The fake landlord and fake tenant pretended to be Chinese technical workers and defrauded 18,000 yuan.

lauren rice comessan francisco While looking at a rental apartment, she was surprised by the location of the apartment, which had a forest on one side and a spectacular view of the ocean on the other. The landlord who came out to welcome him told him that he had just bought the house and planned to live upstairs and rent out the two-bedroom apartment downstairs for 6,000 yuan a month.

After the tour, the landlord welcomed Rice’s application and told him he would only accept applications through Zillow. Rice found this strange because she had seen the ad on Craigslist, but she sent the application anyway.

A few hours later, the landlord received a text message that appeared to be from Rice, asking her to ignore her rental application because she had found another place to live. The landlord found this strange.

The San Francisco Standard reported that, in fact, the text message the landlord received was not sent by Rice herself, and previous messages Rice had received were not from the actual landlord. The real situation is that a scammer pretended to be the landlord and the lessor, and communicated with the landlord and the lessor respectively over the Internet.

This is not the first time this scammer has committed a scam. Just a few months ago, someone used the same phone number and email address to defraud someoneSugar Mr. Alvin Tran, a technology expert, suffered a loss of 18,600 yuan.

If Rice had not discovered her contact information, a phone number of 562-888-2056 and an email address (email protected), she would never have discovered the San Francisco Standard story and might have become the scammer’s latest victim. Following inquiries from San Francisco Standard, Google restricted the use of the above mentioned Gmail email account.

The San Francisco rental market has become one of the most competitive markets in the United States.Tenant People’s desperate need for rental housing has made the city a hotbed for fraudsters.

Alah Rodriguez, a spokesperson for the San Francisco Treasurer’s Office, which is responsible for implementing the “StopScams SF” program launched in July this year, said that they receive information about suspicious rentals on major platforms every day. “Fraudsters are very active and very aggressive,” he said.

One of the most common scams is the one that Les almost fell into but succeeded in tricking Mr. Chen: copying a genuine listing information and then replacing it with fake contact information.

Rodriguez said it is extremely difficult for victims to get fraud money back, especially if the money was sent via wire transfer or an app. He also acknowledged that there were shortcomings and inadequate manpower in law enforcement, which limited the effectiveness of combating fraud.

The victim, Mr Chen, said he did not expect to get back the money he was defrauded, but he hoped at least someone would investigate the matter. To their surprise, the scammers kept using the same contact details. “They should at least change their email address,” Mr Chen said. “They don’t seem to care about getting caught.”