New scam in town: People looking online for rental properties duped with ‘token amount’ trick

Hansda was visiting his hometown at that time, so he thought he had better engage the property before it slipped away. Once he paid that amount, the fraudster posing as the “flat owner” demanded more money as a security deposit and persisted with the demands by falsely stating that the transaction was pending, until the engineer lost Rs 3,06,529 lakh to the fraud.

Fraudsters in the city are increasingly using this new bait to dupe people looking for rental apartments on various property hunting websites. Typically, they list properties that are posh- looking at a very attractive rent and lure the interested parties into paying token amounts on the pretext of “strict housing society rules”.

Siddharth Dhende, a banker, recently came across such a bait when looking for a rental apartment in Model Colony, Pune. “On a listings website, I found a small apartment at a monthly rent of just Rs 12,000. I contacted the flat owner who told me that the society does not generate a visiting pass until the prospective tenant pays a token amount. He asked me to send him Rs 2,500 through a UPI app. I asked around and found that the rent quoted was very low for the area. I smelt something fishy and refused to pay,” said Dhende.

Hansda’s case also shows how fraudsters blackmail the victims into sending them more money by using the lever of the money that has been already sent to them.

“In such frauds, 70 per cent portion of the money lost is sent by the victims to save the 30 per cent that they had sent already,” said Inspector Chandrashekhar Sawant of the cyber crime station of the Pune police. “The additional amounts asked are in small instalments as compared to the previously paid sum. So to ‘secure’ this amount, the victims continues to comply with the fraudsters without realising that they are getting down deeper in the fraud.”

“The fake flat owner kept telling me that until and unless they receive the amount in his account, he will not return the money that was ‘under process’. Hence, I kept trying to make a ‘successful’ transaction and lost Rs 1.32 lakh to them. When I inquired with him after a few days, he told me that my funds were still under process and that I will be required to pay Rs 49,500 as GST over the amount that was already paid. He told me that I will get this amount back as well. Later, at the same pretext they took another Rs 30,000 and Rs 20,000 from me,” Hansda said in the FIR.

After a week, when he tried calling the “flat owner” to see the apartment and get the money back as promised, the phone number was no longer functional. He then approached the cyber police and finally, after two months, an FIR was registered with the Chatrushringi police station on September 16.

Justin Raj, a real estate broker who has been in the business for 24 years, said that it was important for the prospective tenants to physically visit the property before they make any financial transactions with the owner or the broker. He also said that online platforms should verify properties before they are listed online.

“Housing societies never charge any ‘token money’ to issue visiting passes. Prospective tenants need to be cautious and should not send any money to anyone before they see the property in person. People may post fake photos on online platforms and on most platforms there’s no mechanism to monitor if the posted properties are genuine,” said Raj.