One family may have to forgo Christmas this year after falling prey to an ever-growing rental scam in the Brockville area.
Natalie Lowery and her husband Tim Moores recently moved to the area from Calgary and had their sights set on Brockville. Lowery thought she had found the perfect home on Reynolds Drive, but instead, she was scammed out of $1,000 and learned the place she thought was her dream home was never even up for rent
They found what they thought was a great place for their family – the posting included four to five pictures of the inside of the house, and also pictures of a man, woman, and child at a local church.
They claimed to come from a “Christian background,” Lowery said, and that they were more concerned about finding someone who would really take care of their property than they were about the money. The reason they were renting the place was they apparently were transferred to Guelph for work.
Interested parties were told to go look at the exterior of the home and to “peek in the windows” and if they liked what they saw, to let them know.
“It just seemed like the perfect little house,” Lowery said.
Then they were told, “quite a few more people” were interested and in order to secure the home, they would have to send last month’s rent.
Lowery said they seemed like a trustworthy family and their story seemed credible, so she did what they asked and sent close to $1,000 to secure the home last Wednesday.
“I was just so excited about finding us a house for our family, I didn’t even think about the possibility of it being a scam,” she said.
She soon realized what happened, and has since been in contact with the police. But there is little they can do because the scam artists communicated via text through an app that allowed them to input any phone number they wanted in order to appear to be from the area.
Brockville police are aware of the scam, according to Acting Staff Sgt. Tom Fournier, who said it has made its way to Brockville within the last few years.
“It’s scary,” he said.
“The last couple years it’s been more and more frequent.”
Read the full story over at the Recorder.ca
