Family Left Homeless After Rental Scam

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[00:00:01] Bob: This week on The Perfect Scam.

[00:00:03] Phillip Rumple: So I slept pretty well the first few nights and things like that, but by the third night, I'm like, I need the keys. I want the keys. And then he's not responding. And then we start getting knocks on the door...

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[00:00:17] Bob: Welcome back to The Perfect Scam. I'm your host, Bob Sullivan. Imagine moving hundreds of miles away to a new home, packing up your whole life, the kids, the pets and renting a new place, unpacking everything, and setting up your new home only to be told days later that you are trespassing, and you must leave in three days. That sounds unbelievable, and the first time I heard about it all I could think was, how could this possibly happen? Well, today we're going to show you. Phillip Rumple was planning to move his family from Las Vegas to Denver last year when the plans sped up fast. But let's go back one step. Why was he leaving Las Vegas?

[00:01:07] Phillip Rumple: Well for a few reasons. One, I was tired of always burning up during the summer. You know once we have three years straight of 120 to 122, I'm like, I would like to walk outside without my shoes melting on me, that would be great. And then my daughter's fiancé at the time, who is now her husband, was like, I have never seen snow. And I'm like, well, we should move to some place that has weather. And then we're like, okay, so what good place has four seasons and has relatively good politics for us to move to, and we looked at Colorado as a great option for that. And by the time that we even finished considering it, my daughter had three job interviews. So we were like, yep, this will work.

[00:01:40] Bob: Great, so Denver just had more opportunity for your kids.

[00:01:42] Phillip Rumple: Significantly more opportunities for both of them. And then even for my daughter who was still in high school, she already had a high school picked out, so it was a lot easier for her to find what she needed.

[00:01:52] Bob: Oh great, okay. So, so give me a timeframe for when was it that you committed to moving to Denver?

[00:01:57] Phillip Rumple: (laughs) You're going to laugh. We talked about it in June of 2023. We made up our minds somewhat in August, okay, like around August 2nd. She was like, "Oh, I think we should do it. Maybe we shouldn't do it. Maybe we are going to do it." And then she told her boss on August 4th, "We're doing it." And after she told her boss, we're like, okay, we're leaving. And then by that time in August we were out in Denver. (laughs)

[00:02:19] Bob: That's, yeah, that's not the timeframe most people normally work on. (laughter)

[00:02:25] Bob: It's a really quick timeline but Phillip and his family were used to moving thanks to his military career.

[00:02:22] Phillip Rumple: It's actually again not uncommon. I move around a lot. I have moved to way too many states in my 44 years of existence, and I have lived in about three different countries and visited about 25 different countries being in the US Air Force. So, for me, moving happens all the time.

[00:02:49] Bob: So Phillip started the process the way he always has.

[00:02:55] Phillip Rumple: You know, I've always looked in Craigslist for a place to stay, and I always love renting from private landlords, they just make the best landlords out there. And so we went on Craigslist, we hunted around for places to stay that were within our price range and that would work out for you know four people in the house with good separation between me and my adult kids, and then we found this one place in Aurora, which was absolutely beautiful, and we're like, okay, this is a good bid on it. So we talked to a few different people on it, we looked up the information on it on the MLS and tried to find out, is it a real place? So the MLS said, yes, it is a real place. And yes, it is for rent, and it's been on the market for about three months. And I'm like, great, so everything's really checking out with this.

[00:03:35] Bob: What did his family like about this house?

[00:03:38] Phillip Rumple: Well it was just this beautiful three-story home. It was two stories on the main level and it had a beautiful basement, a great, enclosed backyard. We had a beautiful uh drive-up, multi-car driveway and garage. It was just absolutely wonderful and it was a corner lot, which is what I liked because we had the ability to do the gardening out front, we had the apple trees in the back, literally it was everything that we were looking for.

[00:04:00] Bob: So they reach out to the owner.

[00:04:04] Phillip Rumple: The next step is just to contact them and see if they still are open, what the requirements to rent are, all the normal things that you would normally ask about it. So we reached out and a gentleman by the name of Russell Thompson got back to us and said that he was the son of the guy who was, you know, renting the house out, which is not uncommon. We've dealt with that many times before. And we got all the details about the house; what are the requirements to rent, how long it's been on the market, who are you in relation to the owner? Who is the owner? Can I get the owner's contact information? The conversation progressed from there, and then we eventually spoke to Charles who was the father of Russell, and he was the actual owner of the house, and I'm like, okay, great. So we're going to want to rent from you and all that good stuff, but Charles is like, you're out of state. I'm like, yeah, we're out of state. He's like, before you rent, I want you to actually fly down here and I want you to look at the house. And so then we proceeded to go down on that route.

[00:04:54] Bob: You've certainly heard stories about victims putting down deposits for long-term rentals based on internet ads that turn out to be fake. Well, Phillip isn't about to let that happen.

[00:05:05] Phillip Rumple: I mean a lot of the times when you're moving out of state, you do want to see the place, you could do a Zoom tour, you could do a Hangouts tour, you could do something, but the best thing for you to do is literally to fly out and physically visit the place. Not only to make sure that, you know, it's in the right condition, the neighborhood is good, the neighbors are nice, it's exactly what's actually advertised. That you're not going to get from a Zoom tour or anything else like that. So you really do need to fly out.

