I just received two calls last night from 847-812-8623. A quick Google search linked this number to apartment listings, but I couldn't find a concrete connection. They also left two voicemails. Nothing but 10 seconds of air followed by a muttered sound I can't make out.

The strangest thing is, I received these calls on my unlisted work cell phone; a number that I NEVER give out.

'Tis the season, I suppose...

Don't get me going on apartment rentals via Craigslist. DH is looking for a weeknight pied-a-terre near his new job in another state. We emailed and called a ton of CL and other classified ads. Approximately half never returned our calls/mails at all over the course of four days... even when we left repeated messages. ARGHH.

Sorry, I know this rant is off-topic!

Craigslist is great for finding roommates in big cities (I live near DC), but you also have to watch out for scams like this. Just be smart and never give any of your personal info (other than maybe your email and phone number for contact) until after you meet the person and walk through the place you're renting.

I ran into this scam while looking for a new apartment last month, two apartments seemed great and I e-mailed for more information and to set up an appointment to see the apartments. Both apartment listings responded with the same template e-mail response (albeit from different e-mail addresses from G-Mail) with the aforementioned affiliate links to the credit reporting scam sites.

Once I saw that they were requesting a full credit report from an obvious scam site I called shenanigans. I've been flagging these SPAM postings on my local craigslist ever since.

I have, however, had great luck finding places through craigslist. Both my current residence, and the new apartment where I will be moving into in the coming weeks were found through craigslist.

And this is why I avoided craigslist completely when apartment hunting. I don't need roommates, and I'm perfectly capable of finding a place on my own without anyone posting ads about it.

The first clue that the ad was a scam.

"Pets are accepted if you have any."

Even landlords that are open to pets are not going to make this statement. It is usually framed as a maybe, that they might allow pets. Landlords don't want your dog that eats walls or cat that marks every square inch of the place. Even if they do they will require some sort of deposit.

On the other side there needs to be more resources for potential tenants to screen landlords. I have had a couple of nightmare landlords. I found out after the fact that one of them had been in trouble in another suburb for not maintaining properties and playing games with rent and deposit money.

I would only get credit reports from annualcreditreport dot com or directly from one of the credit bureaus or one of their monitoring services.

The credit bureaus are a bunch of scumbags but at least you can be relatively confident that they won't steal your personal information and use it for unauthorized purchases.

The whole freecreditreport dot com advertising is ridiculously misleading. Some guy at the end of the commercial says really quickly, "applies to enrollment in triple advantage".

Most consumers just hear "Free Credit Report" and blindly sign up, only to find they've signed on for a monthly nut. Yes, it is mostly the consumer's fault for not reading the fine print but these companies share the blame for misleading consumers who they already know have the IQ of a mosquito.

@ bohemian: I don't know if saying your home is pet friendly is indicative of a scam. I've seen a great deal of apartment listings and condo listings that say they are pet friendly. If they don't say they charge a deposit for a pet, but they say that later, I would worry more about the landlord's penchant for leaving out information about fees, but I wouldn't immediately dismiss it as a scam.

A lot of people have pets. If you close yourself off entirely from tenants with pets, it makes it harder to rent out your property.

A friend went to see an apartment in Los Angeles and they asked for his driver's license, which they wanted to copy. As an identity theft victim, I was horrified. Do not let anybody copy your license. In Los Angeles, they can go right down to MacArthur Park and get a fake made with all your information on it in about half an hour, for $150. That's all it took to clean out $12,000 from my Bank of America account, since tellers, on seven separate occasions, in various B of A branches, in Texas and California, never checked signature or asked the thieves to show a stitch more ID.

The same thing happened to me earlier this week. I knew the listing seemed too good to be true, but I figured I'd email anyway. When I got the reply with the application (who has to apply to look at a place they saw listed on CL?) and the link to checking my credit score (my-credit-score-now.com) I decided it WAS too good to be true.

