Ginny Davis, a property manager-associate with Magnum York Property Management Ltd. in Olds, says she's battling a worrisome problem — rental fraud.
"What they're doing is they're tagging on to our pictures and our ads," Davis said during an interview with the Albertan.
"'They' being some entity somewhere or somebody. They are taking my pictures, my ads and then they're subbing in their names or their phone numbers. Or, they're leaving my name and adding their phone number or leaving my name and adding their email (address).
"They're changing some aspect at the bottom of the connection part and then they're posting it right back onto the website.
"Or, they're taking a picture of a brand new house that's for sale and they're taking my ad wording and posting it underneath and throwing it up for sale.
"So I've had a few people come in my office and saying, 'how come you have it on this site and on this site for two different prices?'"
Davis said in one case, a woman lost $2,400 as a result of the fraud.
"What they do is they say, 'I have this property for rent. I have a family emergency, I'm out of town in Phoenix,' or 'I'm somewhere. But yeah, that unit is for rent for June 1st.
"Send me your information and your damage deposit and I'll send you off a lease. Here's the e-transfer email.' And they send it to him. He takes it, disappears," she said.
Davis has tried contacting the alleged perpetrators via phone or email but so far that hasn't worked.
"I've responded to them," she said. "You go to an automatic phone call that just sends you right to voicemail. Or if you fire an email, it automatically fires right back that they're out of province or they're out with a family emergency.
"You can't trace it back. You can't trace the phone number back to where it came from because they pop up and disappear the same day. So he'll have a new phone number tomorrow.
"It tends to be the same. The ones that I keep running into are the same individual. He uses several names. And I have reported him to RCMP, at which time they told me there's nothing they can help me with until somebody had lost money," she added.
"So luckily for me, the people that were getting caught up in it were starting to ask questions and started to come to me. That's when I was able to piece it all together."
She said these ads don't tend to appear on more well-known sites like Kjiji, RentFaster or Rent Board.
Davis has noticed the problem for the past six months or so, although it died out for a bit before coming back.
She said some realty companies are experiencing the same problem.
In some cases she said, the perpetrator has taken photos of homes or housing units for sale and put them on a website claiming the home is for rent, when that's not the case at all.
"For instance, I had one the other day. I haven't even managed this unit for over two years. The owner has sold this unit; moved on," she said.
"It's an old, old ad they've found of mine and an old, old picture and they've taken it somehow by finding it and they've scooped it and made it a new ad and are offering a property for rent that doesn't even belong to me, that I don't have available to me."
"It creates a lack of trust in the whole rental industry, for sure," Davis added. "It creates a lack of trust between realty professionals and professional property management and the public when it's not us doing it, it is scam artists.
"And it's affecting the long-distance people. This community's growing so quickly, like with the marijuana (production industry) and everything so we have people coming from all over.
"I have people moving here from Ontario trusting that who I say I am I am. And they are needing to come and rent a property without seeing it first.
"So it is definitely putting a bad name on the whole industry. It's scary for people, for sure."
Olds RCMP Cpl. Shawn Morgan says so far, rental fraud has not been a big issue for police in Olds and area.
"We have had one report in the last month. This is not a crime we have reported to us frequently," he wrote in an email to the Albertan.