[00:05:29] Bob: In fact, Phillip is so committed to flying out to see the place that he flies from Las Vegas to Denver and back again on the same day, which if you've ever done a trip like that, it's exhausting. But he really felt like he needed to see the place, see the neighborhood. The timing isn't quite right to meet the owner, but that's okay.

[00:05:51] Phillip Rumple: We couldn't quite meet up with Charles when he was out there, 'cause he had to fly back on the date that we wanted to fly out. It was either that or pay, you know, $1200 for a plane ticket, which I wasn't going to do. So we decided to meet up with a real estate agent instead.

[00:06:05] Bob: The agent and the listing were with the website named Invitation Homes which was a lot of homes for rent around the country. So Phillip goes to the site and they follow a pretty normal process for setting up the meeting.

[00:06:18] Phillip Rumple: She had us go to the website, fill out the account, get the showing scheduled and all of that stuff like we normally would. And then once we had the showing confirmed, she's like, "Great, the showing's confirmed. You're going to be arriving at this day. I'll be out here waiting for you."

[00:06:30] Bob: And true to her word...

[00:06:34] Phillip Rumple: So we were at the airport and we took a taxi to the place and then she was just there waiting at the place for us.

[00:06:40] Bob: You pull up, she's standing at the door waiting for you, what did you think of her?

[00:06:43] Phillip Rumple: Typical agent.

[00:06:43] Bob: Tall, short? Young, old?

[00:06:47] Phillip Rumple: A relatively young, maybe in the 30s and 40s range, typical real estate agent attitude. Nothing abnormal.

[00:06:53] Bob: Hmm. Friendly?

[00:06:54] Phillip Rumple: Always. The real estate agents are always friendly, talkative, showing off the place, you know. All the normal stuff.

[00:07:00] Bob: So the agent lets them in and the place seems to check all the boxes.

[00:07:06] Phillip Rumple: Got in there, looked around. Everything was great inside. Beautiful cabinetry. A little bit of work still needed to be done on the baseboards and things like that, but for an older home, what do you expect? Then we were pretty much done. It was a good hour, two, just being there looking around, experiencing the neighborhood. I went to talk to the neighbors across the street to get more information about Russell and Charles. Talked to the neighbor next-door as well about the house and they gave us all the right information, and we were satisfied, so we flew back to Vegas.

[00:07:22] Bob: After flying home and sleeping off the exhausting trip which took pretty much the whole day...

[00:07:39] Phillip Rumple: After I woke up again, I contacted Charles and said, yeah, we would like to go ahead and move forward with the process. He's like, great. All I need you to do is go ahead and put the down payment down and sign the lease. And so we signed the lease, he sent it over to us. I went back and forth with him a little bit on the lease because some of the terms were a little bit older, and I wanted to make sure that we were updated with more Colorado terms that were out there, like the right-of-entry and things like that. So we put those on there, and then he got back to it, made those changes to the lease and we got the final lease. I signed it, and then we sent him the down payment.

[00:08:08] Bob: So how did you pay?

[00:08:10] Phillip Rumple: So I paid with PayPal.

[00:08:11] Bob: And what was the total?

[00:08:13] Phillip Rumple: It was like 6,850 total

[00:08:16] Bob: Was it a first month and some kind of a deposit?

[00:08:18] Phillip Rumple: It was first month's deposit and key rent.

[00:08:21] Bob: So, with the lease and deposit out of the way, Phillip and his family are on the move.

[00:08:27] Phillip Rumple: We packed it all up and we put it in a U-Haul. We cleaned everything and we drove out. It would normally would take us 3 days; we did it in two.

[00:08:36] Bob: It's a long drive, especially in a U-Haul, but they get to their new home on time. They have plans to meet someone at the door to get the keys but...

[00:08:46] Phillip Rumple: He wasn't there with the keys, which was a little bit odd for me. But since we already had the code to the door, we just unlocked the door with the code and that worked. Movers came. They unloaded everything. I contacted him about the keys. "Okay, no problem, I'll send a real estate agent up uh, later tonight or tomorrow." And I'm like, "Okay, works for me."

[00:09:02] Bob: The family scrambles to set up their new digs.

[00:09:06] Phillip Rumple: At this point, I was already in my room, I was taking baths in my room. I had a great office set up. The kids were happy. My youngest daughter was thrilled. She had a whole basement to herself. And it was just a great set up.

[00:09:18] Bob: And even the pets are happy.

[00:09:21] Phillip Rumple: They were running around. My oldest cat was up in my room. She didn't really like traveling around the house so much, but she stayed mostly in my room. But yeah, we have three cats; they were having a heyday.

[00:09:32] Bob: Put your head down on your pillow the first night, and did you sleep well? Did you say, gosh, thank goodness that's over?

[00:09:37] Phillip Rumple: I slept well. I mean I did give the keys a little bit of extra thought and I'm like, that seems a little odd I don't have the keys in my hand, but we have the code, so everything seemed fine.