@bohemian On craigslist there is even a place that says something like "MEOW" or "WOOF" in regards to pets being accepted.

I've been apartment hunting a lot lately, and my requirement is that cats are accepted. Most places that will accept cats will say so. I've never had a problem. Sometimes they mention the "pet fees" in the ad, sometimes they don't, but it's always there.

Sooo, that's not a very good idea to determine if it is a scam.

Pretty much any high dollar item on craigslist has a bevy of scammers trying to get you to send the item to them far far away. Or, they want you to buy a high dollar item that they just so happen to have stored in another state, etc.

Crigslist is awesome stuff for connecting locals. It brings the focus of the world wide web to a local level like few sites do.

I just hope they get a better handle on the scammers, or craigslist will end up as irrelevant as Ebay is now.

Craig's List is great but they're leaving themselves vulnerable right now to a smart competitor. Craig's List is so weakly monitored that it's become a haven for scam artists not to mention all the hookers and pimps. A friend's father listed a TV for sale on Craig's List. A couple guys showed up to look at it; and four hours later returned and robbed him at gunpoint. The cops told him this happens all the time now.

@nakedscience: During my latest apartment hunting trip, I saw ads that specified cats and dogs only...well I have neither, and so I called and asked about the fees. Some places would waive it, some places said no entirely. And some places said I couldn't bring it if it wasn't a cat or a dog...and asked me whether I would have anywhere to place my pet if they did not allow it. I thought it was such a weird question...they've already said they don't allow my pet (rabbit), why would they then ask me to give it up to move into their complex? I know they're probably testing the waters to see whether they could bend the rules, but at that point, they weren't being pet friendly anyway.

I found a place that charged a whopping $500 pet fee. Non refundable. And then on top of that, a $20/month fee. I asked why, if my pet was going to stay in a cage while I was at work, and they said because they have to clean the air? What?

The place I'm going to be moving to waived all fees for my rabbit, which was one of my sticking points. I wasn't going to give up my beloved pet, but I sure as heck wasn't going to let myself get ripped off at $400 for a nonrefundable fee.

I have been CL rental hunting. I have run into a Nigerian scam twice:
1. The steal an MLS listing.
2. They price it 10% below market value.
3. They reply back that they need to run checks on you and that they are in Nigeria but will mail you the key. These checks include asking if you are married.
4. They probably ask for a downpayment and then run off with it.
It is hard to believe that anyone would NOT stop after hearing about trasferring money to Nigeria, but there is little to help people identify this type of scam just by looking at the CL ads.

Every time I see these ads, first I flag them, then I wonder how any thinking human being could fall for them. Seriously, you see an ad for an $800 2BR penthouse apt. with a jacuzzi, gourmet kitchen and rooftop swimming pool in NYC and you don't know it's a scam... then you compound the stupidity by sending the scammers everything they need to steal your identity?! I just don't understand people. If the ad has a link to some supposed credit report site, THINK about what that means. THINK what you are about to do, and what the ramifications might be.

I agree that Craigslist is out of control, and relying on the users to uphold the rules (and often the law) is not an acceptable business model. The site needs to be moderated at the very least. Having faith in human nature, believing people are basically honest etc. is all well and good, but it's not a feasible or even remotely realistic way to run a business.

why would you give out any credit information for an application for something you have not seen? that's just stupid in the first place.

@Grover Cleveland: It's the low price. People are desperate to lock in the so called "Deal" so they'll jump through whatever hoops you put them through.

Well, you have to give them credit- that IS a brilliant scam. After they shove them in the deepest darkest Federal PMITA prison, I will send them a single recorded Golf-clap for their advanced skammerskillz.

@neilb: You forgot to add that most have @yahoo.com or @ymail.com email addresses instead of the typical Hous-(insert posting number here)@craigslist.org. Most people don't want to give out their actual email address and just use the services that CL provides.

