The rental listinglooked like Rhiana Scholz's Ocean City condo, with the same balcony overlooking blue ocean and promisesof hot sun, boardwalk fries and lazy beach days.
The ad for Scholz's condo was posted onCraigslist.
The Baltimore woman doesn't use Craigslist to advertise.
"I was just furious," Scholz said of the rental scam that hit herin July 2016. "My first thoughtwas a family showing up for their vacation, excited, with all their luggage, and security telling them someone had already rented it."
That summer, a man wanting to take his granddaughter on a beach trip had seen Scholz's place on Craigslist for a suspiciously low weekly rate of $1,100, with a $300 security deposit.
"It was NOT available that week and my rate was $1,750 plus $200 deposit," Scholz wrote in an email.
Property owners like Scholz and unassuming vacationers get scammed every year. As technology advancesthroughout the world, online crime has expanded, allowing criminals to remotely attack, stripping victims of their money and making justice difficult to pursue.
The scam artist in this case copied a local real estate agent's email signature but changed the phone number. Ironically, it was a Baltimore number, where Scholz lives.
They also grabbed Scholz's photos from her building's management websiteand plugged them into thead.
"It's a total violation," she said.
The copy-and-paste method has proven successful for many scammers. It's designed toconvince a stranger to fork over a hefty security deposit or even a large percentage of the rental cost before the scam artist disappears, sometimes without so much as an identifying emailaddress.
Last year, Ocean City police received 20 complaints of rental fraud —the highest numbersince at least 2011. Eighty-six percent of those cases originated on Craigslist.
"These aren’t some kids in a basem*nt, saying, 'Hey, let’s make a little extra money,' " said Sgt. Todd Speigle of Ocean City Police Department. "These are professional criminals and this is typically the second or third layer of a greater scheme."
That "greater scheme" means vacation rental scams are increasingly a global crime.
Of the 94 cases the Ocean City Police Department received since 2011, victims lost an average of $1,000, withsome losing up to $2,800.
When the would-be renters arrive inOcean City, theytypically find themselves atan already-occupied spaceorsearching for a property that doesn't exist.
While vacation rental scams usually stop victims right at the door, victims of residential rental fraud can live inside for months, paying rent to the scammer.
So-called "home takeover" scams occur when a con artist either moves into a vacant home or leases theresidence to an unsuspecting renter, unbeknownst to the real owner. Often, the con artists break in, change the locks, present keys and legal documents to their victims.
This happened to one family in Wilmington last year, when they arrived to the door — suddenly with different locks — of a home they'd been renting for 10 months, along withpolice warning them that if they entered, they wouldbe arrested for trespassing.
But like a typical vacation rental scam, when they called the man who leased them the home through a Craigslist advertisem*nt, his phone number had been disconnected.
More:How to avoid online rental scams
Background:Was Wilmington family booted from home victim of Craigslist scam?
Craigslist is not new to such scams. The classified advertisem*nts website failed "to identify more than half of scam rental listings,"according to a 2016 studyfrom New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering. Researchers analyzed over 2million rental listings in 21 major markets.
According to the study, some of the listings stayed online for as long as 20 hours before being removed. In competitive resort markets like Ocean City, 20 hours gives scammersplenty of time to strip victims of hard-earned, vacation-bound cash.
Rental fraudreaches beyond just Craigslist and Ocean City.
Rental scams hit big vacation markets like Florida. In particular, victims recently reported being scammed through Craigslist in Naples. This year, rental companies inClearwater warned incoming tourists of fake websites.
Rick Rose, co-proprietor of Palm Beach Vacation Rentals, said con artists copied his company's logo, combined it with photos from a random unit, and put it on Craigslist.
The best bet, Rose said, is to deal with licensed and insured agencies.
"The vacation rental industry is not very regulated," he said, adding that there are roughly 60 hotels in his area, versus 1,500 vacation rental units. "There are not enough human resources to ensure every single vacation rental is being operated legally.In terms of municipal resources, what are you going to regulate?"
A recent study from the American Hotels and Lodging Association found that 55 million bookings a year are made on websites posing as online travel agencies or emulating hotel websites. The incidents of travel fraud jumped 16 percentin 2017, according to a fraud attack index published by Forter, the e-commerce fraud prevention company that works with several Fortune 500 retailers.
Law enforcementoffices often rely on preventative measures in warning the public of scams. In early April, DelawareAttorneyGeneral Matthew Dennwarned residents of vacation rental scams.
"Ultimatelythe best tool is education," said William McDermott, Worcester County's interimstate's attorney.
Rental scams are growing in sophistication. The cyber crime plagues websites like Craigslist, and they are difficult to prosecute, according to Rehoboth Beach,Ocean City andDelaware state police.
McDermott pointed to an ordinance Ocean City Town Council will consider in a few weeks that requires rental licenses to be shown on any online listing.
Ocean City Councilwoman Mary Knight said the sole intent of thatordinance is to collect tax revenue. However, itcould serve as an added layer of protection for folks who want security and legitimacy before they book.
"Asking who the rental license belongs to could be an easy way to do that," McDermott said.
Authorities can do little
McDermott's office has cross-jurisdictional powerbut only in the state of Maryland.
If someone committed rental fraudoutside Maryland, which is often the case,there is little law enforcement can do other than transfer the case over to the correct jurisdiction.