[00:09:47] Bob: Everything seems fine. But the next day comes and goes and the agent doesn't come by with that key. And then another day passes. And still, no key.

[00:09:58] Phillip Rumple: So I slept pretty well the first few nights and things like that, but by the third night, I'm like, I need the keys. I want the keys. And then he's not responding. And then we start getting knocks on the door and I'm like at this point, okay, now I'm not sleeping.

[00:10:10] Bob: They start getting knocks at the door? From who? Well the first knock comes about 72 hours after they move in.

[00:10:19] Phillip Rumple: It is some lady, and she didn't leave her name, and she didn't want to discuss too much of it, but she's like, "We're here to see the place." And I'm like, "Well we already rented the place. We've already got a signed lease and everything." And she's like, "Well that can't be, because I've got a signed lease." And I'm like, "There must be some mistake," and she just walked away.

[00:10:34] Bob: So of course, Phillip reaches out to the landlord and...

[00:10:39] Phillip Rumple: And I'm like, well that just seems odd. So I text Russell and Charles that there was another person at the door with a signed lease and got no response.

[00:10:47] Bob: So that's a bit more nerve-wracking. No answer.

[00:10:52] Phillip Rumple: The possibility was a mix-up. Maybe they signed a lease beforehand and never followed through with it. I've never been in that situation before, but it's within the realm of possibility. So possibly, but the fact that he hadn't responded to my messages for almost 24 hours, and the fact that he didn't respond to this message that I sent him about the lady at the door, and the new lease, that gave me way too much pause.

[00:11:12] Bob: And soon, pause gives way to well panic, because the knocks at the door keep coming. All with the same story.

[00:11:21] Phillip Rumple: The second day there was about four people that came over.

[00:11:24] Bob: That's nuts. Four different people knock on the door and say some version of, "I'm renting this place?"

[00:11:30] Phillip Rumple: I'm renting. I have a lease. I put a down payment on it. I already put a security deposit down.

[00:11:35] Bob: Oh my God. What do you tell them all?

[00:11:37] Phillip Rumple: I'm like, "I don't know what's going on, guys," but the first few times, it was like, let me get your information at least, and it was a fight to get that because no one wants to share their private information. But after the second person, I'm like, okay, this is just wrong.

[00:11:50] Bob: This is just wrong. It's their new home. The kids love it. The pets love it. But now...

[00:11:57] Bob: Now you're worried. At what point do you share your worries with your kids?

[00:11:59] Phillip Rumple: I didn't have to. My kids were the ones that were answering the doors.

[00:12:03] Bob: Oh okay. Hmm. Just like, "Dad, there's this woman here who says she lives here."

[00:12:05] Phillip Rumple: Yeah, essentially it was my daughter going, "Dad, there's someone here that says they have a lease." And I'm like, "No, we have the lease." And they're like, "Dad, just come over here."

[00:12:13] Bob: Not knowing where to turn, remember the owner isn't answering calls or texts so he...

[00:12:20] Phillip Rumple: So I called the police, because Russell's not responding, Charles's not responding. I explain the situation to the Aurora Police Department, they send a sergeant out, and the sergeant gets all the text messages from me, they get all the information from me, they get my bank statements and everything from me, and then they give me a card and a case number. And they're like, "Anybody, who else who comes to your door, give them the information on this card and tell them to call, so they can continue tracking." And so from there, it was easier to get information from people because it was just adding to the case.

[00:12:47] Bob: From there the knocks on the door keep coming. The home is starting to feel unsafe.

[00:12:54] Phillip Rumple: But now this is getting into the point where I turn into my military career where I'm starting to investigate. I'm like, what is going on? Where is the information coming from? I look at Invitation Homes, I look at the real estate agent, and at that point, after looking at the DAR number that was given, the DAR number's invalid, so she's not even a real estate agent.

[00:13:13] Bob: What's a DAR number?

[00:13:14] Phillip Rumple: The Denver Real Estate Agent license number.

[00:13:17] Bob: Okay, yeah, sorry. Go ahead.

[00:13:18] Phillip Rumple: Her number didn't match anything that was in the records, so that didn't work. Her telephone number when you called it was disconnected. Text messages wouldn't go through. So I'm like, okay, so there's something really big here, so I started looking at Invitation Homes and I looked at that, and they're accurate. And so I called Invitation Homes and I explained the situation to them.

[00:13:37] Bob: And when Phillip calls Invitation Homes, he gets some terrible news.

[00:13:43] Phillip Rumple: And they're like, "Under no circumstance, would we ever rent out a house this way. You have been scammed and we will call you back with what we're going to do about that within 24 hours."

[00:13:53] Bob: You have been the victim of a scam? But how? The next call offers more clues.

[00:14:00] Phillip Rumple: The district general manager for the area called back, and she explained the situation, that it's happened to multiple people from Invitation Homes in the Aurora area over the last few weeks, and they were going to talk to their senior management about what actions they're going to take, either a 10-day quit, 3-day quit, or they'll just trespass us to get us out of the house, and then she'll just let us know what their decision was.

[00:14:23] Bob: And while all this is going on, the disturbing knocks on the door keep coming.

