Target 13 Alert: Rental scams are surging, leaving victims out thousands of dollars

“I’ve tried Craigslist, and those were always dead ends,” said Woodland Park resident Darryl Smith.

He’s looking to move from Woodland Park to Colorado Springs for a new job, and thought he was looking at rentals on legitimate websites.

“I tried realtors.com, trulia.com, Zillow and called the local Realtors,” he said.

It was a popular website where he found a house that looked great, at least at first.

A multi-bedroom house for $900 per month, it seemed too good to be true.

But he gave it a shot, called the number, answered some simple questions about his income and job status, but then he said something weird happened.

“He started asking questions about, how much money did I have to get to him,” Smith said. “It wasn’t in terms of deposit. It became how much money do you have. Now I know there’s something up.”

He assumed it was a scam and turns out it was.

The house he was looking at in northeast Colorado Springs is on the rental market but for nearly double what the bogus ad said.

The real broker of the home wasn’t surprised when we called her about the bogus ad.

“Over the past five years, I see it several times a month,” Holly Dalton, owner and managing broker of Encore Properties, said. “The last one I had, it took two days of my phone blowing up to see if a $2,700 rental was really going for $900.”

Smith was lucky, he saw the hoax ahead of time.

But not everyone has been as fortunate.

“It’s hard, we were looking for a very long time,” said Ramona Salas, a Denver rental scam victim.

Her daughter and two grandchildren all moved into a new house that should’ve been perfect for them.

But then they realized they’d signed a fake lease with a scammer.

“Oh my God, what are we going to do now?” said Ana Salas, Ramona’s daughter.

They paid thousands of dollars to a phony who they can’t track.

“It seems the problem is growing,” said Dalton.

Her best advice? Do your homework and if there’s a doubt, use a realtor you can trust.

“Hopefully the more informed people are about it, the less it will happen,” Dalton said.

Sites like Realtor.com, which only allows real estate agents to post listings.

While other websites may have legitimate postings, crooks can get in, steal photos and try to lure potential victims by re-posting a rental for a lower rate.