Caveat Renter: Short-Term Stay Scams Abound

Photo: TaxCredits.net Flickr Creative Commons

This summer has seen an explosion of short-term vacation rentals in the Hamptons, and the market is ripe for fraud as shown in last week’s compilation of police incident reports from the Town of East Hampton Police.

The Town of East Hampton Police report two cases where tenants arrived at what they thought would be their vacation rentals only to find themselves without a place to stay.

In the first case Judy Courtney, of 120 Stony Hill Road in Amagansett, arrived at a rental at 248 Kings Point Road in East Hampton. She had found the rental through Craig’s list and paid for it with a $1,400 wire transfer from her bank. Upon arrival she found that the house had been rented for the summer by the occupants and they had not advertised it on Craig’s List. The number the fraudulent landlord gave to Courtney had been disconnected. Her only recourse was to call the police.

In the second case, Anja DeGorgia of 130 Three Mile Hollow Road in East Hampton and another unidentified person, living at 248 Kings Point Road in East Hampton called the police to report that a rental DeGorgia had contracted through Craig’s List at 115 Hedges Lane in Amagansett was a bust. After wiring $1,900 to someone posing as the owner of the house, DeGorgia arrived on the agreed upon date only to find the house was not available for rent nor had it ever been listed as for rent by its rightful owners.

The East Hampton police reports have two things in common: both report instances of rental fraud which were perpetuated through Craig’s List and both list a house at 248 Kings Point Road as the residence of one of the people taken in by the scam, in the first case, and the location of the rental scam, in the second.

Captain Christopher Anderson of the East Hampton Town Police said that online fraud is rife in the short-term rental market and that online renters should beware and take care doing their due diligence. “We’ve seen an endless stream of people showing up at houses they’ve rented online only to find they’re one of many who rented the same place or that the house is occupied and was never legitimately listed for rent by the owners,” said Anderson.

It doesn’t surprise Anderson that last week two separate instances of fraud arose which share the 248 Kings Point, East Hampton address. “They copy a listing they’ve seen online,” Anderson said, “and interject their own names. Then they open a bank account with fake id’s and when they’ve laundered x amount of dollars they shut it down. Renters should exercise caution whenever they are purchasing on Ebay or Craig’s List. When someone says ‘wire me’ a red flag should go up. It’s a confidence game. Sometimes they give their address and tell the renters that the place they’ll be renting is their second home.”

The scam has been particularly effective in the Montauk market. Anderson said that police routinely receive calls from tenants who show up in Montauk at the address they think they’ve rented only to find themselves without a roof over their heads. “I’ve had a place in Montauk where three sets of renters showed up at the same house,” Anderson said. “It’s fraud.”

And, while the majority of people who rent through Airbnb, Craig’s List, HomeAway and VRBO arrive and find things much the way they were advertised, there is no legal recourse for renters who fall prey to scams other than to call the police, because the rentals are, for the most part illegal, unregulated and untaxed.