We have been warning about fake apartment advertisements on the Internet for a long time (see here ), but now the police are also warning about these fraudulent real estate offers on the Internet. We can only emphasize again and again: apartment hunters are being shamelessly ripped off here!
To emphasize the whole thing again, we are also publishing the police warning here.
Siegen-Wittgenstein (ots) - The Siegen Criminal Police Office 2, which is responsible for fraud, warns of possible real estate fraudsters on the Internet.
The perpetrators' methodology is as simple as it is criminal: in tense rental markets, apartments are advertised that often do not even exist. If you contact the “landlord” as an interested party, you will be told that a viewing is not possible, for example because the “landlord” lives abroad. The “landlord” then suggests sending the apartment key in exchange for a deposit.
In another variant of the crime, the fraudsters lure people with particularly cheap rental or purchase offers. In order to be able to view the alleged apartment, interested parties should pay deposits and advance rent payments beforehand. The rental apartments or properties on offer do not even exist.
According to the fraudsters, the payment should usually be made using money transfer services or an alleged escrow service where the money cannot be traced.
If you pay, the money is of course gone, never to be seen again - and you'll never see the apartment or property anyway! Therefore, the urgent appeal of the fraud specialists at the Siegen Police Department is: Never transfer money before you have viewed the apartment!
From the investigators' point of view, there are also some indications through which "fake" properties can be exposed relatively safely. As an apartment hunter, you should be careful if the property on offer is clearly too cheap for the location, if the description in the exposé does not match the pictures or if the advertisement contains sentences that make no sense. You should also be suspicious if the provider's contact details are incomplete or the email address contains cryptic combinations of numbers and letters.
Also important: It is no longer just false rental apartments that are being listed, but appropriate caution is also required when purchasing properties!
The police therefore warn against accepting such obvious bargains and under no circumstances paying in advance to view the apartment.
There are also clear indications from large real estate portals: Anyone who finds a real estate offer that appears disproportionately cheap, is also located in a significantly more expensive residential area and, for example, asks the interested party to pay in advance for a viewing of the apartment using the money transfers mentioned, should report this property to the portal operator report and under no circumstances comply with the payment request.
The perpetrator or perpetrators most likely come from abroad and cannot or can hardly be identified through normal police investigation channels.
Please send inquiries to:
Siegen-Wittgenstein District Police Authority, via press release
Notes:
1) This content reflects the current state of affairs at the time of publication. The reproduction of individual images, screenshots, embeds or video sequences serves to discuss the topic. 2) Individual contributions were created through the use of machine assistance and were carefully checked by the Mimikama editorial team before publication. ( Reason )