Last week we had people coming by our house, looking around in our backyard, attempting to look into our windows and I had no idea why. So I went outside and asked "if there was something I could help them with?" and one couple showed me a CL post of our address for rent that had pictures depicting our house as a one story rambler and we live in a two story home. This same couple asked if they could come in and look around. I informed them that our house is NOT for rent and to take a hike. We had at least 20 people come around before the post was flagged off.

My boyfriend has found two of these scam listings in our area (Columbus). The condo was listed as $700/mo and when we both emailed with questions, we received the same stock email with a link for a credit site. The other ad had a house listed for $650/mo and the ad said that renters couldn't view the house until a lease was signed with a deposit check sent to them and a credit check was done. Send you money without seeing the place? No thanks.

@LysanderGazelle: Some people don't know how much real estate costs in NYC. And the freecreditreport URL is similar enough to annualcreditreport that you don't have to be a moron to get them mixed up, especially if you've never used either site.

I'm not sure why anyone would bother filling out an application unless they were sure they were interested in the apartment. Perhaps that's just my laziness working out in my favor, but I'd have to see the apartment first and only then would I even consider filling out an app.

@csdiego:

Has nothing to do with getting web addresses mixed up. Has to do with submitting all your personal information online to someone you have no clue about... and before you've seen a property or even know where it is??? You DO have to be a moron to do that. And anyone apartment-hunting in NYC knows what the prevailing rents are... even if you don't, it's easy enough to gauge by looking at all the other ads.

@Riff-Raff:
Those are robo calls. I get them at work too. They dial through the entire area code sequence. If you search Google with the numbers sometimes you will find other people reporting the numbers on "report phone numbers" or "who called me" type of websites.

The easiest way to determine the scam is the yahoo address and no local phone number. By all means flag these ads to Craigslist!!!! The Nigerians (etc) are figuring out that it is easier to make $800 in one shot on a bogus deposit than to lead on a mark about sending money to pay a storage box fee to get the $16,000,000 out that the former Prime Minister left in it...

Trench's blog that incorporates his former Craigscrimelist blog is a great source for apt/house scam reports.

Yes, I had this template email back in February for an apartment. I came this close to filling it out, then kicked my brain back into gear and emailed back to see if I would get a response. Naturally, I never did.

However - I did find my current apt. through CL, and I love it.

These ads are everywhere. I'm moving in a month to Ohio (temporarily) and then New Mexico in the Fall. I've seem the same photos listed for both locations. I flag them like crazy but they are there everyday. They always mention how close they are to shopping and the theaters, which is funny because the location in Ohio is semi-rural. It's gotten to the point that 25% of the ads are fake.

People who give out credit information before even seeing an apartment, just because it's a "good deal" are being greedy and nothing good will come of it...and I'm not sure I have sympathy for them when they let themselves get blinded by their own greed.

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the Job Application as a rich source of ID fraud. I'm shocked every time I see SS# being requested at that stage, along with DL#'s and all the other stuff that a child could use to pwn applicants. In most situations, you're handing that paper over to some anonymous staffperson. Who knows if it gets copied, sent along, properly stored, whatever.

I leave out some of the most intimate info when filling out applications of all sorts (even medical). At a later stage they may have it - provided they have shown they actually NEED it. If they are looking for someone more stupid and careless than me, they may have their reward.

I have came across a similar scam on craigslist.com. I responded to an ad about an LCD TV at a extremely low price. Some lady emailed me saying she just moved to the U.K. and that I would have to wire her money(lol) using some TNT delivery service. Googling TNT delivery resulted in numerous hits on how TNT delivery was a scam.

Avoid 3rd party services with something as large as finding a place to live. Many of these scams wouldn't be successful if the majority of people out there didn't have the rampant dearth of common sense that is so lovingly the status quo.

@Nogard13: Yeah, isn't it just common sense not to give important information to someone you've never met? I've used Craigslist for a lot of things and never had any trouble. It's the internet people!

