'We're moving in': Rental scam snares another victim

Online rental scammers have struck again in the Western Cape‚ this time to the tune of R20,000.

Gordon’s Bay businessman Greg von Gossler was stunned on Saturday morning when a family arrived at his house “to move in”. The property had been fraudulently advertised on Gumtree as being up for rent‚ and the unsuspecting family responded.

Von Gossler said on Facebook: “A few days ago an estate agent friend of mind contacted me to find out if our house was to rent‚ as it was being advertised on Gumtree and they suspected it was a scam‚ especially because the rent seemed waaay too low.

“After I told her that it was not to rent‚ the police were informed and a private investigator was appointed. I didn’t think much of the whole thing as I couldn’t imagine that anyone would fall for something like this.

“Well‚ lo and behold‚ at 8 this morning the first family arrived to move in. After having paid a R20,000 deposit! I wonder how many more will be arriving today.”

Von Gossler told TimesLIVE his son met the family on his way to work. He said they were surprised when he told them the home had not been legitimately advertised.

“We just told them to report the matter to the police. That is all we could do‚” he said.

A number of people told CapeTalk this week that scammers had hit Cape Town’s northern suburbs. Their tricks included stealing genuine rental adverts online‚ lowering the rental price and reposting them on other websites.

Gumtree spokeswoman Estelle Nagel said the online classifieds site was working with police to scrutinise the scams.

“There are a number of things that we are doing‚ most notably working with the police and their online crime unit just to make sure that we are aware of what scams we should be looking out for‚” she said.

“We also have a full-time team whose job is making sure that they are checking up on ads. They investigate reports from our users and if they notice something that looks suspicious‚ they can actually investigate that and take action.

“But in general we believe that prevention is better than cure and we put a lot of messages out there just to inform our users about what they should be looking out for when they are transacting on any classified platform and social media.”

Nagel told CapeTalk the scammers often put up expensive items for a “ridiculously low price” and people fell for it. But the number of property scams on the website had dropped because adverts were carefully vetted.

“But there are a handful of incidents that happen every year on all platforms‚ not just on Gumtree or our competitors. You see it on social media more and more as people get used to trading on social networks.”