My family and I have recently outgrown our 2 bedroom duplex. While it’s really a great house and we have the best landlord in the world, we just need some more room (and a better backyard for our little one). So, we are (once again) performing the rental search. We need another year or two to save to buy and we all know it will be a buyer’s market for a long time, so we decided to just rent for another year.

Well, I forgot how painful the renting process is. Not only is it hard to find a 3 BR house right now, but we supposedly need to worry about scammers from across the world tricking us. Within only one week of looking at a small number of properties online, I have received two scam offers and thought I should share my experiences with everyone in the area so no one else is scammed. Luckily, I was smart enough to do some heavy research the first time, which saved me a large sum of money, but I am afraid that others have been scammed, which is why I’m writing this. Keep reading for the whole story and what you can do to avoid being scammed.

So, basically, I found a great rental on Craigslist. The pictures were great; price and location just right. I contacted the posting to receive back an email from a “David Williams” - a man who claimed to have been a pastor in the Pittsburgh area (which, upon my Googling appeared to be legit). I went back and forth with “Mr. Williams” for a while. He was able to provide additional photos of the house and what seemed like very accurate i nformation (square feet of each room, good description, etc). I decided to snoop around the house itself to see if everything matched up. Having never heard of such scams, I thought the offer seemed too good to be true and I was almost ready to send Nigeria my rent and security deposit.

Of course, the rest of you are probably laughing at me at this point. But I tend to be mildly gullible and I tend to always be optimistic (which has failed me so I’m reconsidering this glass half full thing!) Either way, I am half smart and decided to do a little more sleuthing - and at least check out the house to see if it was as good as it sounded.

Well, I snooped around and checked out the house. It looked great, but there was one thing out of whack - a FOR SALE sign! The man had mentioned that the house was on sale, but he and his wife decided to put it up for rent instead. But, I found the for sale sign fishy and called the realtor. Luckily, she got back to me almost immediately and told me that she had received a prior phone call asking about a guy from Nigeria, which she thought was a fluke. But, upon me voicing my concern that it was a scam, realized that was EXACTLY what it was. So, I was smart enough to not send any money, but others who may be blinded by a great deal would not get so lucky.  If you EVER receive a promising contract for anything online from someone, but they ask you to Western Union them money out of the country - RULE #1 = DON’T DO IT! And, having said that, I hope I save you some money!

Strangely enough, the owners of the house are retired policemen and there is now an investigation into the matter. So, perhaps one of the millions of scammers will actually get caught and I will have been a part of that. That would be rad.

But, wouldn’t you know, as I continued my rental search, I received a SECOND email from someone in Nigeria in response to a rental inquiry. So, the first one was not an isolated instance and if it happened to me two times in two weeks, I can only imagine what other searchers are finding!

Don’t worry about me though - I found the most perfect 3 BR ranch in Greentree and will live happily ever after (for a few years). Although, I’m sure those who have been scammed are not quite as happy as me right now.

So, if you have received any interesting scams of this nature (or any others), please take the time to share your experiences in the comments field below. I am hoping that through spreading the word, we can protect more innocent victims of these scammers - and maybe even get a few caught in the meantime.