It was not and now the Logan County Sheriff’s Office is looking for someone that stole pictures off the company’s website and used them with a fraudulent Craigslist ad.
“It’s rather alarming to think they are probably one of many across this big country ours,” said Doug Zimmerman, owner of Zimmerman Realty. “And when you think about it happening in Logan County, just imagine what is happening in the large cities.”
Darrin Ferrell, 22, of Bellefontaine, is looking to move out of his apartment with his wife and small child. The couple responded to the fake ad on Craigslist and texted with the scammer for more than two days.
In the scammer’s initial response to Ferrell, he said that he was a deaf man that could only text and that Ferrell could not see the inside of the apartment because he moved suddenly to Texas and had the keys with him.
The scammer asked Ferrell to send him $1,200 for the down payment and first month’s rent and then he would send him the keys to the home.
That’s when Ferrell contacted Zimmerman Realty and learned the ad was a fake.
Ferrell said if he had paid the scammer the money, he and his wife would not have been able to move out of their apartment.
“That would have taken exactly what we needed to get into the new place that we are actually going to move into, and we wouldn’t have been able to move at all,” Ferrell said.
Zimmerman said he believes the scammers are targeting possibly desperate people searching for affordable housing options.
“They are taking advantage of somebody that obviously needs a place to live and don’t have the funds to live in other places,” Zimmerman said.
Zimmerman said no brokers at his office, or any other in the Miami Valley, would not allow a person to see a property before they buy or rent it.
“You need to meet the individual at the property,” Zimmerman said, “possibly tour the property and have them explain the terms to you — not over the phone or through text message.”
Detective Tom Watson with the Logan County Sheriff’s Office said he is actively investigating the case.
He said he’s working with the Attorney General’s Office to look for similar postings in the Miami Valley and trying to backtrack phone numbers the scammer used to text victims.
However, Watson said a conviction is hard to get in these types of scams because they often originate overseas.
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