DAYTON — Scammers are stealing thousands of dollars using properties around the Miami Valley.
News Center 7’s Amber Jenkins spoke to experts about preventing this from happening.
Some realtors are seeing a scam popping up more on social media. Scammers are using pictures of real homes in our area to make a fake listing and scam people out of thousands of dollars.
Realtors at Irongate said these scammers are taking advantage of people wanting to call the Miami Valley home.
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“We have literally seen people show up with a U-Haul at a property, ready to move in, expecting to get the key, only to find the homeowners still in the house,” said Brett Williford, Office Manager at Irongate Realtors.
Realtors at Irongate Realtors are seeing more of these scams on social media.
There was a post advertising a home in the Bellbrook/Beavercreek area, and it said the first person to wire a deposit and the first month’s rent can move in.
But there’s an issue.
“It wasn’t for rent,” said Jennifer Durbin, Associate Broker for Irongate Realtors. “I’m fearful for people as far as safety as well.”
Williford and Durbin have seen this scam multiple times on Zillow and TikTok, using their properties and others around the Miami Valley, and they’ve noticed a pattern in these scams.
“They’re always at an extraordinary value, you know, way below market rent,” Williford said. “But there’s always a mitigating circumstance like, you know, we’re an Air Force family stationed out of the state.”
He added that the scammers use email or other messaging apps to pressure victims into wiring them money, and these realtors are trying to get these scams removed.
“We report them to the platform that it’s on,” Williford said. “We refer them to the Ohio Attorney General’s Office. And then you can forward an email to spoof@fbi.gov. But then again, there are so many of these things going on.”
We called the number listed for the Bellbrook/Beavercreek property, and the New Jersey area code number was disconnected.
Williford said these scammers want to communicate on messaging apps but still use the same number to make their scam more believable.
“Unfortunately, that’s the world that we’re in,” Durbin said. “But pick up the phone, call us. We are local. I work with many agents, and I don’t know anyone that wouldn’t mind picking up, having someone call them to make sure that they aren’t getting taken advantage of.”
We are waiting to hear back from the AG’s office on whether they noticed an increase in these scams across Ohio.
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