House Identity Theft via Craigslist

April 22, 2008

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We’ve talked about house theft before, but this is a new twist. Red Tape Chronicles has a post about “house identity theft” via Craigslist.

The post gives a few examples:

The con artist makes a Craiglist ad with pictures of the outside of an apartment for rent. The ad says something like “I’m out of town for a year, send a deposit and I will send the keys”
In Oregon, a man came home to find his house being ransacked and people walking outside with all his stuff. Someone had posted an ad to Craigslist saying that everything in the house was free to take, and take people did.

You might think that no one would be dumb enough to believe that someone would give away their whole house or mail money to someone for keys to a place they have never set foot in, but the for the victims of these scams it is a nightmare and some of them are quite elaborate.

From the post:

“They send an application. It talks about the owner being a good Christian woman. There’s an online questionnaire. It’s very thorough,” Siddons said. By the time she contacted msnbc.com, she said she had already tried the police, the FBI, and Craigslist to no avail. “Results: My house is still listed for rent with Craigslist. … I’m concerned that someone will send eventually send money.”

Have you ever seen any Craigslist ads that would qualify as “identity theft” to you?

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Category Posted in Identity Theft

2 Responses to “House Identity Theft via Craigslist”

Greg Vandagriff said:

April 29th, 2008 at 8:13 pm

I wrote a post about an interesting twist on Craigslist Identity Theft wherein the advertisers were basically soliciting for sex partners, then while the victim was distracted, their credit cards and other sensitive documents would be stolen.

So yeah, Craigslist hookers… you gotta watch out for ‘em!
BD said:

May 15th, 2008 at 6:52 pm

Yeah, I haven’t had great experiences on Craigslist. Well, nothing like that (hah) but I don’t know, I just avoid that site unless I have to.