Scammers are targeting people looking for a place to live in Greater Manchester with fake listings.
The frauds play on the region’s housing shortage to try and con would-be tenants out of hundreds of pounds at a time.
The Manchester Evening News has discovered that fake ads are being place on Facebook Marketplace for homes to let.
The posters ask people to contact them by WhatsApp – the encrypted messaging service which is supposed to be more secure than other forms of messaging – to enquire about the properties.
But when asked about viewing the property, the scammers insist cash must be handed over first, for what they claim is a ‘refundable deposit’.
Here, the M.E.N’s Stephen Topping looks at what the problem means for househunters and agents – reveals what happened when he approached an online scammer, and finds out what Facebook is doing about the problem.
The warning signs
Having seen a post about the scam affecting someone in Droylsden, Tameside, I searched Facebook Marketplace for myself to look for other suspicious adverts.
I searched for properties to rent within 5km of Manchester and trawled through the list of houses, apartments and flat shares that came back.
Many adverts looked legitimate – such as city dwellers searching for new housemates to take on a room, or tenants looking for someone to take over their tenancy – at prices you would…
