An online scam has conned potential tenants desperate to rent a property out of $40,000 in 2011.
Scammers are posing as landlords on popular informal property listing sites to offer prime properties for a knockdown rental price. They are able to exploit the already tight housing market to dupe victims into handing over hundreds of dollars.
The scammers claim to be unavailable for a meeting, but they use the pressure of competition to demand a payment to secure the application for the property. Therefore, victims lose sizeable sums of money alongside their hopes of the ideal home.
The professional scammers accrued tens of thousands of Australian dollars last year into their offshore bank accounts. Once the money is wired out of Australia, the money trail becomes almost impossible to follow.
"In desperation, a lot of would-be tenants are prepared to hand over money without seeing the property," said Dave Hillyard, a Consumer Protection industry director.
This is just one of many forms of internet scamming. Spam emails are a much-maligned source of fraudulent activity, together with auctioning, key-logging and phishing scams.
Consumers might consider consulting advice on online financial and identity protection, especially as the internet continues to grow as a source of commerce. Credit cards offer a degree of protection against fraudulent activity but it is always best to remain vigilant when negotiating wire transfers to unknown sources.
Have you been a target of one of these scams? Leave us a comment and tell us about it.
Bret Clement