[00:14:29] Phillip Rumple: We had a lady come up who was living in a shelter for domestic abuse victims, she had put a security deposit down and she was scammed as well. Um, another gentleman came up, older gentleman who had been, same scam from us through Invitation Homes, moved into a property, out $16,000. And so we took his information, worked with him to try to get it settled, and it was just piece after piece after piece after piece after piece.

[00:14:52] Bob: And finally, the really bad news arrives from Invitation Homes.

[00:14:58] Phillip Rumple: And then eventually she called back, she's like, "Yeah, we're giving you three days to leave, otherwise we trespass you."

[00:15:02] Bob: My head is swimming, so I can't imagine how your head must have felt at this time. Because you're still...

[00:15:07] Phillip Rumple: I was beyond livid. I mean you can still hear the stress in my voice. I'm still beyond livid that this even happened.

[00:15:14] Bob: His family, the kids, the pets, they just moved a thousand miles from home and now they are essentially homeless. They've got to move all their belongings just moved into this home back out of this home and figure out what to do with it all and (inaudible) in three days.

[00:15:33] Bob: You're still trying to figure out your neighborhood, get your kids settled, get your cat settled, and now you're being told you have three days to leave. What are you thinking?

[00:15:39] Phillip Rumple: How? The only thing that came to my mind was how? We took most of our main savings and paid for the cleaning of the house that we were in, paid for any repairs that we had done there, rented the U-Haul and the moving help to get there, for the moving help to unload and pay for the actual trip out here for food and lodging along the way, then we get here and we lose up to $7,000, and we only have less than a thousand left and now I've got to do another U-Haul, another move, pay for any damages to Invitation Homes and find a place to go. All of which was negative, negative, negative, nega--, I don't have the money for it. There's just zero way for me to do that. So thank you for the 3-day quit, but how the heck am I supposed to do that? But it wasn't their problem, so there was no answer.

[00:16:22] Bob: But how could this have all happened? How could they have moved into a house; I mean how could they even toured a house that wasn't owned by the person who said he was renting it. How did that agent even get in?

[00:16:35] Phillip Rumple: What's really going on is that there was a scam ring, Russell and Charles were part of it, and so 16 other people were a part of it as well, and they were using services like Invitation Homes to go to the website, you register, you get a lockbox code. You're not required to have an agent to show you around, you're not required to have a staff of Invitation Homes with you at any time, they can represent themselves and show you around themselves, and act on behalf of Invitation Homes. And it is, of all the people that I've talked to, the 6 to 9 people that I talked to, they were all Invitation Home scams.

[00:17:07] Bob: But more than one moved into a home and were squatting, right?

[00:17:10] Phillip Rumple: All but one. All but one or two moved into the home.

[00:17:13] Bob: That's just, so these, this company has families in all these rental homes of theirs that they're kicking out at this point.

[00:17:19] Phillip Rumple: Yeah, even the district manager admitted that she'd had this problem over the last couple weeks with Invitation Homes as well.

[00:17:25] Bob: The key to the scam is the rise of self-guided tours through the use of so-called smart locks. You've probably used one if you've ever rented a place through a service like Airbnb. They allow people to let guests in remotely. Well rental companies are starting to embrace the technology now, but so are criminals. In Phillip's case, the fake rental agent was able to enter the home by registering for a self-guided tour and getting a smart lock code. And then, according to Phillip, he was able to use the code he got from this criminal over and over.

[00:18:00] Bob: I mean you must have been going in and out of your house for these days, right?

[00:18:03] Phillip Rumple: A lot, yeah.

[00:18:04] Bob: So I mean...

[00:18:05] Phillip Rumple: But the code always worked, so.

[00:18:08] Bob: We reached out to Invitation Homes to ask about Phillip and other victims. They sent us a statement that read in part, "We are always frustrated to discover that one of our homes has been used for these types of scams which can have a devastating effect on the victims. Whenever we discover that someone is living in one of our homes as a result of a scam, we offer the opportunity for that person to apply legally for the home directly with us." They also said they take multiple precautions to keep criminals from using their homes for scams. With regard to smart locks the firm said, "It has become common practice in multifamily and single-family rentals to utilize a smart lock system to show homes." Phillip, meanwhile, has a very immediate problem. Where will his family live?

[00:18:54] Bob: So you have nowhere to turn and you have three days to get out and solve all these problems. What do you do?

[00:19:02] Phillip Rumple: I called my mom for one. (laugh) I'm like, "Mom, I may be 44 years old, but I don't know what to do in this situation." She didn't know what to do either, but she's like, "Honey, call the local news stations." You know, put out some feelers, get some news stories out there and see if the community can help. And then my boss, who found out about it as well, was like, go do a GoFundMe page, explain what's going on, record a video, explain the best you can, and you know put out up there for people to help you out.

[00:19:26] Bob: The TV appearances work. Within just a couple of days about $2,500 has been donated to the GoFundMe, which is important when a landlord with a condo to rent reaches out to Phillip.

[00:19:38] Phillip Rumple: He's like, "As long as you can just pay the first month's rent, that's all I care." And with that 2500 from the community we were able to do that.

[00:19:44] Bob: And all that happened within the 72 hours they gave you.

