Shortly after answering the door to her house in October, Margaret Moses was equally as confused as her visitor, who had rent paperwork in hand.
“He said, ‘Oh, you’re not the guy I’ve been talking to,’ ” Moses said.
The man had seen a Craigslist post claiming that the house between Vancouver’s Lincoln and Northwest neighborhoods was for rent, said Moses, 77. He didn’t, however, submit any form of payment.
But two weeks later, another man knocked on Moses’s door making a similar claim. This time, the visitor said he’d had paid $6,700 to an East Coast bank account after communicating over the phone and through text messages. He later reported it to the Clark County Sheriff’s Office, which is still investigating, Sgt. Fred Nieman said in an email.
“After the transaction, the victim didn’t hear from the advertiser again, and attempts to contact him were ignored,” Nieman said.
Such scams appear to be rare locally, authorities say. But the sheriff’s office and Vancouver Police Department have each taken one case in recent months that were similar in nature.
“I just can’t believe somebody could fall for that,” Moses said.
Vancouver police’s case came Nov. 7 on the 2500 block of F Street in the Arnada neighborhood.
The victim paid a $1,000 deposit after finding an online listing and was only communicating with the scammer through text, Vancouver Police Department spokeswoman Kim Kapp said. When the victim arrived at the house — which was unoccupied at the time and had a lock box — for a tour, the scammer wasn’t there.
Police contacted the property owner, who has since rented the house legitimately through a property management group. The owner was unaware of the misleading online listing. The scammer hasn’t been identified, and the case remains under investigation.
Kapp said there are several red flags that can tip people off to scams: rental ads on unconventional websites, requirement of up-front deposits without meeting landlords or property managers and rental prices that are lower than other comparable properties.
An estimated 43.1 percent of renters have encountered a listing they suspected was fraudulent, according to a 2018 report from Apartment List, a rental listing website. The figure was determined through a national survey of 1,000 renters.