There are, or at least used to be, a few higher-end properties here in San Francisco with management companies that wanted to run your credit before even arranging so much as a showing of the place. They seemed astonished that I wouldn't give them that information without seeing the place. I don't know what their pricing or policies are now, but I can see they're now advertising one month of free rent and no move-in costs.

@ElizabethD: What's happening here is that you're being ignored because landlords think you're trying to work a scam. It goes something like this:

"I am interested in renting your apartment, but I am in (some impossibly exotic location doing an improbably cool and interesting job)." After a few back-and-forth emails and/or phone calls, this is followed with "I have the cash and can send it to you today, but it's in the form of a $5,000 money order from my employer. Why don't I send this to you so you can cash it, take what you need for deposit and rent, then send me the remaining cash?"

The landlord does so, the cash is sent off, after a few days your bank figures out it was a bogus money order and they're out a couple thousand dollars. Individual property owners have been hard enough and often enough that they discard any out-of-town inquiries.

Well, one of the reasons. But it's a big one.

They run these same scams on approx 75% of the job postings on CL too.

It's sad because times are tough and people are lowering their guard just trying to get a job or a place to live.

Add EXQUISITERENTALS.COM to the list. I received this email when inquiring about an apartment for my girlfriend,

Thank you for your inquiry concerning our rental property.

Due to the massive number of inquiries we receive about our rentals we can not answer any questions about the rental until you have been determined to be an eligible renter.

You will need to have a credit report run in order to determine your renter eligibility. Everyone will need to complete this step in order to setup a tour of the rental.

Please go to the following URL to complete the free credit report needed: http://CreditScoreDeluxe.com

PLEASE DO NOT SEND US YOUR CREDIT REPORT AFTER IT IS COMPLETED.
Your personal information and details of your credit report are not required by us. We are only given your name, email address and your credit score to determine your renter eligibility.

If deemed eligible you will then be sent an email from us with all of the specific details of the rental including specific location, pricing, and qualifications.

Thomas Parker
Owner of ExquisiteRentals

If you really want to stop these scammers, don't flag them...grab the url of the ad and also their affiliate code.

Then you send that info to the affiliate program. Most programs will ban and withhold all future payments, no affiliate = no money for scammer = no more scams = victory!

While I do agree this is wrong and putting an apartment on CL that doesn't exist just to make a buck sounds stupid.

The problem I see here is that everyone thinks that the credit report sites they are going to and filling out their information on are scams.

These are legit sites that serve a very good purpose. They give you some free credit reports and other info. It is up to you to cancel and read the fine print. They all say somewhere on the site that it is a free trial.

So I would complain about the people posting the ads and not the companies that they are sending you to. These sites are paying these people up to $25 a pop when you fill out the forms.

So not only are you trying to get an apartment that doesn't exist the company is also paying for a lead that won't convert.

craigslist rental scam . . . another business name one to add to the list:

[homerentalsnow.co.cc] freecreditreport

(delete space after forward slash)
Link sends you to the Credit Report America site.

Thank you for such a great article!
It seems these people are proliferating at an exponential rate.

@From the cubicle of PGibbons: If they insist on you filling out the SS# field, write in "will give to Payroll on hire date." Some of them will say they need it for a criminal background check, at which point you should ask them if that means you are provisionally offered the job pending the clean criminal background check.

@speedwell, avatar of snark: Says someone who was victimized by a staffer at a temporary agency. Gee, you'd think people would rather steal from the rich?

@bohemian: Apartments around me regularly have "Pets welcomed!" signs outside their building. They know that it makes them much more appealing to a large segment of potential renters. Plus they generally charge a refundable pet deposit, non-refundable pet deposit, and a monthly surcharge. I doubt they're losing their shirt renting pet owners.

@johnfrombrooklyn: And how would a competitor to Craigslist prevent such an act? If they did any type of screening, then they'd open themselves up to legal liability when someone (inevitably) slips through.

