I put a google alert on each of my listings so that I will be alerted if one of my property addresses shows up anywhere on the web. So far, so good.

Bernadette, that's an excellent idea and I think it will work better than anything else as far as fraud prevention concerned. I would also recommend to set a google alert for one of the phrases from the rental description or subject line. I've seen too many times when scammers just copy/paste the original description and create a fake advertisement.
For the last couple of years it's a growing trend in the vacation rental industry, especially with those classified sites where people exchange emails and take monetary transaction offline.
At http://rentini.com we have another layer of protection for our guests. We hold reservation money from guests until their check-in date. Guests know their funds are safe. Scammers know they will never see this money.

Describing Zillow as "relatively reputable" is interesting.

Yes, so very INTERESTING If there were five starts I could give for your comment, I would give you 10!

"Sophisticated Zillow scam puts NAR and MLS on alert" got my attention but I might have titled it "Sophisticated scam puts Zillow, NAR and MLS on alert"

and Postlets.com, and Trulia.com, and Hotpads.com and Yahoo! (owner of Zillow and Postlets)

Scammers post to Postlets, then it's syndicated to other websites in the matter of hours.

Yeah, not a shock!

I don't think so. I am just confronting Zillow on one of my listings.

You should confront the FEDS

Its not just Zillow. It happened with a listing I posted on Craig's List. My listing was a home for sale. The scammer posted it using my photos, verbiage and details as a rental and said if you moved fast and sent in the two months required deposit, it would be reserved for them on the date they wanted to move in. So many people drove for hours to see the house only to see my sign on the front yard. Of course they called the number (me) on the sign and I didn't know what they were talking about...at first. After many calls with the same request, (is this home really being rented for only $1200/month? wow, what a deal...seems to good to be true!) Well it was. I was able to field many who were slightly suspicious and came in to town to see it. I felt violated...to think that my listing was involved in a scam was quite unsettling. My heart ached for those who didn't drive in to town...those who paid down their money for a chance to live in a brand new luxury home.

i had a worst experience myself. I listed a property for rent and a week later I am going to show the property and found 3 signs that belongs to someone else. I thought were the owners signs so i called him and he said no, so I decided to call the number passing as a client and a man answered the phone so i told him that I was interested to rent the house and he told me that it was already rented but that he has another in another area far from my listing. So we Realtors have to have our eyes very open.

Same happened here... Luckily people actually drove to the house and then called me off of the sign asking about the rental and why it was so cheap.

Then they forwarded the scammers e-mail to me who had set one up under my name.

Here is a great solution:

The online advertising should not be FREE.

Zillow, Trulia, Hotpads, Postlets, etc get the REAL AUTHENTIC data from MLS around the United States, which is paid for by agents members who are entering the data into the MLS.

The problem is Zillow, Truilia, Hotpads, Postlets,, etc allow 'homeowners' (scammers) to input listings into the system for free.

If they have to pay to place the ad, that will eliminate the majority of these fake listings.

... Imagine if we allowed "FOR SALE BY OWNER"s to list in the MLS for FREE. .... This would be a nightmare. It's happening now with rentals.

That is the best solution. The scammers would have to pay for a fake ad, paying via a valid credit card (a trackable form of payment). Then, when the scam is discovered, and the listing is removed, they have to start over with a new credit card. Hard to do for a scammer. They don't have credit cards in West Africa like we do here in the US.

Great idea Jim. Makes you wonder why such a common sense approach has not been tried. I am sure Zillow would love to collect more fees from folks needing ads.

You should not be mixing 'Accurate professionally data from Agents and Brokers, with 'For Sale or For Rent By Owner' data'

When you mix & co-mingle the data, the general public believes that the data is equal.

Having people go to my clients home looking for a rental property, finding my sign saying "FOR SALE" is a complete waste of time to the agents, the sellers, and the people fooled to drive across town to see a listing that is advertise for lease "BY OWNER" in Zillow, Postlets, Trulia, Hotpads, etc.

Let's vote on this question:

POLL QUESTION: Who is responsible for wasting everyone's time???

--- 1 - Is it the scammers??

--- 2 - The agents listing the houses for sale??

--- 3 - The consumers for believing the data is accurate??

--- OR 4 - The people/companies/management of the internet companies running the websites ( Zillow, Trulia, Hotpads, Yahoo! (owner of Zillow and Postlets) whom all allow the fraudulent data to be published on their sites???

Vote now ---

I'm going with the companies that make it easy for scammers to operate. I also agree with you that the data should not be together.

