A 27-year-old Eureka woman reportedly was scammed out of $800 when she tried to rent a house on Randall Street in St. Louis that someone had advertised as available on Craigslist. However, the real estate agent handling the property told investigators the man the woman spoke to about renting the home was not the owner, Eureka Police reported.
The woman reported the scam on Aug. 16 after the man who claimed he owned the property stopped responding to text messages she sent him, the report said.
The alleged victim told police she contacted the man on Aug. 10 after seeing the listing. She said the man told her the rent was $1,500 per month and she needed to send him $800 through a mobile payment service called Cash App before he would give her the keys to the house. The woman was supposed to pay the other $700 after moving in, according to the report.
She told police she sent the man four payments, one for $100, another for $300 and two for $200, over a two-day period. The investigation determined the man had used a fake name to set up the account she transferred the money to, the report said.
The woman said the man then called her on Aug. 13 and said he needed the entire $1,500 before he would give her the keys. She said she told him she could not pay the extra money at that time and argued that paying the full $1,500 wasn’t what they had agreed to, so the man said he would refund the $800 she had sent, Eureka Police reported.
However, the woman said the man never sent her money back and stopped responding to text messages, the report said.
After she reported the incident, a Eureka Police officer found the rental property listed on the Zillow real estate website and contacted the listing agent for the property. The agent said she previously had been informed of a similar scam connected to the Randall Street listing, and she said the man the woman had been in contact with was not the owner, according to the report.
The phone number the woman had used to contact the man belonged to a 60-year-old Lynn, Ore., man. Investigators were unable to contact the man using that number, Eureka Police reported.
As of Aug. 26, the woman’s money had not been returned, and police continued to investigate the scam, Lt. Michael Tapp said.