Vicky Nguyen

They rip off a bunch of people and disappear.

Hey, Andrea.

Great to be with you.

This is a new frontier and a really wild one, Andrea.

So a lot of younger generations go not on just Craigslist or StreetEasy to look for apartments and rental homes these days.

They're looking for them on TikTok and Instagram.

And while there are legitimate accounts, scammers have found a way to rip off tons of videos from real real estate agents and realtors, make new bogus imposter accounts, and they post the same apartment for a fraction of the cost.

It's too good to be true, but...

If you are new to an area or you're a first-time renter, you might not know that this apartment for $1,500 actually goes for $15,000 in New York City, right?

Because $1,500 still seems like a lot of money.

So what they do is they take these videos and they attract people.

And once they get them on the hook, they're like, hey, this apartment's going to go really fast.

I'm going to need you to send a fully refundable deposit.

but you need to do this and act quickly.

So there's a couple of red flags, right?

The price is too good to be true and you need to act fast.

There's a sense of urgency.

And so they'll ask you for two, three, $400, which a lot of people in hot rental markets think that's reasonable.

And then they find out the account has ghosted them.

Once they've zelled or PayPal or Venmo the money over, that person cuts off all communication.