I have been waiting for the day that a scammer actually pays for an ad on the site, uploads photos, and the rest of their information. The operative word here is “pays.” This happened yesterday when I got an ad for a flat in Toronto. The signs were all there that it was fraud – the text had the same “tone” as a typical scam email – the fellow’s name was Joseph – and the ad started like this “My name is Joseph. Bright 3bedrooms apartment with modern bathroom, bed linen. It also has its own private kitchen with all cutlery and crockery.”
Crockery? Why would you leave this at an apartment you are renting? And cutlery? The title of the ad also said 2 bedrooms which contradicted the text in the ad that said 3.
I cut and pasted some of this guy’s ad text into a google search, and he had posted the exact same ad on several other websites – but for different cities.
The photos were very bad, and looked like they were stolen from a variety of different ads from different sites too.
I then tracked the guy’s IP address (I capture these for every ad) and lo and behold – Nigeria!
The payment came from someone in the UK – so it might of been his boss or subordinate paying with a stolen card or something like that. I didn’t accept the money (you can refuse payments in Paypal.).
Just goes to show the lengths these chodemonkeys will go to steal from you.
Fortunately we catch and block most of these idiots before they do much damage.