CINCINNATI — You may have heard of the rental scam where fake landlords take a prospective tenant's deposit money, then disappear.
But one Cincinnati woman says a fake landlord handed her the key to an apartment, and allowed her to her move in.
Now, the real landlord is demanding that she move out immediately.
Latasha Crossty took us through the her dream apartment in Price Hill that she has spent the last two weeks furnishing, from the living room to the outdoors.
She even had cable and internet set up, put up curtains, and purchased patio furniture for outside.
But then came a knock on the door, from a woman who claimed she was about to show the apartment to a possible renter.
"She said 'I am here for a showing,'" Crossty said. "But I told her that I live here. She said no I don't, that no one is supposed to be living here."
The woman accused Crossty of being a squatter, and said her company would begin eviction proceedings.
Who did she really rent from?
It turns out Crossty gave a $1,000 deposit and another $1,000 for the first month of rent to a fake landlord who she met on the street, and who said he had some apartments to rent out.
So she stopped over to see the apartment, loved it, and immediately gave a down payment.
"I gave him me and my kids' money, thinking we got a home," Crossty said.
This case is unusual because typically a rental scammer posts a fake ad, then takes a deposit for an apartment they don't really own, and vanishes into the night.
Its almost unheard of for them to give the tenant a key that works in the door, and then tell the victim to go ahead and move in.
But that's what apparently happened.
Neighbor Kyla Moulton, along with Cincinnati Legal Aid, are now seeing what they can do to help Crossty stay.
"She's scared," Moulton said. "She gave someone $2,000, all she had. Now they've told her that her home isn't hers. She doesn't have anywhere to go."
Crossty and Moulton have already asked the property managers if should could sign a legitimate lease and stay, but did not get any response.
We called and visited the property management company, Fortune Vine Realty, but could not find anyone to talk.
The office was locked, and no one returned our voicemail.
But the managers are still active, because one week after we first met with Crossty, she says she found a "Notice to Leave the Premises" taped to her door.
It was not a court order, but Crossty worries she could be evicted at any moment.
She cannot believe the nice man who showed her the apartment, gave her a lease to sign, and took her money was really a fraud.
"The only thing I know is I trusted someone I thought was genuine," she said. "I never would have thought in a million years this man wasn't what he said he was."
It now appears the fake landlord may have gotten the key from a lock box on the door, or the apartment had simply been left unlocked by the owner, and he put a new lock on it.
An investigation by the Detroit independent news outlet Outlier Media found this scam is becoming widespread in lower income areas of Detroit, where fake landlords now usher new tenants into vacant homes and apartments they don't really own.
It appears this more sophisticated version of the rental scam is now spreading to other cities, including Cincinnati.
For now, Crossty is just living day-to-day, worried that a Sheriff's office may knock on her door at any time.
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