Fraudsters regularly attack tenants looking for affordable housing in Quebec by extracting large sums from them or even stealing their identities. Let’s dive into the heart of the schemes used by some of these fraudsters, who often act with impunity, with the police paying little attention to them, according to experts.
Whether on Facebook, Kijiji or other platforms, fraudulent advertisements for housing for rent at an attractive price abound on the Internet. In order to better understand the functioning of the fraudsters behind these, representatives of the Duty have contacted some of them pretending to be interested in the apartments they are offering for rent, even if they are not actually the owners.
This is how we came into contact with a certain Michel Morin – an assumed name, in all likelihood – who quickly responded to our email when we asked him if he still had vacant accommodation in Montreal. . He then suggested that we visit a beautiful, modern and spacious apartment, offered at $1,050 per month and located on avenue Christophe-Colomb, near the Jean-Talon metro station.
Claiming to live in Sherbrooke, the individual, who gives us a business card on which he presents himself as director of the real estate agency Immo Villeä, however asks us to make a deposit by bank transfer of $50 before the time of the visit accommodation, an amount which would be reimbursed “automatically” at the end of it. When we told him of our fear of never seeing the color of this money again, he said he understood “perfectly [notre] doubt “. However, there is nothing to fear, he assures. “I am Catholic, father of two children and my religion does not authorize me to fool or defraud,” he wrote in an email exchange.
Unexpected visits
The problem is that the three-story, 32-unit building located at the address provided belongs to entrepreneur Alain Migneault. In an interview on Tuesday, the latter said that a person showed up at his building last week indicating that they had paid $50 in advance of a viewing of an accommodation, which never took place. The fraudster did it again this week by encouraging another person to come to the scene after paying the same amount.
“We can’t do anything except to politely tell the person waiting at our door that they’ve been cheated,” says Mr. Migneault with a sigh, who notes that his recourses “are limited,” as fraudsters can use the address of their accommodations and photos of them as they wish.
The Immo Villeä agency, which has no employee named Michel Morin, has for its part had to respond in recent days to several emails from people who have been targeted by this scammer trying to extract funds from them. “I have the impression that these people will never be caught. It’s annoying,” says Patrick Lavigne, who is a partner in the property management company Uptimo, which notably offers its services to Immo Villeä.
Another fraudster, who introduced himself under the name Drouin Curtis, offered us a beautiful apartment located on avenue de l’Hôtel-de-Ville. The person behind this fraud, who claims to be the owner of this accommodation offered at $1,200 per month, requests the transfer of an amount equivalent to half of the rent before the time of the visit. To confirm that she is indeed the owner of the accommodation — which is not the case according to the City’s land roll — the person in question claims to be a 39-year-old lady working at the Raglan mine, in the north of Quebec, like “dishwasher”.
Following the refusal of Duty to send him the requested amount of money, the fraudster deleted his Facebook account.
The duty has documented several other cases of potential fraud based on similar schemes, which involve an owner living abroad and whose son lives in a Quebec city hundreds of kilometers from the advertised accommodation. Before asking your son to come to show the accommodation, we ask the person wishing to visit it for a deposit. The photos presented for accommodation supposedly located on avenue Jeanne-d’Arc, in Rosemont–La Petite-Patrie, are those of a house put up for sale in Sainte-Marie, in Beauce. In another case, the fraudster gives the address of the Plateau-Mont-Royal borough offices for the accommodation offered. One ad even displays an apartment for rent in Saint-Étienne, France, claiming that it is located in downtown Montreal.
Few complaints
“It’s madness,” says community organizer Gaétan Roberge, of the Ville-Marie Housing Committee, who notes that rental fraud is wreaking havoc in a context of shortage of affordable housing. “People want housing so much that they are going to be scammed more easily,” laments Mr. Roberge, who notes that in addition to being taken from large sums of money, people also have their identities stolen by fraudsters who request a lot of personal information.
Across the country, the Canadian Anti-Fraud Center says it received 688 reports last year for rental fraud totaling some $832,000. Of this sum, nearly $40,000 concerns fraud committed in Quebec. However, this is only a small part of the scams that are reported to the authorities, notes professor at the School of Criminology at the University of Montreal Benoît Dupont, who also notes that the police pay little attention to this. type of fraud.
“It’s not the number one priority for policing. There is also the fact that many of these fraudsters are not in Quebec, which makes investigations more complicated to carry out,” adds Mr. Dupont.
“As you know, the police are overwhelmed with reports on this subject. So, if we send them too many files, they won’t be able to do anything,” says Kent Sikstrom, head of community relations at Kijiji. In this context, the company is banking on artificial intelligence to try to detect fraudulent advertisements that are published on the platform, in order to then ban the individuals behind them.
Joined by The duty, the Police Department of the City of Montreal assures that it takes fraud linked to the rental of accommodation “seriously”. “Each report is responded to quickly,” says the police force, which however did not respond to our request for an interview to take stock of the concrete means its investigators take to uncover the fraudsters behind these scams.