts and/or commute.

It doesn’t have to be that obvious or involve a willingness to be involved in crime on the part of the account holder.

I’ve heard of occasions when people who are hired for WFH are given a reason why the business funds have to go through their personal account while the business account is being set up. After a few weeks or months, the ‘employer’ vanishes and the ‘employee’ is left holding the bag with various funds having gone in and out of their account.

Alternatively, the overpayment scam often works - the account owner is expecting £50. Oh, no, the buyer has accidentally sent £5,000 (money actually from tenant in this case or other scam victim). He needs that money. Please send it to X account urgently.

Obviously many people won’t fall for these scams but many people (generally young and just starting out) do.

Odfod. The op has done nothing wrong at all

Oh here we go again with the anti-landlord posts. @WaterWipee is not responsible for criminal behaviour by scammers. And, you know, some private landlords are really good. Sounds like the OP is one of them.

Or they were panicking and starting to realise something was up and went there in the desperate hope they were wrong.

ive seen nightmare tenants show this happens alot theres nothng you could have done theyre nasty little scammers

Sorry to hear that OP. It is all too rife it would seem.

https://www.experian.co.uk/consumer/identity/rental-fraud.html

There was a recent thread where somebody DID use an agent and now scammers are using her flat as an Air Bnb type and only paid her the first month's rent.

It's awful for that poor couple but I think you need to keep out of it now and let the police deal with it, you don't need to be drawn into it any further, you have done nothing wrong

I wrote a long and detailed account of what happened but deleted it as I've come to realise the details are a little redundant now and, at the risk of educating people on how to pull this off (I probably have already and it appears it's nothing new), I'm only going to share what mistake I made and what I will do differently next time.

To avoid the same thing happening in future, I'll be strict about the names of everyone viewing and will need to make an effort to check that I have communicated with all of the viewers myself. For my convenience, which did not help in this scenario, I arranged a group viewing so I didn't have to conduct several viewings a week or have to turn up to viewings only to discover that someone had cancelled last minute (and that's if they bothered to tell me).

Similarly, if you're renting an apartment as a prospective tenant, ensure you're given proof of ownership of the property you're renting or are dealing with a profile on Spareroom that's verified. Not all genuine landlords have a verified profile so you'll need to ask for their photo ID and proof of ownership documents (recent council tax bill, mortgage statement, or land registry title deeds).

Ah, ok sorry, I didn't understand when "the scammers booked a viewing" that meant with the op, not with the prospective tenants (after setting up the fake ad).
So the OP had been communicating with the scammers, unbeknownst to her. I guess that is where in theory you can stop them but yes, you'd need to ask for lots of proof and be more paranoid than the average person.

Sorry this happened, they are total arseholes. But agree it's not really on you to sort out- it's between the scammers and "tenants". They should report to Action Fraud, though it probably won't do anything.

At it it's a group viewing f I can sort of see what happened.

And I can imagine the scan fails often at this point when tenants realise rent is wrong or the person they are emailing is not who they saw in person.

Not sure how a home owner can really stop it too much (and it doesn't impact them beyond pissed off strangers)

But prospective tenants need to be far more wary!

This is fraud and theft.

The police will be completely uninterested.

However, the property is real and (hopefully) the funds have been transferred between banks with UK licenses, to someone who has passed a KYC (Know Your Customer) check to enable them to open/maintain a bank account.

The defrauded have a claim against their bank via the bank (if it is one) that their funds were transferred to.

Good luck.

Genuine question - how did the scammers (and the scammed tenants) know the address of the property? I've used SpareRoom many times to advertise for a lodger and make sure the advert is quite vague on location and doesn't have any external photos. I guess if you are in an area with only a few properties to a postcode then it might be harder to be vague?

I was quite freaked out when someone came to view our room a few months ago and she knew my surname (basically opened conversation by asking if I was from X place due to my surname!) despite it not being available from the advert and I hadn't given her my phone number either 😬

Anyway, pisses me off that there are arseholes out there scamming people like this and I'm sorry that you and the scammed couple have been subject to it.

Had a similar thing when an elderly family friend went into a care home and house was unoccupied prior to a sale. They actually broke in and changed the locks though, advertised it on Gumtree, and managed to fleece a few people out of 'deposits' as could appear as the genuine owners and conduct viewings.

The scammers got it from the OP when they rang up to make a booking to view. They then passed it to the scammed couple pretending to be the owners. The couple then attended the viewing.

As the OP has said several times now.

Sorry, hanging my head in shame! Have just re-read and saw the multiple other PPs get told off too. This will teach me to get on with my actual work and stay the hell off MN!

This just happened to my friend. She really is that gullible :( AS...she handed over 6k, yes 6k in CASH to the scammer , only found out when went to collect the keys and the flat's owner answered the door and told her that she was definitely not renting , only selling and she'd never heard of my friend. Friend despite my protests refused to tell police (because she'd paid 6 months up front in cash not card)

However, I think my friend is right when she says the police wouldn't care anyway

They might well have done. When my daughter was going to Scotland to study a postgrad degree she was looking for accommodation on line and was asked to do that. She reverse searched the photos and they came up on numerous other adverts, so obviously she didn’t do that. She managed to get uni accommodation in the end (she was told it was full initially).

Of course they are. Classic Mumsnet. She’ll be telling her to give the house over for free in minute.

That is unfortunately an age old scam, it happened to a friend of mine back in 2011, exact same thing with about a £1k deposit up front

It was dodgy of you to place an ad online. Why didn't you go through an agency who vets prospective tenants. I do think you need to take some responsibility for this.

Maybe you should stop being a pratt?

Not because of the OP at all. They’ve done nothing wring - except maybe pissed you off simply because they’re a landlord so you’ve posted to have a go.