Full Notification

WINHALL POLICE & RESCUE
PRESS RELEASE

The Winhall Police Department recently received a report of rental scams on Craigslist involving a homes and condos in Winhall and Stratton, Vermont.

Pictures are being taken from legitimate rental listings on sites like homeaway.com and are being used to create fraudulent listings on Craigslist with different contact information. This fraud is occurring with rental property listings all over Southern Vermont. If you discover a fraudulent add on Craigslist, you can contact them direct to remove the listing.

A note at the top of the rental advertisement of Craigslist states:
Avoid scams and fraud by dealing locally! Beware any arrangement involving Western Union, MoneyGram, wire transfer, or a landlord/owner who is out of the country or cannot meet you in person…

Commonalities with rental scam emails listed below:
•
Does the email start with Sir/Madam?
•
Are there misspellings in the email?
•
Are there character mistakes in the email?
•
Is there excessive capitalization?
•
Does the email reference GOD, UK, Cashier’s Check, Doctor, Nigeria, Reverend, etc?
•
Is the email from a free email provider, i.e. Gmail, yahoo, AOL, Hotmail.
•
Does the email refer to another person or agent”
•
Does the email reference wanting to move sight unseen?
•
Is the rental price extremely low?
•
Is the scammer out of the country on business?
•
Did the scammer ask that payment be wired?