I turned up to my new home & a stranger answered the door – brazen tricks of fake landlords scamming renters for £1,000s

SHAMELESS scammers are hiring out Airbnbs to pose as estate agents and landlords, before swindling desperate Brits out of thousands of pounds.

And the shocking rise in such elaborate rental scams across the UK has cost renters a staggering £12million, a new investigation reveals.

New Channel 4 documentary UNTOLD: The £12 Million Rental Scam found the criminals are using websites like Facebook Marketplace and Open Rent to target potential victims.

And with only one property available for every eight tenants looking, renters are desperate, making them easy pickings for the scammers. 

With half of under-35s renting from private landlords, the number of tenants is the highest it’s been since the millennium.

Reporter Harleen Nottay, herself a previous victim of a rental scam, says: “Criminals are posting what looks like genuine property ads online. But once hopeful renters pay up, they’re ghosted and left with nowhere to live.”

As a student Harleen found a rental property on Gumtree and the ‘landlord’ asked her to pay a £1,000 deposit.

Desperate she paid up, but the minute they got the cash she was ghosted and never saw the keys. 

Harleen thought she had just been unlucky but her investigations revealed crimes like this are on the rise with nearly 100 reports made to the police each week.

That’s a jaw-dropping 345 per cent increase in the last decade.

And she believes the fact that people are often ashamed to admit they have been scammed could mean the figures are even higher.

“You are literally walking through a minefield, it is a really tough climate out there,” she says. “It is just such a shame that we are at the point in this country where fraud has got to such a level and it is really hard for people to keep themselves safe.

“Rental fraud is massive. The fact that 40 per cent of all crime in England and Wales right now is fraud is incredible, but even that doesn’t give a true picture as many people don’t even report scams to law enforcement.

"I think we have an epidemic on our hands in this country.

“I think people can be embarrassed to report it, which is why I speak so openly and candidly at being scammed in the past myself.

"I really don’t think there is a place for shame when it comes to any victim of any crime. We don’t sit there and beat ourselves up if somebody comes in and robs our house.

"Why are we doing that when a sophisticated professional who knows exactly what they are doing and the language that works is swindling you?"

Fleeced for £8k

An explosion of social media platforms and online rental forums means it is easy for scammers to hunt out potential victims.

One victim of a rental scam like this is Anna, 26, who was swindled out of thousands in an elaborate scam via Open Rent in London. 

A criminal posing as an estate agent had ripped property images from an Airbnb listing, which the fake estate agent then rented out himself to hold fake viewings. 

He took six months’ rent upfront to secure the property - something that has become standard practice amongst a desperate renting community - and subsequently disappeared, leaving Anna £8,100 out of pocket.

It was only when they went to the property to try to collect the keys to move in that Anna and her partner realised they had been scammed.

“I went to the property and I knocked on the door,” she recalls. “And the guy who answered told me that it was actually an Airbnb, and he had been renting it for the next five days.

"The whole property wasn’t available for rent. It was just an Airbnb that had been hired. I just had this sinking feeling of dread."

Anna was totally shocked as the whole process had seemed completely professional and above board.

She says: “I’ve signed for properties in the past with less thorough processes. Having a man there who was suited and booted to come and greet us when we did the viewing was normal.

"It was a fake estate agent, fake contracts, a fake website. I just felt so deceived and a loss of hope in the system.”

She reported it to Action Fraud - the national fraud and cybercrime reporting centre - but they did not take her case forward.

Of more than 5,000 rental fraud cases reported to Action Fraud last year, only 67 were brought forward for charges - around 1 per cent of cases.

Luckily Anna had enough documentation to support her case that her bank refunded her the money - but the whole experience left her shattered.

“It wasn’t even about the money in the end,” she says. “Somebody denying you your home, shelter. It was like the theft of your autonomy, your safety and your freedom.”

Harleen adds: “Anna is a very switched-on, intelligent young lady. What happened to her would have happened to me, would have happened to anybody.

"She did all the checks and all the due diligence. She had viewed the property herself, she had proper contracts, it all seemed above board and legitimate.”

Generation rent

Channel 4’s investigation found one of the most prolific websites for scammers is Facebook Marketplace, with new data from Santander revealing the site makes up almost half of all rental scam claims made to the bank in the past year.

Exclusive research carried out for the programme by Generation Rent analysed hundreds of Facebook Marketplace ads across six UK cities - London, Birmingham, Manchester, Belfast, Cardiff and Edinburgh with some shocking results.