Landlords and Tenants – Avoid Being the Victim of a Con Artist

By admin · January 4, 2010 · Filed in Tenant Services

LANDLORD AND TENANT SCAMS AND HOW TO AVOID THEM

Scams can go both ways: whether you are a landlord getting scammed by a potential renter or you are a tenant paying your rent to a person that isn’t even the owner of the property you are renting!

Just because a person signs a rental application or a rental agreement for that matter, doesn’t mean they are legit!
Fraudulent claims and Internet scams are constantly on the ride, so is it any wonder that it has finally hit the rental housing market?

TENANT SCAMS:

Recently the U.S. Postal Inspector gave us warning that some landlords are being conned by scam artists using counterfeit checks, counterfeit certified checks, fake bank checks and even counterfeit money orders. Property owners should be very careful in responding to a prospective applicant or roommate who contacts you from out of the country from an online advertisement the building manager may have posted.

These con artists will want to pay their deposit with a cashier’s check, money order or using some other form of paper transactions, in most cases requesting to pay many months up front plus some for “administrative fees”.

The con artist will then ask the owner to send back part of the money (usually in a wire transfer), as well as most of the “administrative costs” or ask that the entire amount be given back by supplying a rationale that they may not take the unit after all. This regardless of whether they may have filled out a rental application.

Subsequently, the owner refunds all or a portion of the monies before being informed that the original “check” was counterfeit. These scammers are usually from a foreign country and even with law enforcement working with you can be very difficult to hunt and find.

This basically means that all of the monies the landlord paid back is straight out of their pocket. Con artists can do this over the phone too if they find the right landlord to fall for it.

And even though the landlord may have sent them a rental agreement, it doesn’t mean it’s enforceable overseas!

Here are a few tips to avoid being scammed as a landlord:

* Do not accept or return any monies without first having a face to face meeting with your potential new tenant and confirm they are who they say they are by checking their identification.

* When you do accept monies from anyone, tell them that you cannot refund anything until at least 10 days after the check has cleared.

* Make sure to do both a credit check and a criminal records check as well as a public records search.

* And if you smell something fishy, it probably is. Remember, if it seems to good to be true…

If you have been a victim of this kind of scam, immediately call the US Postal Inspector as well as the fraud division of the FBI.

LANDLORD SCAM:

Someone posing as a landlord who isn’t happen occasionally, but this week a con artist actually had the guts to sue his ‘tenant’ for non payment of rent in court!

About a year ago, an individual moved in to a new apartment located in New York state to find out a few months later that the gentleman she was sending her rent check to every month wasn’t the owner or property manager of her building!

He was a con artist with absolutely no legal rights to the property, trying to scam a few hundred dollars a month by deceiving an innocent person who needed a place to live.

However, it wasn’t discovered until the con artist decided to sue the tenant in court for nonpayment of rent after she fell behind! She had asked him to fix some problems in the unit and he wouldn’t do it. She stopped paying the rent and he took her to court!

Law enforcement arrested the con artist and charged him with burglary after he had scammed nearly ten thousand dollars in illegal rent collections.

he stands to serve over seven years in jail if he is found guilty.

TIP:

If you are ever in doubt and something “smells” funny, you can always do a public records search for the owner of the property you are about to rent.

Just head to your local courthouse for this information. There may be a nominal charge.

Stirling Gardner consults for EZ Landlord Forms – your best online resource for state specific rental agreement and free rental application.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Stirling_Gardner

Comments

William H. Millard
April 3rd, 2010 at 3:38 pm

THE UNIVERSITY OF REACTION THE ABSOLUTE
306 North Brooks Street
Room 409
Madison, Wisconsin 53715

ATTENTION: Police-man and Police-lady

The alleged THERMAL NUCLEAR REACTION sustained and con not, at all,be as the cause of the various kinds of the fields,..I realized of an essentiality of the development of another kind of a physical theorie of the world necessary to be developed, and also of an importance to the doing of it so because if it would not be developed then my country would end.

Early in the nineteen fifties I realized the stupidity and absurdity of the, alleged, relativity and the quantumology. In this way I realized and was enabled to develop of another kind of an understanding of the phenomenal and or physical world and of its related parts. Early on I became aware of an essentiality of something different as related to the causes of the electrique, magnetique, industrial and the plausible cause of light and field issuance’s and emission’s manifest of the sun and the stars. To me, it became an im-plausabiltty the alleged thermal nuclear cause of the light emission and field issuance’s of the sun and stars; something different then causally allow of an impossible means of an use of an alleged thermal reaction.