OMG! This happened to me. I specifically responded to the ad and asked for an address and said that I did not live in the town I was trying to rent in. I received almost the exact wording in the scammer's response. Funny. I didn't fill it out and sent a reply that said, "You seem shady...SCAMMER!" Or something like that.

Oh well. Now I'm just going to wait here for my $250,000 to be deposited from a Nigerian bank. The guy said he was an ambassador, after all.

@ShortBus: Any non refundable deposit is a scam. Ditto monthly surcharges. If they want to allow pets, they should charge a REFUNDABLE pet deposit. nothing else.

@pecan 3.14159265: Pet owners need to stop paying pet fees and pet rent. They need to draw the line at a reasonable pet deposit. No more than a month's rent. This kind of crap has to stop.

Yep, just saw an ad like this about 10 minutes ago. Shopping for a house to rent, emailed "Jessica" about the exact location, gt an email back with an application & request for credit report. Luckily, I'm hip to these scammers on craigslist and other sites and know better to ALWAYS INQUIRE first before ever submitting any personal information. Too bad other people have learned this quite yet and learn the hard way. This was a scam by equalopportunityrentals.com and it was "jessica roberts" as the email respondent to my inquiry. I replied back to her telling her people like her (or who ever it was emailing me) should never have been born.

Below is an email my boyfriend received shortly after contacting an add on Craigslist for an apartment we knew was too good to be true

Hi,
I got your e-mail for the apartment. Sorry I didn't reply sooner, but my inbox is full of e-mail's for the apartment for rent. Please e-mail me the number of months or years you have working with your current employer, your yearly income, and your credit score.

If you are not aware of your credit score, use the link below.

http://www.icredit-scores.com/

E-mail me this information once you get the chance, so I can set up a show date. Thank you

@LysanderGazelle: Thats kind of harsh- I have used Craigslist for a lot of things-and I can usually pick out the scam-but I have been unemployed for 10 months and looking for a job, this is what I replied to: Data entry, setting service calls for techs, receiving parts from manufacturers, filing etc. must have a positive attitude. Drug tested and background tested. Do not apply if you cannot multi-task. Must be positive and hard working. Work hours are from 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday-Friday. Must have good work history, if you are a job hopper do not apply.

* Location: redding
* Compensation: starts at $10.00
* Principals only. Recruiters, please don't contact this job poster.
* Please, no phone calls about this job!
* Please do not contact job poster about other services, products or commercial interests.

Ummm-looks good to me, then I got back :

Dear Renee Harsanyi,

In reply to your application for the position at WB Digital Media, I would like to apologize for the delay in responding to your enquiry. The sheer volume of applicants from Craigslist for the position has been overwhelming. This has in turn had a knock on effect on the time taken to sort through the junk / spam applications and the serious candidates.

I am however extremely happy to inform you that your resume or initial details have been reviewed positively and you have progressed to the final stage.

We believe an employee who is well rewarded and motivated is the key to our growth oriented company, and for that reason our employees enjoy a competitive payment structure, health packages and additional key benefits to be discussed at interview stage.

As part of our routine checks on all potential employees who have reached this stage, we require applicants to complete a security / credit check to verify your details.

Please note: A negative credit rating will not be a determining factor in your eventual employment, (your credit itself is not relevant), a full credit check however does allow us to weed out time wasters and to verify accurately, legal US citizenship, employment history, social security references and a verifiable confirmation of address.

To get your free report we recommend using this provider or another similar trusted company.

http://check-your-credit-online.com/

IMPORTANT INFORMATION: Please DO NOT under any circumstances email us your credit report as it contains confidential information that is purely for your own benefit.

When the HR department contacts you again shortly with full details on the position, human resources will simply need some non confidential data from the report to verify your details.

Once again, thank you for your interest in the position; we will be in further contact shortly.

Yours faithfully,

Myleene Davis
HR Assistant Manager
WB Digital Media

This is cruelty at it's best in todays job market.