[00:19:47] Phillip Rumple: All that happened within the 72 hours, yeah.

[00:19:49] Bob: Wow. I mean you must have come right down to the wire though.

[00:19:52] Phillip Rumple: It was up to about 10 pm that night and we were supposed to be out by midnight.

[00:19:59] Bob: Wow. I'm getting so nervous just listening to this story. So you just have all your boxes stacked up near the front door trying to figure out where you're going to go at midnight?

[00:20:07] Phillip Rumple: Um, right around 7 pm, we had the movers with the last of the money that I had, come back out, and repack everything into the U-Haul. I had to rent another U-Haul, I had the movers come back out and put it back in. Didn't have a destination. So the house was empty and I was just waiting on what was going to happen next. And then I got a call from Eric (inaudible), says, "I've got a condo up. I heard your story, understand what's going on, don't care about the deposit. I'll work with you on it. Just pay your first month's rent," which we were able to do, and then he moved us in that day.

[00:20:36] Bob: But that's not the end of the story for Phillip.

[00:20:41] Bob: Oh my God. Okay, so that's, that's a happy ending. You get all your stuff moved into this condo the next day, so what did it feel like the first time you put your head on your pillow in that place?

[00:20:49] Phillip Rumple: I still wasn't sleeping. I mean, I was so angry, and I'm like, everything is just going on to me, to other people. These people are still out there. So I'm like, okay, so we've got more evidence to give out, and then we submitted the case to the FBI. So for like the first week that we were here, I was so engrossed in investigating, I didn't get a lot of sleep.

[00:21:08] Bob: I'm sure this became like a full-time job for you.

[00:21:10] Phillip Rumple: It was an obsession. I wanted to get as much information as I possibly could, help out as many people that reached out to me as I possibly could.

[00:21:16] Bob: And also, as you told me, if I understand correctly, we're talking about 10 or so families that you know of who are homeless also, right?

[00:21:24] Phillip Rumple: Uh, 13 families that I've up to count right now as of last week.

[00:21:28] Bob: The real estate agent is obviously a real human being who is really in Denver. You know so many of these crimes actually ultimately happen virtually, and you think, well it sounds like they're local, but maybe they're somewhere overseas. Who knows? This woman was not overseas. She was there. Do we have any idea who she was?

[00:21:43] Phillip Rumple: I don't, I really don't have any idea who this person was. I've got a feeling, as do several of the other people that I talked to, that this person travels from state to state doing this.

[00:21:52] Bob: Whoever that was, she said her name was Ronnie, was using a stolen identity.

[00:21:59] Phillip Rumple: Fake, 100% totally fake. Ronnie is not the name that was actually on the, the phone number when I looked up the phone number on the reverse Yellow Pages, and reverse White Pages. And I looked it up on some websites using some creative means, that's all I'm going to say on that. The name that came back to the phone numbers in questions were, were not Ronnie, they were completely different names. Then we forwarded those informations on to the police as well. Russell and Charles Thompson, even with the ID that they sent us, even with the documentation they sent us, even with the county paperwork they sent us, all of it was completely faked and the identity was stolen.

[00:22:31] Bob: Stolen IDs, fake identities, smart locks. What Phillip went through; this crime wouldn't have been possible without today's technologies.

[00:22:43] Phillip Rumple: No, it's not possible without a smart lock. It's not possible without, you know, being able to do the document fakes, do the digital ID fakes and things like that, and do the, the electronic VoiceOver IP fakes as well. I mean without that technology, none of this would exist. But...

[00:22:57] Bob: So that's...

[00:22:58] Phillip Rumple: Working in the technical field, I can tell you, technology is a wonderful thing. It moves us forward as a culture, but the more it moves us forward, the more controls we need in place to protect us from that technology.

[00:23:09] Bob: There is even more to the happy ending but it takes a while.

[00:23:14] Bob: What about the money? Did you get any of the money back when you tried to dispute transactions or whatnot?

[00:23:19] Phillip Rumple: After about three months, the bank started slowly rolling back the transactions. Initially, they denied all of it. But because it was through PayPal, I'm not a dumb person, I wanted to make sure there was a paper trail, because it was through PayPal they eventually did refund everything that was in there because I gave them the police report, we gave them all the evidence that we could possible give them, and the news articles, and that was enough for the bank to go, okay, this was proceeds of crime, so here's your money back.

[00:23:44] Bob: But it took three months.

[00:23:45] Phillip Rumple: But it took three months for them to do that.

[00:23:46] Bob: Certainly at a time in your life when you didn't have three months.

[00:23:49] Phillip Rumple: No, we didn't have three months.

[00:23:52] Bob: How is Phillip now?

[00:23:54] Phillip Rumple: My daughter and her new husband are moving out at the end of this month to their own apartment.

[00:24:00] Bob: And so you're, does that mean you're, you have one kid left with you?

[00:24:03] Phillip Rumple: I have my now 18-year-old daughter with me, who just turned 18, and uh we are going to be moving to a two-bedroom apartment somewhere downtown. I want downtown, 'cause it's a better place. Otherwise I'm fine. I now work as a Chief Technology Officer for a major real estate company here in uh Denver. That's some irony for you. And my daughter has got some job prospects out there for her. She just got her permit so she will be driving now, yay, that kind of scares the hell out of me, but okay.

