How a convicted con artist may have exploited Airbnb’s ID checks in rental scams

By Jon Woodward

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    TORONTO (CTV Network) — Hosts on a major short-term rental platform may be kept in the dark about their guests’ true identity – a situation that a prolific Canadian con artist appears to have taken advantage of to fleece even more people in a multi-year crime spree, a W5 investigation has discovered.

Records and receipts appear to show how convicted fraudster Colleen Hull was able to dupe Airbnb and the owner of a Toronto-area property to get access to the home, pose as a landlord to take deposits of tenants, and then disappear.

“It was a shock,” said one potential tenant, Jacob Handy, who was among several people who tried to move into the Oshawa, Ontario home in November – only to find he wasn’t the only one.

Handy had already paid a $1,000 deposit to secure the rental, but found he was among at least five other people who thought they had a lock on the property, only to discover they’d been tricked.

“I knocked on the door. And then a gentleman answered and said, ‘Can I help you?’ And I said, ‘Hey, I’m not sure what’s going on, but I’m supposed to be moving into this unit,” Handy recalled. “He said, ‘You’re the fifth person that’s been doing this.’”

One of the other victims, Ryan Howe, grabbed a picture of Hull from a social media profile before it disappeared. W5 showed that picture to other would-be tenants, who identified Hull as the person who had shown them the place.

Court records showed Hull had been accused of perpetrating a similar scam to a few people a month, off and on, adding up to more than 50 victims in the past four years. One of those victims also identified Hull from the picture.

In some cases, the records indicate she had been banned from other listings sites like Kijiji. In this case, the property where she claimed to be the landlord was actually a short-term rental.

The suite was legally licensed for short-term rental in Oshawa, but title records show Hull is not the owner.

W5 tracked down the real landlord over the phone, who asked to be identified by her first name, Laura.

She said her receipt doesn’t bear the name Colleen Hull. Instead, it shows another person with a first name Tyrell, with a picture of a young man. We’re not identifying him because he tells W5 he had nothing to do with it.

“What happened was, for me, a shock,” Laura said in an interview.

W5 asked if she’d seen the name “Colleen Hull” appear on the app, and whether she might have looked it up and thought twice about accepting the booking.

Laura said her systems are set to a feature called “Instant Book” – meaning it would have been accepted automatically and she may not have even had the chance to check.

“To be honest with you, we pretty much trust Airbnb,” she said.

Airbnb is a multi-billion dollar company with millions of listings. It’s the largest short-term rental platform in the world.

Its website requires your ID when you sign up as part of its identity verification system. W5 wanted to check the system out, so started an account in my name.

We provided the site with my real ID – but then something strange happened. We tried to use an AI-generated profile picture, which was accepted by the site.

As for the name that was used for most correspondence with hosts, the site allowed me to call myself the names of several fictional characters in correspondence with potential hosts.

One of those names was the Sesame Street character “Big Bird” – and the hosts saw that correspondence with the “verified” badge on the AI picture and the fake names. Only in the booking email was my real last name included.

That’s a big problem, said Claudiu Popa, the CEO of Data Risk Canada. He says while Airbnb may know who’s provided it with ID, it should be sharing that information with hosts so they know who they are dealing with.

“That’s definitely not enough in situations where information is being processed and financial transactions are taking place,” he said.

Airbnb says it keeps the real identity information on file, and knows who its customers are, even if its hosts may not. It said it doesn’t rely on a user’s profile photo for identification and relies on a real-time selfie for comparison with government ID.

It also has ratings systems that hosts can rely on for the account-holder’s history with other hosts. Tyrell’s account was poorly rated. After our inquiries, the company says it’s deleted that account.

“When fraudulent activity is reported, we take action immediately, which could include removal from the platform,” the company said in a statement, adding that the behaviour is against its policies.

“The booking guest provided the correct credentials to complete our ID verification process. However, third-party bookings are not allowed on Airbnb. Booking guests are required to be present for the stay they have booked,” the company said.

It’s also possible Hull used someone else’s account, something that would be against Airbnb’s terms of service.

Handy wishes that either the landlord or Airbnb had been checking who they were dealing with before he lost $1,000 and a promising place to live.

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