Lauren Rice, a nurse starting a job at UCSF, found a two-bedroom duplex unit on Crestmont Drive in Forest Knolls listed on Craigslist for $6,000 a month. The real owner gave her a tour. Then someone else stepped in, the San Francisco Standard reports. A scammer was posing as the landlord in emails to Rice and posing as Rice in texts to the real landlord, telling him to ignore her application.

The same playbook as before

Rice looked up the contact information she had been given. The same phone number and email address had been used in a summer scam the Standard covered in August. In that case, Alvin Tran and his roommate answered a Craigslist ad for a $6,200-a-month two-bedroom on 15th Street. The ad was copied from a real Zillow listing. They toured during an open house, were told they had been approved and wired $18,600. No one showed up with keys. Their bank's two attempts to recall the wire failed. After the Standard asked about the account, Google restricted it this week.

Why SF renters are targets

The Standard cites CoStar data showing citywide rents up 26% over the past year with vacancy around 3%. It reports that prospective renters outnumber listings by about 10 to 1. The city's StopScams SF program, run by the treasurer's office and launched in July with a three-year, $3 million JPMorganChase grant, says it sees suspicious rental listings on major platforms every day.

Red flags before you pay

  • Ask for proof. StopScams SF's tracker says anyone who cannot prove they own or are authorized to rent the property is a red flag. Ask for proof before paying anything.
  • Watch the payment method. The city warns that demands for wire transfers, gift cards or cryptocurrency are signs of a scam. The Standard notes that money sent by wire or payment app is extremely hard to recover.
  • Search the contact info. That search is what saved Rice.
  • Be wary of a copied listing whose poster's name only resembles the owner's, or whose "landlord" insists on communicating through a different channel than the one used for the ad.

The city's guidance says scam victims should report to their bank right away and to police. Federal reports can be filed with the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center or the FTC.