Things To Do |

Apartment hunting is easy online but so is getting scammed

Jose Luis Vilchez could have had the apartment right then, he was told, as long as he paid his security deposit in cash.

That move, police officials say, should have been the first red flag that something was up about the sublet he was looking into renting in Ukrainian Village earlier this fall.

“I needed to move and I’ve dealt with people on Craigslist so many times and never had any trouble,” said Vilchez, 33. “I saw the ad, and it was a good deal, $450 a month, everything included, great location.”

The man allegedly behind the advertisement, who was charged with several felony counts of theft by deception earlier this fall, “looked so trustworthy,” Vilchez said.

Money was exchanged. A security deposit receipt was written up. Promises to grab a beer and chat again before the move-in date, Sept. 15, were made. But as the date drew near, Vilchez said, he was given the run-around in a series of text message exchanges that culminated in a decision to put off the move. Vilchez went to the apartment, on West Thomas Street, on the evening of the 14th anyway to see what was up.

“I see a police car pulling in front of the building and I thought, ‘This is really convenient.’ Then a girl comes out of the back seat of the patrol car and she’s pointing at the second floor of the apartment, and I thought, ‘Oh my God, this girl has been scammed, too,” he said. “At the end, it’s like, six of us total outside of the apartment, some of us trying to collect our money, and the other half who said they were supposed to move in that day.”

Police caught the man who allegedly scammed Vilchez, among several other would-be renters, after he allegedly met with Vilchez in Wicker Park the following night to take more money from Vilchez and exchange keys to the apartment, and then pulled a gun on him, according to the police report.

Though Vilchez’s case is on the extreme end of the spectrum, Vilchez is one of an unknown number of Chicagoans who lose money every year to apartment scammers who take advantage of the city’s increasingly competitive real estate market by showing an empty apartment unit to multiple individuals, demanding cash deposits and then disappearing. Others don’t even live in Chicago or oversee an apartment here, police officials said, but compel interested apartment hunters to wire them money overseas under the ruse that they are traveling abroad. Those scam artists are rarely caught, according to Sgt. John Lucki, a police official with the Chicago Police Department’s financial crimes unit.

“It goes back to the old adage ‘let the buyer beware,’ ” he said. “One of the problems with Craigslist is that a lot of people are too trusting when they engage in transactions. They don’t ask the right questions, they might be under a lot of pressure economically, socially, with their family, to find a place to live.”

The police department doesn’t keep track of which thefts by deception reported in Chicago are related to rental scams, Lucki said, and the Federal Trade Commission does not have statistics on how many rental scams are reported around the country, either.

Lucki also noted that the crime likely is significantly underreported.

“A lot of people of low economic means don’t have the time to contact the police or the wherewithal,” he said. “A lot of times they might be embarrassed they got scammed.”

The proliferation of apartment rental listing websites and the popularity of Craigslist have enabled financial criminals to become tougher to weed out from honest listings.

“Some people unfortunately still believe that if they see it on the Internet it’s true,” said Steve Bernas, the president and CEO of the Better Business Bureau of Chicago. “But what the scam artist could do is copy someone else’s entire [listing], same pics, same names. I can make a website that looks like a Fortune 500 company in minutes.”

That was likely the case when David W. Quinn, 35, went hunting for his first apartment in the city in April 2012.

“I will always remember that the ad was perfect,” he said. “I was sure it came from a realtor company.”

But when he and his partner arrived at the one-bedroom in Jefferson Park, the man there to show the place started pushing for them to put down a deposit in cash. Immediately.

It took the man more than 20 minutes to find the right keys to the unit, Quinn said, and when they said they weren’t carrying the $900 needed to make a deposit, the man told them just $400 would do. Quinn, who now lives in Roscoe Village, said they quickly realized it was a scam.

“When people look, they think they’re weeding out the creepy ones, but I didn’t realize that some people are stealing other people’s ads,” he said. “We never took our checkbook with us, and that we would always have a reason to say, ‘We’ll have to think about it.'”

To protect themselves from a scam, Bernas suggests renters view listings with an extra level of skepticism.

“Do some more research before you go out there,” he said. “Put that address in Google, find out who the property manager is and give them a quick call. Then you can kind of have some confidence that the person is truly who they say they are.”

Avoid red flags

It’s not always possible to tell someone is trying to carry out an apartment scam right off the bat, but there are some easy ways to stay safe and avoid red flags, police officials say.

“ Never wire money or pay in cash for an apartment, even if the landlord is insisting on a quick security deposit or application fee.

“ Use the Internet, a business directory and/or a landlord’s ID to verify that he or she is the true landlord of the unit.

“ Keep on your guard if the apartment is going for a rent much lower than other nearby units.

“ Write checks to exchange money, and keep a record of transactions, such as the security deposit, application fee or first month’s rent.

“ Verify information about the apartment with other tenants in the building, or the people currently renting the unit, if possible.