When rental fraud lacks a physical location, it creates a gray area for local jurisdictions: Who can investigate crimes committed online?
"We need help from our federal brothers and sisters," McDermott said. "Andhaving the allied help of the Department of Homeland Security is always a benefit."
Speigle said he couldn't think of an Ocean City vacation rental fraud case that was successfully prosecuted. That's because the crime didn't technically occur on Ocean City grounds, leaving the agency out of jurisdiction and victims in a nightmarish online limbo.
Scammers have many ways to block law enforcement.
"Anybody could go on and create a Gmail or Yahoo account," Speigle said. "There’s really no way for us to tell who that person is. They can put anything in there."
Detectives could try to determine from a location connected to anIP address, but the perpetrators often use coffee shops and other businesses to connect to the internet, masking theiridentity.
When Speigle started, the internet was still gaining in popularity, he said, and perpetratorswere usually physically inOcean City when committing their crimes.
"They would be stealing a six-pack of beer from 7-Elevenor breaking into someone’s vacation home in the winter when they weren’t there, and stealing the TV," Speigle said."And that would leave clues and give us something to investigate."
Now, someone could commit fraud halfway around the world — without a trace.
"When somebody’s in eastern Europe and they’re sitting in an internet cafe, it’s going to be kind of hard for an Ocean City detective to No. 1 figure out who he is, and No. 2, to get the money back and bring him to justice."
The majority of cases Speigle sees are committed from across the country or are international. Email is usually the only form of communication, and payments are typically sent through a Western Union transfer or Moneygram.
"Once that money is sent out, it's hard to trace," Speigle said. "We’ll also see money wired from one bank account to another, which by the time we get the report and catch up with it, that bank account doesn’t even exist anymore."
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Scammers are professional disappearing acts.
"The only nexus to Ocean City is an address, but in reality, no actual crime has been committed here," Speigle said of the majority of rental scam cases the department handles.
In 2011, Speigle thought he tracked down a rental scammer. A family had come down for vacation, knocked on the door of their rental and realized someone was already in the house.
They sent the Western Union transferto a 74-year-old man in New Hampshire. Speigle contacted the man, who revealed he had sent close to $200,000 to someone in Nigeria.
Bewilderingly enough, theman had received an email from the scammer, who told him his great-uncle was a prince somewhere in Africa, and had left him millions of dollars worth of inheritance.
The man wouldkeep 5 percent of whatever he sent overseas and had no idea what was going on in Ocean City.
Speigle hadn't caught the perpetrator, he had found another victim.
After speaking to the man, Speigle discovered multiple people from different jurisdictions were sending the scammer money, and that typically, they were older.
"He’s giving a bunch of his money away, and he believed it," Speigle said."He was vulnerable. He ended up being a bigger victim than whom the initial case came from."
Avoid the scam
Scholz's condo is one of 390 units at Atlantis in Ocean City. She rents her place out for the summer season.
The grandfather who saw the Craigslist ad was able to contact Scholz. He hadn't booked the place, and Scholz reported it to Craigslist, which removed the post.
Ocean City broker Grace Masten calls the fraud a "witch's hunt," because even if the ad is reported as spam and gets shut down, it can pop back up on a different site.
"Get down here and look at the property," Masten said. "Make sure the people are actually who they say they are."
If folks can't do that,they should contact a local, reputable real estate agent, Masten added.
According to Craigslist, 99 percent of scam attempts can be avoided with local, face-to-face contact.
"If you're six hours away, you're not going to check a place out," Speigle said.
The listed phone number can be telling of someone's location, he added: "If some guy from Arizona is trying to rent out a condo in Ocean City, well that’s a little strange."
Rental fraud is popping up on vacation sites like HomeAway and Vacation Rentals By Owners, according to Lynn Mauk, the branch vice president forColdwell Banker in Ocean City.
Scammers will grab listings of agents and market their for-sale properties as rentals. Mauk said this happened to one of her agents this year.
"Thebest thing is to recommend to a potential renter that they really need to do their homework," Mauk said. "There’s a way they can go online and see if that’s the actual owner, to protect their interest."
Those who opt for the Basic Rental Guarantee on HomeAway or VRBO have a chance at reimbursem*nt, up to $1,000. The program is "intended to provide protection against internet fraud for payments made outside the HomeAway platform," according to the website.
Airbnb, an online hospitality service known for at-home, short-term lodging in over 190 countries, warns users of lookalike sites like airbnb1.comor airbnb.bya.com.The main body should always be"https://www.airbnb.com" and users should never pay outside that platform.
Mastenadded her property addresses onto Google Alertsto get notifications of any possible scammer activity on them.
Whenever Scholz goes on vacation now, she checks the property's tax records and makes sure it matches the person she's communicating with. She will call the property owner, double check the pricing — anything to ensure her trust in booking.
For her Ocean City condo, Scholz checks Craigslist regularly to make sure no one is compromising her listing. A lot of her business comes from her own neighborhood by word of mouth, but she also uses social media to advertise.
"It’s such an electronic world now," Scholz said. "It’s really hard to know who people say they are, but it’s how we function."
USA Today's Christopher Elliott and The News Journal'sXerxes Wilson andChristina Jedra contributed to this report.
Contact reporter Taylor Goebel at 302-332-0370, tgoebel@delmarvanow.com or on Twitter @TaylorGoebel
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