MENTOR, Ohio — Fake rental listings for homes in Northeast Ohio are being found on Facebook Marketplace. It's a scam former 3News photojournalist Mike Leonard has seen with his own property in Mentor.
Leonard said he posted one of his rental homes on Zillow, but he was contacted by prospective renters about a fake listing on Facebook Marketplace.
"What I'm finding out is somebody is taking my ad, copying it and then putting it on Marketplace and what they're doing is they're charging these people to come and just look at the house," said Leonard.
"It really is horrifying on every level," said Jonas Bordo, who is the CEO and co-founder of rental home platform Dwellsy. A 2022 survey by the company showed rental fraud like this is costing Americans billions of dollars.
"Over 20% of renters have had a personal loss in the process of finding a rental," said Bordo. "If you extrapolate that our to the country, that means Americans are losing over $16 billion a year in rental fraud and this isn't just any kind of fraud. This is most of the time people losing their life savings at this point. At a point when, in many cases, the process of being defrauded can leave them homeless as well as having lost their life savings."
Leonard tells 3News he has spoken to some of the people impacted by the scam listing involving his home.
"What people are telling me is that they charge basically the first month's rent and then the guy never shows up, he never shows it to them and they're out of the money," Leonard said.
In order to protect yourself and your wallet, experts suggest a few tips when searching for a rental home:
- Avoid opportunities that seem too good to be true
- Don't send money or personal information before viewing the property
- Be wary of requests to send money through difficult to trace methods like cash or gift cards
- Cross-check multiple websites to make sure the property is actually for rent