Five Money Scams to Watch Out for on Craigslist Toledo
It seems like the scams involving Craigslist ads will never stop. It doesn’t matter what city you live in, there is a plethora of scams going on. In addition, even people that are careful can readily find themselves in a situation where they’ve been scammed out of their money before they even know what’s going on. In reality, it doesn’t take very long for something to catch you off-guard, especially when you’re looking for something specific and you need a break.
That’s precisely what these Craigslist scammers rely on. They prey on people that are looking for housing, trying to buy or sell something, or looking for a job, all in the hopes that you’ll be desperate enough to take whatever the ad says at its word instead of investigating further. If you live in or near Toledo, Ohio, here are five of the biggest scams you should be watching out for.
1. More Rental Scams
Authorities have recently been telling people in the Toledo area to pay attention to rental scams similar to this one, in which case they already have a suspect. The person responsible for this crime had been placing ads on Craigslist for rental property that he did not own. Of course, those who responded to the ads had no way of knowing that. As a result, many of them ended up losing a great deal of their hard-earned money as they sent money to him remotely to pay for rental costs on property that was never for rent begin with.
2. If It’s Too Good to be True…
Recently, a young man was trying to sell his used car and placed an ad on Craigslist, offering the car for $3,000. Someone in another state responded, saying that he would like to have the car shipped to him and he would pay $2,000 over the asking price in order to get it. He then sent a check for $5,000 plus the cost of shipping. Here’s the catch. He wanted the cost of shipping sent back to him. Unfortunately, the seller in this case did not realize that it was a scam. He deposited the check in his bank and then went ahead and sent the shipping cost back to the supposed buyer. The next day, he realized that the check was no good and he was now on the hook for the whole cost.
3. The Overseas Rental Scam
This is another rental scam. Fortunately, the person in question here realized that things weren’t quite on the up-and-up and never sent him any money. It all started when she found an ad on Craigslist advertising a rental property for $600 a month. She contacted the person listed as the landlord in the ad, and was told that she would need to provide first month’s rent and a security deposit. However, the so-called landlord then went on to ask her her social security and driver’s license numbers. At this point, she refused to provide the information and drove to the address listed in the ad. There, she found that the house was actually for sale and was in fact being closed on within a matter of days. Authorities believe that the person who tried to scam her out of her money actually lives overseas and was using a U.S. based telephone number.
4. Tickets That Don’t Exist
This scam isn’t exactly new to Toledo, either. It’s another prevalent one that exists in several cities. Nevertheless, two people in Toledo were recently charged for scamming people out of more than $200,000 through Craigslist scams involving the sale of fake tickets. Every time a concert or sporting event would come up, they would claim they had a ticket to the event and would offer it for sale. They would typically have the money wired into their account and then never send any tickets, because they didn’t exist in the first place. Clearly, this is something they would manage to get away with for quite some time before getting caught.
5. The Camper Scam
In this case, a person had placed an ad on Craigslist advertising a camper for sale. A local woman wanted to purchase the camper, but when she contacted the seller, she was told that she would need to deposit money into an account through MoneyGram without ever seeing the camper. Fortunately, she realize that something was wrong and refused to do business. She also turned the ad over to local authorities, which is what helped them track down this individual.