The one problem with your scenario of payment... Scammers can get a prepaid Visa or M/C, and pay for the ad. It's just like disposable cell phones. The best way to stop most electronic scams is to eliminate burner phones, and get rid of prepaid credit cards as currently being marketed. Perhaps if purchases of such items was accompanied by a fingerprinting, then that would eliminate the problem, without causing undue harm to those who need these products. After all, if you aren't breaking the law, then fingerprints wouldn't present an obstacle. The digital tech is so inexpensive now, retailers can't whine about the cost. The prints go thru a processor, and the cost are (or could be) very affordable. The new software being used is extremely fast, and accurate. If a person enters a known i.d., then the prints are verified in seconds. If it's a false i.d., or a new user, it could take a couple hours to be returned as unknown or unverifiable, requiring more identification.

In short, the time and potential cost associated with a scammer setting up a false i.d. (or other criminal activities for that matter) would be a huge deterrent for committing fraudulent activities.

This is just one easily implemented step lawmakers can provide that should have been there all along. If you want to stop criminal activities, take away easy access to the tools and technology.

More Big Government Solutions for people that have no common sense in the first place. I mean really... send money to somebody far, far away to get the keys without even seeing the inside of the property?

Pretty Stupid if you ask me.

Agreed. The solution is never to have a kneejerk reaction that invites MORE government intrusion into our lives for temporary "protections". Have we not seen already that those temporary solutions become permanent and that the law abiding people are affected the most? It is insanity to expect to get keys in the mail.

That wont work. Then people that had their property taken would never know if they had to pay then people could not look to protect their property. Freedom of Info wont allow that on public info. Property, ownership etc and listings are public

But come on people!

Sorry to sound harsh here, but this is the 21st century. If you are not aware of the multitude of people who prey on consumers from every angle, you might want to read the paper once in awhile.

Seriously? You would have an email chat with a stranger then send someone money in exchange for keys?

This has been going on in our market for many months and what I find most shocking is the level of gullibility!

Maybe not the paper this being the 21st century.

What's more unnerving (certainly not startling) is the court's willingness to penalize real estate professionals for the crimes of others. We've seen this perpetrated on Craigslist as well, and somehow we're supposed to monitor (and secure) all our ads on the internet- even those entered via the MLS...

Is this article about Zillow scamming people or is it about scammers scamming people?

Kudos for the outrageous headline I guess.

Greg, this is what made all of us come here and read:)

Teke, I think you did a great job writing this article, specifying the details and bringing it to the public's attention.
I received a phone call as recently as yesterday from someone asking me if I was Ronald Bailey, when I replied "yes I am! How can I help you?" they hung up the phone. For the first time in a long time I double checked my doors before going to sleep last night. I'm no coward but I do have a wife and children to worry about. I have seen people do ignorant things for way less than a promise, a set of keys and $1000.
Thanks again Malcolm and Teke for not taking this matter as lightly as some have suggested we should.

The reason we felt that this scam qualified as "news" is that it appears to be more sophisticated than your typical listing scam -- NAR's general counsel said as much.

At the same time, we thought that Bailey's case highlighted the psychological impact that scams can have on agents, as well as their potential to imperil agents, not just consumers.

Then the agents need to know that the scam runs deeper than rentals, how about millions in property selling scams? They certainly should be worried about the fact that people are using the properties they as part of a larger mortgage fraud. Any concern about this from agents?

Title should be ONE MORE REASON ZILLOW should have to adhere to NAR, MLS Rules...pay dues, get CEU and more importantly have more accurate information with some accountablity.

Zillow also has a history where a home is for sale and for rent, of overlaying the for rent on top of the for sale when it is downloaded from our local MLS (even though sales and rentals are separate categories), so I get calls and emails (usually from overseas) wanting to purchase a $1.5m house for the $5000 rent amount, then they person gets angry with me when I tell them that zillow is in error and the property is for LEASE at $5000 and for SALE at $1.5m. So, this scam issue does not surprise me one bit. If they can't even catch legitimate errors caused directly by their own site, then how can they catch fraud? How far off their zestimates are, in my market, is another whole discussion as well.

well said Lee. Zillow had one of my listings as SOLD in Jan for way over the listing price. When a real buyer saw it was sold, he became very untrusting of me. i had to explain i had no idea where Zillow got that info but there it was for the world to see. Put off a few buyers because of that.

did you report this?

I wonder if you you might have a legal case against Zillow in their misrepresentation of your transaction to me.

Yes! My property was for rent by zillow not by me then for sale. As far as the estimates and assessments of the same property listed in different ways was assessed for 54,000 in 2010 but in 2008 was assessed for 217,000 and mortgaged 5 times. so the value went down in a shore town??? Thats a whole other blog Lee!

I am not sure why are they just bringing this in now. Here in San Diego I have found so many of the same in Trulia. I had one of my Listings posted as a Rental with a very cheap Rent and asking the Tenant to send the money to an address and once they got the money they will send the keys.

This has happened to several of my colleagues with Trulia since couple of years ago.

It's sad how low people get to be able to scam other people.

We e-mailed the people at Trulia and they took the fake Rental down in a matter of 3 days.

Was it reported? This has been going on in my family since 2008 with our shore properties. Where are people going to tell about the scam?

