Since the explosion of Craigslist, we’ve had the opportunity to buy discounted electronics, sell used furniture and advertise jobs, all on one platform.
However, it is difficult to ignore some of the more scandalous user abuses of the popular website such as known cases of sex solicitation, Boston’s notorious Craigslist killer Philip Markoff, and various scam artists siphoning money by the thousands from vulnerable people.
Though La Plata County is a relatively rural community, it is not excluded from popular online fraud such as the “Nigerian Prince” scam and others. A variety of people, ranging from a county judge to workaday residents, are falling victim daily to elaborate scams.
Durango Police Department records show nearly 90 people have reported being victims of fraud on Craigslist since the beginning of the year.
Anastasia Lucero and her husband, Toby Lujan, both of Durango, were the victims of a rental scam earlier this month. The couple recently had been approved for Section 8 Housing – government assistance for rental housing for low-income families – and were in the process of finding an affordable rental in La Plata County.
When Lucero found a three-bedroom, two-bath home listed in Bayfield for $1,000 (including utilities), she thought her prayers had been answered.
The landlord, who gave the name Hector Rivera, said he would be willing to accept Section 8 and said that the rent was low because he lived out of town, and his wife didn’t want to sell the home. He then requested an $800 deposit via MoneyGram before sending the keys in the mail.
The couple could afford to send only half the amount, and Rivera agreed. Lucero had not heard back from Rivera the next week and became concerned. Rivera told the family that his lawyer had advised him not to send the key until he received the payment in full. The family agreed to send $250 more.
Shortly after, Lucero decided to do a Google search of Rivera’s phone number and came across a forum of people who had been scammed in a similar manner in Rhode Island, California and Massachusetts. Also, the different aliases the man used where included. The next morning, the family was able to cancel the transaction.
The scammer later confessed to have been working out of Africa, she said.
The home’s information also had been taken from Coldwell Banker and Heritage House Realtor’s listings.
Craigslist simply provides the platform for users to browse and advertise at their own risk. In an effort to police and remove inappropriate content and scammers from the website, Craigslist has made available a “flag” for users to use. Also, the website has a “safety” tab that gives users information about how avoid scams and maintain personal safety.
Another popular scam is people receiving an excessive amount of money for an item he or she is selling. In this case, the customer overpays with a fraudulent check or money order and asks the seller to return the excess, DPD Detective Burke Baldwin said. Sometimes, it takes weeks for a bank to realize original payment was falsified, but by that time, the scammer already has received his reimbursement for the overpayment.
While many residents have fallen victim to these elaborate scams, a handful of people have noted suspicious interactions while trying to buy or sell an item. Those people were able to notify the police in a timely manner and didn’t lose money. However, law-enforcement efforts to catch these scammers are rarely successful.
A Durango resident did lose a lump sum of money.
One of the reported victims of a Craigslist scam was La Plata County Judge Martha Minot.
Minot found a 13-foot trailer advertised Feb. 18 on Craigslist, according to a police report. She then began corresponding with the seller who gave the name Brian Slaughter. Minot sent a payment of $2,200 via MoneyGram to an Oklahoma address Feb. 21.
Slaughter became unreachable, so Minot contacted AutoTrader because he had claimed he was working for the company. AutoTrader explained that it does not use Craigslist to advertise products.
According to the police report, Minot was fully aware she was not likely to recover her money.
Baldwin advised that consumers should always be wary of a person trying to conduct business while out of town, overseas or unwilling to meet face-to-face.
The biggest thing is when a person requests an untraceable form of payment such as Western Union or Green Dot, he said.
Terrorist organizations use Green Dot to transfer money, and if the FBI’s counterterrorism division can’t trace it, the Durango Police Department sure can’t either, Baldwin said.
Though the vast majority of Craigslist ads are legitimate – and the nefarious ones don’t exactly scream scam – some characteristics should raise a red flag.
For instance, if you see a rental listed that includes various qualities of photographs that should trigger suspicion. It doesn’t hurt to drop the image into Google images to see if the pictures were stolen from a real estate website, Baldwin said.
Be skeptical of doing businesses with someone who claims to be overseas or out of town. Also, if the ad has a significant amount of typos or broken English, it could be an overseas scammer.
Most people renting or selling in the area should have a good understanding of the English language, with a few exceptions. If the person conducting business appears to have some kind of Eastern European or Middle Eastern accent, be skeptical, but not racist, because many scammers often operate from abroad, he said.
The reason many of these scams are successful is because of the Internet, he said. Most of these scams would never work if executed in person.
“If it’s too good to be true, it’s not true,” Baldwin said.
vguthrie@durangoherald.com
On the Net
Craigslist provides several tips about how to avoid scammers:
www.craigslist.org/about/scams
