Selling house? Scam turns it to rental

WYOMING, Mich. (WOOD) - When Troy Middlecamp put his house up for sale in December he'd never heard of the scam he was about to witness.  

"I would say it was the first weekend, we had a couple stop by, knocked on the door and asked if the house was still available for rent," he told Target 8 investigators. "I said the house is absolutely not for rent, it's for sale."

That began a parade of potential renters.  

He said "they kept questioning that; 'you sure it's not for rent?'  You know I own the place. I'm sure it's not for rent.'"

International cyber-criminals have found a way to con you right in your own neighborhood by stealing house-for-sale listings and putting them on their own web page as rentals.  

That's what happened to Middlecamp's online sale ad for his house on Colby SW in suburban Wyoming.

"Fortunately, I don't think a lot of people lost money yet.  Maybe one.  But once a week we get somebody knocking on the door asking about renting the house."

The bogus ad on Hotpads.com has been taken down. But a couple who didn't want to be identified shared an email exchange they had with the crook regarding Middlecamp's house.  

The crook wrote, "My company decided to open a sub-division in London (United Kingdom-England) and I was transferred there as chief operation manager..."  He said he'd eventually return home and wanted to rent out the house to keep "the building structure alive and in good condition."

He also said that he had the keys with him in England so potential renters could only view the home from the outside.

That might have been one of the faults in the crook's plan because as Middlecamp, the home's owner, pointed out "it was supposed to be empty. Well, they get there and there's Christmas decorations up and the car's in the garage..."  

But if nobody was home the scam might work.

And if a potential renter became suspicious and checked and found Middlecamp owned the house, they'd also think they were dealing with the owner.  "The guy posing as me actually created a Yahoo email address with my name."

In this case the couple found that they knew someone who actually knew Middlecamp and learned the truth before they sent money to England.

According to the Internet Crime Complaint Center, IC3, this particular scam often involves victims sending money to a foreign country and sometimes the crooks pretend they are overseas doing missionary work.

"It seems that again and again and again, there are actual syndicates, criminal syndicates" involved in these kinds of web scams, according to the Better Business Bureau's West Michigan executive Phil Catlett.  "There are criminal enterprises now that are taking great advantage of the opportunities of the web."

Avoiding web scams is trumping what is supposed to be the convenience of using the Internet.

"It's getting harder and harder because you can no longer trust anything without digging into it deeper," said Catlett.

In this case, he said, he would even do what some of Troy Middlecamp's visitors did -- drive by the property to see if it was for rent or actually for sale.

Middlecamp said he saw one of the bogus rental ads about his house and noticed that there was no way to contact the person who placed the ad except for the rental form.  He called that a "red flag, but not everybody's going to catch stuff like that."

People, he said, should "stick to reputable websites."  And "if it looks like a scam, it probably is."