FORT CARSON, Colo. - It’s a renter’s nightmare - thinking you’ve found your next home, paying your deposit and first and last month’s rent, then traveling all the way across the country with everything you own in a moving truck only to find out your new home is already occupied by a family that just bought it.
This was the horrible scenario that recently played out for Spc. Jonathan Flores, a supply specialist in 18th Space Company, 1st Space Brigade, and his wife, Fabiola, who were initially out $3600 and living in a hotel for 10 days before they found a place to live.
The couple fell victim to a rental rip off, an occurrence not all too uncommon in this day and age of scams and fraud.
In late September the couple found a house in the Cheyenne Meadows neighborhood of Colorado Springs just north of Fort Carson. Jonathan was being transferred to Fort Carson from Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah, Georgia. He went through a website called FortCarsonHousing.com, found the four-bedroom house, contacted the landlord - a man by the name of David Young - by phone, email and text, and paid the security deposit and first and last month’s rent via Zelle, an online money transfer app.
“Everything was very convincing,” Jonathan said. “He was talking about all the amenities the house has and we definitely fell for it.”
The couple arrived in Colorado Springs in early November and showed up to the house with all their belongings, ready to move right in, but something wasn’t right. Young was supposed to meet them at the house, give them the keys and go over the rental lease details, but instead they were stood up and shocked to see boxes and furniture in the house through the living room window. Little did they know, the house had been sold two days prior to them finding it online more than a month back.
“We were shocked,” Jonathan said. “Like, how could this happen? Now what?”
He immediately went through his chain of command and contacted his first-line supervisor at his new unit. They got the couple a hotel room free of charge utilizing Temporary Lodging Expense (an allowance intended to partially pay members for lodging/meal expenses incurred by a member/dependent(s) while occupying temporary lodging in the Continental United States (CONUS) in association with a Permanent Change of Station (PCS) move) at the Candlewood Suites on post, where they would spend the next 10 days before they found another house to move into.
But during that time they began to do some research on the man who ripped them off: Mr. David Young.
Turns out, Young was running rental scam jobs all over the country - many of them near military installations. The couple found 10 different rental house listings connected to Young’s phone number. That number is now disconnected.
The scam is an easy one for a con artist - find a house online listed for sale, download the photos, copy and paste the house info, then repost it for rent on any number of online house and apartment listing sites as your own. Finally, set up a way to collect money through any number of online funds transfer sites like Zelle or Venmo and get your victim to send the money then vanish.
Jonathan contacted the El Paso County Sheriff who is investigating the case, along with the Colorado Bureau of Investigation. No new updates to the case have come forth as of the posting of this article and no one from either organization was available for comment on it.
“Do your research,” Jonathan said of finding a rental online. “Go meet with the landlord in person and tour the house. I know this is difficult if you are looking from another state, but I don’t want this to happen to any more Soldiers, or anyone else out there.”
Sgt. Timothy Monroe, a military policeman with the Fort Carson Police Department, said a few good practices to do in order to avoid a scam like this are to avoid renter websites that don't have screening processes, to never hand over a deposit and rent without signing a lease first, to avoid renting anything off Craigslist, or sites that have been known for scams, and most importantly, request a Zoom or FaceTime walk-through of the property with the landlord.
"And if it does happen to you," Monroe said. "Follow up with filing a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission or the Internet Crime Complaint Center so they have record of it."
The silver lining in it all - one of Jonathan's family members set up a GoFundMe account for the couple and raised $4600 to recoup the couple's losses.
Additionally, the owner of the house that the couple thought they were to be renting, invited them over for Thanksgiving dinner.
There's some holiday cheer for you.
| Date Taken: | 11.30.2021 |
| Date Posted: | 12.07.2021 14:56 |
| Story ID: | 410200 |
| Location: | COLORADO SPRINGS, US |
| Web Views: | 122 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Renter beware - Space Soldier scammed out of $3600 in rent fraud, by SFC Aaron Rognstad, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