[00:24:32] Bob: How are those other families who were also victims?

[00:24:36] Phillip Rumple: I do reach out to them on occasion to see how they're doing. The lady that was in the domestic abuse shelter has her own place now, which is great. The man wasn't able to recover any of the money that he had, but he was at least moved into a better home from his family. Most of the people had good, positive outcomes being moved in by friends and families eventually.

[00:24:55] Bob: Let's not sugarcoat it. What a terrible way to start a new life in a new city.

[00:24:59] Phillip Rumple: It is. I mean it's horrible. You, you, you move where you want to go, you finally find a place that you and your family can do well in, and you think you get there and you start on this great high, and you crash down to nothing. And if it wasn't for the local community, we would still be down at that nothing. So that's one thing I'm very grateful for.

[00:25:16] Bob: I'm still floored. (chuckle). So the criminals, in the end, the criminals stole close to $7000 from you, right?

[00:25:23] Phillip Rumple: Correct.

[00:25:23] Bob: I hate to say this like this, but this is a lot of work to steal $7000.

[00:25:27] Phillip Rumple: It is a ton of work to steal $7000, but when you look at it, over a period of, a period of one month of investigating, we found 13 families that all happened within that month. So you're talking about stealing 7,000 from us, 16,000 from another, 8,000 from another, 5,000 from another. When the average take from them is 35 to 7500, it may be a lot of effort, but it's a lot of reward for them.

[00:25:52] Bob: What does Phillip want listeners to learn from his experience?

[00:25:57] Phillip Rumple: That no matter how much diligence you have, you don't have enough. When I think about everything he provided to us, and I think about that I could have also just gone down to the county court here in Denver as well and looked at the documents myself, that still wouldn't have been enough, because I have all the right information, and I have the right names on it. That doesn't mean that it was the right information. It was just information that was presented to me. How do I verify this person? How do I verify that this person is related to this product? How do I verify this product is owned by this person? There is no definitive way to do that other than hoping that the ID information they give you matches the ID information on the government document. That's the best due diligence that you can have.

[00:26:38] Bob: And I, I can't imagine, I mean it's absurd to suggest that people go to the county records office every time they rent a place.

[00:26:44] Phillip Rumple: It is crazy to suggest it, but when I spoke to the county recorder, they're like, they wish more people would.

[00:26:51] Bob: Moving is incredibly stressful, especially if you have to move far away. As Phillip's story shows, there are potential pitfalls that, well in truth, didn't even exist a few years ago. So it's important to take every precaution you can. And we want to help you with that. So we invited Rhonda Perkins onto the show. She is Chief of Staff of the Division of Marketing Practices at the Federal Trade Commission's Bureau of Consumer Protection. She's also an expert on rental scams. But even she was surprised by Phillip's story.

[00:27:24] Rhonda Perkins: Oh what a horrible situation, and it's definitely a more elaborate version of the types of rental listing scams that we usually hear about from people, especially where he had someone showing him the property in person and what it sounded like handing him phony documents. We don't usually hear about in a scam that's quite that elaborate for rental listing scams.

[00:27:51] Bob: Okay, so it's been a bit since I've rented an apartment. Self-guided tours are a thing now, is that true?

[00:27:57] Rhonda Perkins: I'm not sure how common that is, but we have seen reports where people have said that someone has given them a code to the lockbox where they can let themselves in.

[00:28:10] Bob: It absolutely makes sense to me. Given this story, I can now absolutely see a scenario where a criminal could get enough information from a landlord to give that to a prospective victim and at least the victim would be able to walk into the house which is again all, all of this is sort of, it's a kind of next-level for me, 'cause it's one thing to tell people, well you should never wire money to someone, you know where there's no physical contact at all, but if you’ve actually seen a house, I could see while sending someone a deposit.

[00:28:37] Rhonda Perkins: Yeah, I'm sure that level of the scam makes it a lot more real for people because they're actually able to walk around and see it.

[00:28:46] Bob: The use of stolen identities and stolen listings and rental scams is quite common she said, and it has been for some time.

[00:28:54] Rhonda Perkins: We're definitely seeing scams where someone hijacks a real rental listing and so much information is available online. Scammers take that information, the address, you can pull pictures from online, and so they'll take that information from a real listing and then move it over to a different rental listing website, and all of the information is the same except for the contact information. So if there is a realtor listed or a property owner, what they'll do is take their information and now the scammer's contact information is attached to that rental listing.

[00:29:32] Bob: Rental scams are very common, unfortunately, and often follow a very familiar pattern.

[00:29:39] Rhonda Perkins: What we normally hear about from people is a scam where the person refuses to show them the property and insists that they keep paying them for different types of fees or deposits or even first month's rent. They're usually refusing to show them the property, which is a huge red flag.

[00:29:57] Bob: We often tell people to avoid making decisions under pressure. Criminals can take advantage of high-pressure situations. But it's pretty normal when you're moving that you're under pressure. So families who are moving are very vulnerable.

