Total money lost $200
Type of a scam Rental
On Monday, July 30/18 my husband & I placed an ad on Kijiji looking to rent a cottage last minute for the coming weekend. That same day we received a response from "Kyle" stating he had a property due to a cancellation on Gull Lake in Gravenhurst. "Kyle" sent pictures of the cottage & we negotiated a price and discussed amenities, check in & out times, etc. "Kyle" gave us his home address & telephone number (Kyle Addoritnai, 121 Ice Boat Terrace, condo 1407, Fort York, ON, tel: 647 495 2774) and then we agreed to send the $200 deposit via email: [email protected] .
Upon sending the deposit, he stated we would receive the cottage package with the info, address, local amenities, etc. Immediately after sending, the lies began. He would be unreachable the rest of the day due to his father’s funeral, we would get the cottage package via email in 24-48 hours due to an email glitch, he would not give us the cottage address because he did not want us "lurking around and disturbing the current renters" despite our assurances we would not.
These all being red flags, we searched up "Kyle’s" name & address, both proved to be false. Realizing we had fallen victim to a scam artist & anxious to recoup our money, we requested a refund on Tuesday. At first, "Kyle" was agreeable to refunding our money, but then more excuses … his mother did not have Internet access, he could send Wednesday by 2pm.
My realtor also did a search & found no cottage properties belongIng to Kyle Addoritnai, which further confirmed a cottage never existed.
On Wednesday at 2pm, as expected, "Kyle" messaged & refused to return our money alleging "breach of contract" though we never signed anything and he never stated the deposit was non-refundable. We attempted to get him to refund us by letting him know we were getting the authorities involved, but he was taunting us so we cut off contact.
We informed our bank branch Fraud Department today, filed a police report and we filed a Fraud report with Kijiji and the Government of Canada.
We are fairly savvy consumers and have rented cottages on Kijiji several times successfully so are very disappointed we were scammed by this individual. Based on his arrogance in believing he would not get caught, we feel certain he has committed this scam more than once and there are other victims out there.