In this way of an acceptance of my early understanding and convictions; on this account then I have followed through with an essentiality of performances what were motivated by my early realizations when my early realizations different from every one else’s and my seemedly ridiculous performances allegedly un-acceptable what then has allowed others to victimize me and un-justifiable target my self for the advantaged use of others.

I am not, at all, interested in being a member of a goologue nor prison camp. A man is worthy of his hire. My thing is new science, technology and industry in the American Republique. I am a capitalist, industrialist and am interested in the accomplishment of the further amount of the monetary and economique success. Persons are ripping me off when targeting me and making me hurt and I have had enough, and the time now is to break out of being some type of a captive.

But this has happened, to me, because I had ideas what others disagreed with and did not have, The early realizations had, of myself, different from the contemporaries what then has allowed my contemporaries my victimizers, and this also to my regret. In this way alluded I have had to nearly succumb and I have been constrained to tolerate and I have become some one else’s target made to their monetary advantage.

But at this juncture…I am saying enough is enough. My ideas and discoveries are marketable and profitably salable. let persons be allowed to pay me for my time, pain, trouble and suffering having been wiling to suffer and pain so to be allowed to discover, contribute and further develop of my discoveries and work contributed not only for the benefit of myself but contributed also for the benefit of my country persons alike. A man is worthy of his hire.

I am writing this letter, to you, to let you know that I am being victimized and made a target by persons who are making of an illicit use of myself to get money from the government gotten by them without my permission. In this we I am being held hostage used as a vehicle for the profitability and the support of others who are incapable. But this arrangement is not to my satisfaction and this arrangement is not good for the United States of America and its constituents.

Yesterday the policemen was called by Mrs. Sharon Hutchins after it was that I presented, t her, the swollen hands and complained as related t the continued infestation of the bed bugs what continue, unrelentingly to infect the rooms of the building in which I live. Porch light Properties has no intention of allowing the building at 306 North Brooks Street rid of bed bugs because the bed bug problem of its infestation is the way that they use to terrorize persons constrained t remain in the building. And the occupants can not escape to go else-where because they are poor with no finance. And in this way they do not complain because they need a place t live. They do not want to live in the Street…but the police and the other agencies in the city continue to maintain the negative circumstance what continues at Porch Light Properties what Schooler continues to portend as his bogus and pseudo extortion racket what he and his bunch use to get money from the government. It is a crooked mafia run operation what I am not gong t tolerate.

My life and my work as well as discoveries belongs to myself and to no one else who, wrongly, would effort to covet it. My discoveries and work belongs to myself until at some such time that persons contract with me to have of a part of it or in it and my work is not, at al, as related to Porch Light’s work when Porch Light’s MISSION STATEMENT is not at all t do with the electrical, industrial and commercial means of the lighting and powering of planet earth, similarly, lighted and powered like the rest of the stars what re in the sky.

My discoveries and work is my work and discoveries and the same does not belong to Porch Light Properties and it does not belong t any-one else until at some such time that they compensate me for my work, discoveries and doings. Yesterday when the policemen visited when called by the conspiring Sharon Hutchins after it was that I presented, other, my swollen hands, the policemen informed me that I lived inthe Porch Light Kingdom. But I will not live here when persons are targeting me and threatening my life and poisoning my life also…it will not longer be tolerated by myself…. I will not reside at this location because I am being victimized and I will no longer continue to allow it.

For the last fifty years of my life, I have been very much interested in the research of some very profound areas what stupid others could not know about and understand, and it is now that I have to live in Porch lights Kingdom while the authorities continue to make me a target allowing Porch light and the other criminals around me allowed to rip off my hard work in research areas where other exploiting nit wits could not realize some phenomenal reality what was needful to be investigated and known about what others could not notice or understand.

I am no longer willing to be any persons patsy while my research is being ripped off by the dumb and stupid criminal minded Steven Schooler.

Respectfully.
William. Millard

Post script:

They are all in complicity with the SUCK METHOD of the money making as is Porch Light Properties also. And the stupid mob members thinks no one will ever detect and no oner will ever detect nor find out find out. I am of the opinion…at the deeper investigation as related t this matter of the all of that what is amiss…one will discover the pest control people in league with a the racketeers organizing and arranging to be allowed to competitively capture the monetary profits, and they do tis of an use of a means arranged so to allow of places becoming rodent and but infested of an calculated means. And they do this so to insure of their arranged amounts of the monetary profits got form the organized efforts arranged and make of an use of by the mob.

I noticed yester-day that when I informed the policemen of the bed bug marks and bits on my arms shown to hi, then later when he would not find the blood spots in the bed in my room, then he also dismissed my concerns.

The bite marks on my legs and arms are enough for me, an dI do not have to be looking for blood spots in abed to know that have been bed bug bitten.