[00:30:12] Rhonda Perkins: Well there's all kinds of reasons why people might need to move in a hurry. Maybe they just got a job offer, um, like Mr. Rumple and his family, and so they're moving to another state or maybe something is happening in their current place and they have to get out quickly. So there's all kinds of reasons why people have to move fast and scammers know that, and they take advantage of that, and that's why they pressure people to act quickly and pay in payment methods where it's really hard to get your money back because they know that time is precious and that people a lot of times do have to move as quickly as possible.

[00:30:45] Bob: Today's very competitive real estate market has added even more pressure to the equation.

[00:30:51] Bob: Where I am, rentals are now really, really hot and I have heard stories about people bidding up the price of rental units the way that we've heard people bidding up the price of buying homes, and so it is common for landlords to demand quick action like you see the place, put down a deposit right now or else you'll lose it, right? So that kind of speed also plays to the advantage of the criminals?

[00:31:13] Rhonda Perkins: I think any type of time pressure is an advantage for a scammer because they don't want people to take time to stop and think or do any research on their own.

[00:31:22] Bob: We don't often think about this, but the proliferation of rental scams online is a real problem for property owners too.

[00:31:31] Bob: You know I also think this must be a real pain in the you know what for landlords, especially smaller landlords, right? Because now I'm guessing people are very suspicious uh for, you know, mom and pop uh landlords, and it's probably no fun for them either.

[00:31:44] Rhonda Perkins: Absolutely. And this is why it's so important for people to report these types of scams. It’s not just individuals who've lost money and time who are being hurt here, but there are people who are legitimately trying to rent out their property. So this type of scam really hurts everyone.

[00:32:03] Bob: Rhonda offered lots of specific advice to would-be renters; you'll hear that in a moment. But she said something I think is really, really important you can apply to a lot of situations. Do your research before you get emotionally attached.

[00:32:18] Rhonda Perkins: These people are professional. They know what they're doing, they know what buttons to push. That's why it's really important to do that research before you ever talk to anyone because they're really good at getting people to give up their money very quickly. So take that time to look before you leap. Make sure you know who is actually supposed to be showing that listing, offering that listing. What are the rents in the area? Is this listing offering an unusually low rent compared to other listings nearby? So do that research before you get on the phone with anyone before someone has the opportunity to start pressuring you for payment.

[00:33:02] Bob: Boy, I think that's a good piece of advice that I don't actually recall having heard before. All this stuff we're talking about, do that right away before somebody has any chance to talk to you or manipulate you or even, or even for you to just get your hopes up about maybe this might be real. Do all that before you email or call the number, right?

[00:33:19] Rhonda Perkins: Right, and they're not just wasting people's money, they're wasting people's time. And that's a big deal too. If you have to get out of your current place right now, or you have to get to another state in the next 30 days, this is a real time crunch for people. Moving is never fun. Packing up all your stuff, maybe you even have to get your kids in a new school district, and then you get on the phone with someone with an amazing offer, or over on--, online, and it's, it's much easier to act quickly when you're in that type of time crunch and someone's offering you something that seems really great. And definitely do that research before you start talking with someone, before you get into those conversations about how much it's going to be or how they want you to pay.

[00:34:03] Bob: Okay, so what is the best way to get background information on a prospective property and landlord?

[00:34:09] Rhonda Perkins: So it's really important that people don't use the contact information in a rental listing. But if a company is listed, for example, go to the company's website. Make sure that the listing is there. Call the company from a number, not in the listing that you just saw, but from, perhaps put the company's name in a search engine, go to their website, call them and make sure that that listing is actually available. That does take a few minutes, but it's better than paying for a phony listing.

[00:34:36] Bob: And what about where you look for rentals in the first place? Does that make a difference?

[00:34:41] Rhonda Perkins: Well people look for rentals in all kinds of places, but what we've seen is for information that's online, even if it's a well-known company, a name that we've all heard of, it doesn't mean that the information on that website hasn't been taken by someone who shouldn't be using it and putting phony information in it. But I think regardless of where people are finding the listings, it's still really important to do that extra research.

[00:35:05] Bob: I'm, I'm glad you said that because, of course, you know there are some places that have worse reputations than others but any place that you get a listing from, and we've seen this, this, we've seen this with, with Mr. Rumple, there could be a, a criminal behind the listing. So every place needs verification, right?

[00:35:20] Rhonda Perkins: Absolutely. We don't want people to think that, oh, this is a well-known company that I've heard of, just because they're advertising heavily on TV, online, or the radio, it doesn't mean that there's not a phony listing not showing up there. So people should have their guard up, people should be checking out this information regardless of where they find it.

[00:35:38] Bob: Okay, so what other ways can you protect yourself when house hunting?

