Rental Scam

Began on Craigslist in the United States in the early 2000s as copied listings with wired deposits; the FTC's first dedicated analysis came in December 2025.

Fake rental listings appeared with Craigslist in the early 2000s: scammers copied real listings, cut the rent and asked for a deposit by wire before a viewing, often claiming to be abroad. Facebook Marketplace overtook Craigslist as the main venue in the 2020s, and the FTC found in December 2025 that about half of reported rental scams now start on Facebook. Variants include the scammer who rents a real flat and re-lets it to several people at once, and 'application fee' scams that harvest identity documents.

A scammer copies a real listing's photos and description, posts it at a below-market rent with their own contact details, and tells applicants the owner is out of town or that a viewing is impossible because of high demand. The victim is asked to pay a deposit or first month's rent by Zelle, wire or crypto to 'hold' it, or to fill in an application with SSN and ID images. The listing disappears once several deposits are collected. Some scammers gain access to vacant homes and show them in person.

Costs nothing: copy a listing, change the phone number, collect deposits from several applicants in a tight housing market. The FTC has 65,000 reports since 2020 but says most victims never report, and because each loss is a few thousand dollars and payments are by Zelle, police rarely investigate; prosecutions are scarce and local.

The FTC recorded about $65 million in losses across nearly 65,000 reports since 2020, noting the true figure is much higher; the FBI's broader real-estate fraud category exceeded $275 million in 2025. No single large prosecuted case dominates. Victims, often students and movers, lose deposits and sometimes their identity documents, and can be left homeless on moving day.