Five Money Scams to Watch out for on Craigslist Nashville

Once upon a time, Craigslist was considered one the ideas spots to find great deals on products and services, as well as being a great place to promote your products and services. Well, Craigslist has become a hub for crime and scams in which people are quickly and permanently separated from their money. Don’t get me wrong, there are still some great deals on Craigslist and it can still be a great place to find unbelievable deals; the problem is being able to distinguish which deals are real and which ones are scams. There are many people who have simply decided that it is not worth it to use the site. For those of you are still willing to take a chance on the site, there are some money scams that you should watch out for.

Being that each city has its own Craigslist page, we are going to focus on Craigslist Nashville in this article. Following are five of the most prevalent money scams being run on Craigslist in the Nashville area.

Real Estate Fraud

One of the hottest and most out of control scams on Craigslist is the real estate leasing scam. Scammers are finding vacant homes around the city, many of which are owned by banks who foreclosed and others by private owners. Somehow, the perpetrators are getting the keys to these properties and leasing them to unexpected families. By the time that the situation has been discovered, the crooks have taken a families money and disappeared. This type of crime creates more than one victim. Obviously, the family who was duped into reading a home from someone who does not own it or has permission to lease it are victims, but the property owners are victims as well. With these types of crimes, it can be difficult to catch the red flags, but if something seems too good to be true, it probably is. If anything seems out of the ordinary, it is worth looking into. Hire a real estate agent to run the point for you in your home search.

Scammed into Scamming Others

In Nashville, a woman received a text message offering her a position as a payroll clerk, earning $800 per month. Scammers used this woman, unwittingly, to scam other people out of their hard-earned money. Things got so bad that the Nashville Police Department asked that the woman’s identity is protected out of fear of retaliation. Basically, the woman was contacted by a man who identified her through Craigslist and he paid her to print out check to send to various people. While some of the things seem odd, it was not enough to tip off the woman that something was wrong. The problem was that the checks were counterfeit and not associated with a legitimate bank account. Once people would deposit the checks in their bank and the bank would discover that the checks were counterfeit, the individuals would suffer the financial consequences of depositing those bad checks. It is not clear exactly how much money has been lost, but it is definitely a significant problem in Nashville.

Counterfeit Concert Tickets

Another big scam con that is wreaking havoc in Nashville is the selling of counterfeit tickets. It is not difficult to print out tickets that look authentic with the computer software programs that are available today. A local teacher found that out the hard way when he purchased what he would later find out was counterfeit tickets. While this type of hustle is not exclusive to Craigslist Nashville, it has become a serious problem that law enforcement is attempting to get a handle on. The teacher says that he found tickets to a Justin Timberlake concert on Craigslist and the price of the tickets was great, so he jumped on it. Unfortunately, he found out that he had purchased fake tickets. Fortunately, the victim used his PayPal account and he was able to recover all of his money.

Medicare Scammers

With the arrival of new Medicare cards in Tennessee, the potential for scams has increased drastically. In June, the Tennessee Depart of Commerce and Insurance issued a warning to be on the lookout for a scammer who will attempt to exploit the arrival of new Medicare cards. There are numerous ways that the scammers can exploit the situation. First, there is vital information on the card itself, but federal law requires that information like social security numbers be removed. Craigslist scammers have been notorious for offering services that don’t exist to Medicare recipients. Medicare fraud has always been a problem; Craigslist is just another medium through which crooks can exploit the system.

Job Scams

The personal assistance scam is huge on Craiglist. The scammer pretends to be out of town on a business trip and needs to hire a personal assistant to handle things stateside. All of the communications are generally through a free email account like Gmail. The long story short, criminals use this particular scam to set up money laundering activities.