Victim Location 60638
Type of a scam Rental
I was looking through apartments.com around 10pm and found a property in downtown Chicago that had a cheaper price than usual, but I decided to contact them anyway. The person said his name was James Navarron, and he bought the property for his daughter while she was studying in the city, but then she moved permanently to Minnesota and now he needed someone to rent.
He said he preferred long term, and wrote "The utilities (cold/hot water, electricity, wireless broadband Internet, digital TV, 1 parking spot, dishwasher, garbage disposal, microwave, refrigerator, washing machine, etc.) are INCLUDED in the price of $1,000 per month plus one month deposit of $1,000 is also requested and fully refundable once you decide to leave the apartment (with a 30 days notice before). As from my side, i will never ask you to leave the apartment because my daughter is permanently living here in Saint Paul, so we won’t disturb you."
Then he asked how many people will move in and for how long and I responded and mentioned how this seems too good to be true. I also tried to look up the listing again on apartments.com but it was taken down, so I became even more suspicious.
Then he wrote back, "Everything sounds good, but as I said, I live in Saint Paul, Minnesota and unfortunately i can’t be present to deal in person. I can arrange to rent the apartment from here through AIRBNB, which is the biggest international website dealing specifically in rentals properties.
I hope you are familiar with Airbnb, but if not i’ll explain you how it works. If you decide to proceed with this transaction, I will need your phone number along with your full name, the date when you want to enter in the apartment, how many people would live there and for how long. Then I will start the process through Airbnb here in Saint Paul, providing them with your details. Next you will receive a notification message with all the instructions that you need to follow in order to complete the process and receive the keys with the rental contract."
That’s when my boyfriend and I googled if airbnb does this and we saw many stories exactly like this that are scams.