Since January 2022, at least 997 people here have lost a total of $3.9 million to scammers who posed as real estate agents, the police mentioned.
According to a police advisory, there has been a rise in the number of scammers who pretend to be real estate agents and ask their victims for money to rent a unit before they’ve even seen it.
The police said that most of the time, the victims would respond to online property listings and start talking to the scammers through WhatsApp using the contact numbers in the fake listings.
During the conversation, the scammer, who was pretending to be a registered property agent, would send the victim a picture of the agent’s business card and pictures or videos of the property to be leased. This would convince the victim that the scammer was legit.
The scammer would then ask the victim for his or her personal information so that the lease agreement could be made.
When the victims asked to see the house, the con artists would say that the landlord was not available. To make it seem more real, the scammers would send the victims a copy of the lease agreement with the name and NRIC of the person who was supposed to own the unit. The victims would then sign it.
After signing, the people who were scammed would be told to pay for things like rental deposits, stamp duty, or other fees to secure the rental.
They wouldn’t find out they’d been tricked until the scammers stopped talking to them or they found another way to get in touch with real estate agents.
The police told people to take precautions like making sure a property listing is real.
They can do this by talking to a real estate agent using only the agent’s phone number, which is listed on the public register of the Council for Estate Agencies (CEA). People can find out if a real estate agent is registered with the CEA by looking for the agent’s phone number on the register.
If the search doesn’t lead to the real estate agent’s profile page, it means that the agent hasn’t registered that phone number with the CEA, and the listing may be fake.
The public can also call the agent’s real estate agency to make sure the listing is real.
People are also told to be wary of calls with a “+” prefix that come from abroad, not to make any payments before viewing a property, and not to give anyone their personal information, credit card and bank information, or passwords, including one-time passwords.
If you know anything about these scams, you can call the police hotline at 1-800-255-0000 or fill out a report online at this website.
