While scrolling through my email, I see a headline from WRE News that peaks my interest. I immediately click through to the article by Phil Hall. The first paragraph reads “A California county is under siege by fraudsters pretending to be property owners and tricking real estate agents into selling properties they do not own.” Now I knew I wasn’t the only one that almost fell victim to this scam, but I didn’t expect it to be front page news. Well, friends, this calls for story time!
Before we get into vacation rentals and master scammers, let me preface this story by sharing that I am a licensed realtor in both Florida and Georgia with nearly $15,000,000 in sales. I also hold a Florida broker’s license. The point? Fraud can happen to anyone.
It’s February 2020 and I’m at my desk busy balancing the roles of Client Relations Director and Realtor for one of Orlando’s top short-term vacation rental companies. We’ll save the story of how I ended up heading both divisions simultaneously for another day. The pandemic hadn’t yet shut down the U.S. so it was business as usual. I received an email from one of my clients saying he was finally ready to sale. I say finally because he and I had the conversation about him selling on multiple occasions, both in person and via email. He was a Nigerian businessman who purchased this vacation home many years prior (long before I became an agent) and, despite it not providing the returns he hoped for, was reluctant to sale. He had an emotional connection to the home.
The last time he was in town, I reminded him that his friends that purchased in the same community at the same time had all sold their homes for good reason. I advised that it would be in his best interest to sale the property and use part of the profits to purchase a newer vacation home, one that would have positive cashflow. When I saw his email, I smiled. I knew this decision would greatly increase his net rental income and he’d be grateful that he listened to my advice. Within a few hours of the listing agreement being signed electronically, I had the home on the MLS. Being an expert at vacation home pricing, we had multiple offers within 24 hours (this was before multiple offers became the norm later on during the pandemic). It’s important to note that, in the vacation rental industry, the majority of my clients were foreigners. This meant most of the sales I conducted were done electronically.
Nothing appeared out of the ordinary. Yet.
We decided on an offer (via email) and my client (or so I thought) countersigned the contract. All documents were sent to the title company. A few days later I receive a call. It’s him. Heavy accent that was sometimes hard to understand even in person – hence why email was our preferred method of communication. He started asking about payment, which was a bit premature at that stage in the transaction. I didn’t read too much into it at the time. The following day I get another call. Same heavy accent. This time it’s the real client telling me that he heard his home was for sale – a sale not authorized by him. Excuse me. Come again? I’d like you to take a minute to imagine how I felt, so you can feel my pain. It was the scariest moment of my career. Is this even real? How could this happen?
Well, here’s how! The fake client hacked the real client’s email. He saw our previous discussions about selling the home. He emailed me asking me to update the email address on file – weeks before he put his scheme into action. So for weeks, after the contact email was updated, I was communicating with the fake client for everything pertaining to the real client’s home. He then asked me to list the home for sale. Due to him already being a client whose home I managed rentals for, I already had everything I needed to know about the property, as well as the owner’s identification. There was nothing to ask for, but the electronically signed listing agreement.
I was now in full on damage control mode.
Fortunately, crisis management is one of my strong suits. All things considered, my real client was okay. He knew my character and was just grateful that the sale hadn’t gone through. Can you imagine him coming to Florida to stay in his home only to find out he no longer had one? Now that nightmare would’ve been way worse than the one I felt I was living that day. That’s a crisis that would’ve been impossible to manage! Calling the selling agent and the title company felt daunting, but I put my big girl panties on and made the calls.
Oh and the fake client called again asking about payment, to which he was promptly informed that he was caught. He hung up, of course. Technically there was nothing we could do. No way to trace him.
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