Fraudsters have scooped over a million euros, duping people into believing they are about to rent a ‘dream’ property for a knock-down price.
Citizens watchdog DECO has sent out a warning. Anyone looking for a rental property online must make sure they check it out first before parting with any money.
Sadly, this has not been the case for hundreds of people who have submitted formal complaints to police over the last few years.
Every year, the numbers go up, a source for the PSP tells tabloid Correio da Manhã – and the real figure for victims will almost definitely be higher.
The paper gives a typical example: ‘Ana’ saw an ad online or a 2-bedr. property in the centre of Lisbon with a garage space for €500 a month.
She leapt at the chance, because the price was so good.
Her contact was a man called ‘Andy’: a German resident who had to return to Germany for health reasons and wanted to leave the property ‘in good hands’.
Andy’s seemingly sincere story reeled Ana in, and she transferred €1,000 euros to an account number given to secure her new home.
The minute Ana had made the transfer, all contact with Andy ‘stopped’.
Ana reported the incident to police, but they have told her there is unlikely to any chance of recovering her money, or indeed in finding Andy.
These crimes take advantage of the ease of placing online ads, explains DECO’s Paulo Fonsec, and could be perpetrated from any part of the world.
CM calls the con, ‘the rentals mafia’.
PSP commissioner Carlos Lourenço says the business is “very lucrative, and allows criminals complete anonymity”.
As to the way to crack this kind of crime, Lourenço says people must report it – however hopeless they feel recovering their money may be.
A 53-year-old estate agent from Cascais told CM that she saw photographs of her former home used for one of these ‘cons’ – advertising an €800 per month rental (when the property itself would normally have been able to ask a rental of between €2,000 and €3,000).
She outed the fraud over Facebook and tells CM she was inundated with messages from people who said they had been taken in and lost money.
She said: “One woman called me to say she had transferred €3,000 without having even seen the property…”
