PASCO COUNTY, Fla. (WFLA) – Aaron Hedman was so angry, he started knocking on neighbors’ doors. He wanted them to know that someone was listing the house on Summer Wind Court in Lutz for rent, and it was not their house.
When no one answered their doors, he took to social media to express his frustration and warn others about the listing.
Hedman’s case is just the latest in a string of rental ripoffs. He says he’s been schemed not once, but three times.
“This is the third time that we’ve had a scam attempt in the past week,” said Hedman. “The first one we actually did fall for it and sent them money and provided our social security numbers for the application process, and then what was fishy is that after we filled out all the application processes they wanted us to send a copy of our id’s to a Gmail address that was different from the original web site.”
The Pasco County Sheriff’s Office said it only investigates about one case like this a month, but that could be due to a lack of reporting. In Hedman’s case, he got his money back from his bank, so he never reported the case to the sheriff’s office.
Last week, Clearwater police arrested Ewelina Drozd and charged her with burglary of an unoccupied dwelling. Police say she somehow got into the key boxes of two vacant homes, duplicated the keys, opened the home and took pictures and posted them online. In one case, the victim who answered her had given her $1800 as a deposit and the first month’s rent. After her arrest, the victim got most of her money back.
After Bridget Cunningham saw our story, she contacted us to tell her story. She recently bought a house in St. Petersburg, and a week after she moved in, people started showing up wanting to rent it. Someone had apparently taken the “for sale” listing and posted it for rent.
St. Petersburg Police Detective Caitlyn Lance works in economic crimes. She says the department deals with cases like this multiple times a week, but making arrests is difficult.
“We don’t really have an easy way of tracking them,” said Detective Lance. “They are using fake phone numbers that are generated through a computer. They aren’t tied to a real name. They are using property information from a house that isn’t theirs.”
Back in Pasco County, the sheriff’s office posted on Facebook, a warning about rental scams. Detectives say some behind these fake ads are now asking for deposits in bitcoin, because it is more difficult to track.
Hedman says people need to do their homework.
“Meet the landlords in person,” Hedman suggests. “Visit the house before sending any money or applying and also just verify everything before you send your social security numbers because identity theft is probably a concern now.”
