Social media rental scams impacting Springfield tenants

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. — Imagine you’re at home, and there’s a knock at the door. You answer and it’s someone who says they think they’re at a place listed online for rent. That can’t be, because you’re actively living in the same space. So you explain there must be a mistake, and they leave.

Then it happens again. And again. And another time.

Welcome to Serenity Barnett’s life for the past several weeks.

Potential scammers are posting her and her neighbor’s rental on social media as if it’s available to rent, only to find that it’s already being lived in.

“Two weeks ago, we had some people drive up. They said, ‘Hey, do you live here?’ and we said, we live in this one. He’s like, ‘What about that, the one next door?’ I tell him some people live in there and he’s like, ‘We signed a contract and we paid our dues and we’re here to pick up the keys,’ Barnett said. “We told them that there wasn’t a way that they could do that because somebody already lived in there and they would need to contact the property company. They told us that they had reached out to somebody on Facebook who is posting rentals on Marketplace and that they had paid her and they just came to get the keys.”

This wasn’t the only case.

“Once a day we had people coming by knocking on our door asking [if we live here] and well, yes, we live here,” Barnett said. “They have the same story. They reached out to somebody in Facebook Marketplace with a rental, and they had signed a lease, paid their dues and were coming to pick up the keys. One of the people even said, ‘Hey, there’s a key box somewhere. Can you show me where it is? We notified our property company and they said they were aware of it and already reported her, but she’s still posting. I had gone on Facebook and was able to find my apartment or my house, the interior of mine, with all the pictures of my specific address, the posted with the neighbors’ address.”

It’s led to some unhappy potential tenants.

“[One person] lost quite a bit. He had paid first month’s rent, a deposit and half of second month’s rent already,” Barnett said. “One of the last couples that approached us was an older couple me lived somewhere else in Missouri. It was like a three-hour drive away. He was saying “I just got a job up here. I’ve got a week to move. This lady, we gave her the money and she told us to come here and then she blocked us and we can’t get a hold of her anymore. I absolutely felt terrible for them

The unsolicited visits have made Barnett, her child and her husband change their approach to enjoying their home.

“I really don’t go outside much. Me and my little one, we used to play outside every single day, but right now I don’t want people approaching me. We stay in the house and now we’re extra cautious. We see anybody approach our front door and we won’t even open the door now,” Barnett said. “I don’t really like having to tell these people like, you know, this place already has somebody living in it because I don’t know how people are going to react.”

Pamela Hernandez with the Better Business Bureau says this is a scam more seen in other cities.

“Phishing scams are typically preying on reward for fear, and when it comes to renting, renting a home or renting an apartment, it’s a little bit of both. You get excited because maybe you have found something that’s in your price range in a neighborhood you’ve been looking at, then there’s the fear,” Hernandez said. “The fear that you’re going to lose it, that you have to act now, and so scammers are preying on both of those things, trying to give somebody a great deal on rent in a tight market and a hard market for a lot of people, but you’ve got to act. If you want to secure this, you need to pay a deposit. You need to go ahead and get this credit check done. That’s how they’re able to entice people.”

She says it’s easy for scammers to put a post online under false pretenses.

“It is very easy to take images from other websites to take images from Google to put those out there and create a fake listing. It doesn’t take a lot to do that. The scammer will create a very realistic looking social media post or listing on some sort of online marketplace, offering a great deal,” Hernandez said. “They’ll try to typically connect through social media or through messaging of some sort, and then they start asking for a lot of information and even money from you upfront. They again try to instill that fear [the idea that] you have to act now.”

As for remedies, Hernandez says there are options.

“It depends on how they paid that deposit or for that credit check. If they use a credit card, there are some protections built into credit cards. You can report that fraud to the credit card company. Consumers often tell us when they report this type of scam that they’re asked for that money be some sort of peer-to-peer payment app, but with [payment methods like] cash app, you don’t have the same type of protections,” Hernandez said. “You want to report it. So whether that’s your local police department, certainly want to report it to BBB, that way we can share the information with consumers. You can report it to the attorney General’s office. They have a consumer protection area, so there’s a number of places you can report it.”

Barnett says it’s important to do due diligence and look at places before you invest.

“I would suggest, because I’ve looked for housing on Facebook as well before, I always take the address of it’s provided and I search it into Google. You can use the Zillow, Trulia and all that stuff to see who actually owns it,” Barnett said.

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