[00:35:43] Rhonda Perkins: Make sure to search that listing on your own; go into a search engine, something like Google. Put in the address, see if there are other ads that pop up with that same address that has different contact information. That's a huge red flag. That could be a scam. You can search the property owner or rental company's name plus the words "complaint, review, or scam," however, as we just discussed, these things seem to move really quickly, so that might not be the way to figure out that there's something fishy going on. But make sure that you're calling the rental company from a number on their website, not in one that's provided in the listing because a scammer can put in any contact information that they want. Another red flag is how they insist that you pay. And I know that this is a tricky one because we have people who are paying with payment apps and services like Venmo, but when you're renting a place, you haven't met this person; if they're insisting that you pay through MoneyGram or Western Union or gift cards, which is probably the biggest red flag of all because gift cards are for gifts not for rent or deposits or fees, they might insist you pay cryptocurrency or some way that's really hard to get your money back, and they'll be very specific. You have to spend the money by this way for this account. And they might have different reasons why you keep having to pay different fees to different accounts. So these are all huge red flags. And if you're dealing with a private landlord, look up that person's information in a tax or city assessor's information, in the county or city's information and verify that it's that person who's listed.

[00:37:28] Bob: So that's really interesting. I know that's going to be different probably, slightly different for every part of the country, but just in general, how would someone find that information?

[00:37:36] Rhonda Perkins: You can, once again, go into a search engine, look up your city or county's name plus tax assessor, and/or property records, and find whatever is in your county or city, however they maintain property records, and try to find who actually owns that property. Because anyone can attach any name to an online listing. So we want to verify this information from other sources.

[00:38:05] Bob: And this just verifies that the person who says they own the property actually does own the property, right?

[00:38:09] Rhonda Perkins: Right, because someone could put their own name in. And so if you can, it's important to try to see the property in person, and if the person has a lot of excuses for why they can't, or if you say, you know, I have a friend in the area, they're going to check this out for me. If they have a ton of reasons why they're not able to show it to you in person, that's a red flag. And if you do meet with someone in person, if they hand you a business card, you always want to ask for their identification, for their business card, but once again, as we've seen from Mr. Rumple's story, information can be phony, they can hand you phony lease papers, they can hand you phony documents. You want to call the real estate company or the rental company separately, not the information on a business card, not the information that they hand you. Verify the person that you’re talking to is the person who's actually supposed to be showing you this listing.

[00:39:00] Bob: And if this crime has happened to you or someone you care about...

[00:39:06] Rhonda Perkins: There's several steps that we recommend that they take. They should report it, I can't say it enough, it's really important; report to your local law enforcement agency, especially if you've been in the situation where someone has showed up in person and they're handing you phony documents. You definitely want to let the police know about that. You want to report it to the website where the phony listing was listed. Report to the FTC, reportfraud.ftc.gov, and report it to your state attorney general. So I know those are a lot of steps but it's really important that law enforcement agencies know what's going on, know where these phony listings are, and where it's happening. And the Federal Trade Commission has a report database that I mentioned at reportfraud.ftc.gov, where people report this to us, and we use that information not only for law enforcement efforts, but also to spot trends so that we can get the word out to people because education and prevention is so important. So I'm hoping that people who are listening to this right now, people who read about this through consumer alerts that come out from the Federal Trade Commission or wherever you get this type of information, we're hoping that it will ring bells for people so that when someone says you can only pay with gift cards or Zelle or Venmo, and you have to pay right now, and you have to pay this other person in this different account, and you have to pay the guy who's making the keys, but no, I can't show it to you; we hope that people hear these red flags and that they don't pay the money, because it's so much harder to unwind these things after it happens. So that's number one - reporting. Also, talk about it. Talk to people in your community so that they can avoid this as well. Maybe they're not receiving consumer alerts. Maybe they're not listening to this right now, but you can tell them about what you've spotted or what you heard about and hopefully that will keep other people from losing their money as well. And if you did lose money to something like this, make sure you contact the company however you paid. It can be really hard to get your money back in the way that scammers want you to pay. But it never hurts to try to see if you can get that money, and also alert the company receiving the payment that this is a fraud that's going on.

[00:41:26] Bob: If there's just one takeaway from our conversation, it's this.

[00:41:32] Rhonda Perkins: We can't say it enough; the biggest risk lies are how people ask you to pay, insisting that you pay quickly without taking time to do any type of research. If someone won't give you 10 to 15 minutes to look in a search engine, to make sure that they are who they say they are, and that they're supposed to be offering you this property that they're offering you, walk away.

[00:41:58] Bob: If they won't give you 10 or 15 minutes, walk away. I know it's hard. I know finding a place is nuts right now, but we still don't want you to be the victim of a crime. All the more reason to take just those few extra minutes and independently verify all the things a prospective landlord is telling you. For The Perfect Scam, I'm Bob Sullivan.

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[00:42:30] Bob: If you have been targeted by a scam or fraud, you are not alone. Call the AARP Fraud Watch Network Helpline at 877-908-3360. Their trained fraud specialists can provide you with free support and guidance on what to do next. Our email address at The Perfect Scam is: theperfectscampodcast@aarp.org, and we want to hear from you. If you've been the victim of a scam or you know someone who has, and you'd like us to tell their story, write to us. That address again is: theperfectscampodcast@aarp.org. Thank you to our team of scambusters; Associate Producer, Annalea Embree; Researcher, Becky Dodson; Executive Producer, Julie Getz; and our Audio Engineer and Sound Designer, Julio Gonzalez. Be sure to find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. For AARP's The Perfect Scam, I'm Bob Sullivan.

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