This has been going on for a few years and why is it now just getting attention?

it is now kill zillow time. what do they do that we do not do and do better? nothing. by the time consumers are finished being brainwashed by zillow and others, they think they know the market. I am tired of playing with zillow and redfin fans (and all the other parasitic hawkers of stale listings and inaccurate market information). These indocrinated buyers never make offers high enough to get anything. Then they snivel. it is a very delicate thing getting through to people whom they should trust before it costs them another 50k for the house they intend to buy. I see it over and over again all around me, buyers blow through six months befoer they catch on that we are not deceiving them about what it takes in this market to get an offer accepted. oh well.... end of rant lol

Zillow doesn't guarantee that your offers will be accepted. It simply drives leads to you and then you take the ball and run with it.

Zillows not the issue or the only site with misinformation.

I couldn't have said it better. I receive contacts regarding listings that closed 2 to 3 years ago. The listing that appears on Zillow is the original listing same MLS number from 2-3 years ago. The only thing changed is the price which is only a 2K-5K more then originally list price. When I first started to notice this I contacted several of the agents, from various brokerages. There answers were all the same. Yes, I listed this property and I sold it 2 or 3 years ago.
The Phoenix market has changed dramatically in the past couple years. I have people contacting me regarding these homes priced at $50-$60 a square foot. When now these homes are selling over a $100/square. 90% of the people that contact me are already working with an agents (who have informed them that property is not available), but are just calling to double check. I have spoke with my account rep who advised me to use the " Report problem with listing link". There is one property that is still "active" according to Zillow that I receive inquires about, even though I have reported it as an invalid listing 3 times in the last 2 months. I have since cancelled my Premier Agent status with them, due to the fact that these 2-3 year old listings are creating far more work then what I'm getting out of their so-called "service".

Because the amount of properties being stolen and it takes years to follow the paper trail. Another reason? People when this happens do not demand answers or tell the right authorities.

It's just taking the Craig's List rental scams to the next level. Surprised it hasn't happened sooner.

That's exactly what I was going to say Cindy! Scammers did it to a listing in our property management portfolio via CraigsList over a year ago. They too actually got the money and ran on some poor soul. We found out a week later- knew nothing of it!

This scam has been going on for several years. It's not new.

I think you are being very unfair to Zillow! To use the term "relatively reputable" borders of defamation. There are so many ways to be scammed on the internet today and unfortunately, it's "Buyer Beware" to the nth degree for anyone who uses the net. You would have to be incredibly stupid to send money to someone under the terms you describe. I remember many scams like this on Craigslist and after reading the ads for the second time, I knew it was a scam. How many well known and respectable firms have been hacked.....a lot! As a responsible reporter, you have an obligation to tell the story from the proper perspective and not slam the entity that was illegally used to pull off the scam. I have been very happy with Zillow and have received some excellent leads in only 2 weeks on their site.

Hey Marilynne, thanks for reading.

I reported the reactions of NAR and two real estate pros, including an MLS chair -- wasn't trying to editorialize. I also mentioned various methods that Zillow uses to police its listings. The story was definitely not intended to knock Zillow, just to highlight this scam and its implications.

Do you think there are any steps that can be taken to guard against scams like this? Or do you think there aren't really any ways to prevent them?

Just for the record, I don't recall using that language, and it certainly wasn't intentional.

I spend too much time dealing with syndication problems, but up until now I can't recall having any problems with Zillow. From what I hear the leads are better than the rest. The only complaints I hear are about Zestimates being so unrealistic.

Contrast that with the other major player who just doesn't seem to get it lately. Photos keep going missing, and they display off market listings with big skyscraper agent ads next to them and a tiny little "unknown" to mark them as off market.

That's not as serious an issue as fraud of course, but it goes to my main issue. I know we are sending quality listing data from the MLS to syndication. The apparent value of that listing data decreases when consumers can't tell the good from the bad because of all the bad listing data allowed on those syndication sites. Bad data also includes listing data manually entered on franchise sites, and those entered into automated posting sites. There is no way agents can keep that up to date so that is another source of stale listings.

How is this a good thing for anyone? The consumer gets frustrated and angry with the agent they call from the ad. The agents gets angry because it's usually a waste of time and the active listings get less attention. This has to drive consumer away from the syndication site in the long run because they can't trust the listings.

Malcolm Waring
MLS Committee Chair
Pocono Mountains Association of REALTORS®

Yes not to knock zillow but if they know their platform is being utilized for major fraud and they do nothing then by default they become part of the issue

I think there have been several suggestions that would work. The Google Alert would seem to be the best for agents, in my opinion, and would be what I would use if I posted a listing. Perhaps the MLS can come up with a solution that would benefit Zillow, Trulia, and Realtor.com. Not being an IT person, I don't know how it could work, but given the level of technology available, it would seem that they could work together to come up with a solution.