“Listed a property on Postlets this week. Received two calls from prospective tenants saying they found my ad on Trulia being pushed by a scammer to get people to wire the security deposit in exchange for keys. Both prospects almost fell for it given their sense of urgency and the great deal being advertised ($300 less per mo). Postlets said to take it up with Trulia. No response from Trulia yet.”

A fellow landlord shares the following tips on how to prevent your rental house from being used by scammers.

“Just happened to me – an alert local Realtor saw it. I had watermarked, but not large, and the scammer managed to blur it a little. Here’s what to do: Go to the Trulia listing. Under the listing photo, hover your cursor on the word “more”. In the dropdown, chose “flag”. Next, email fraud@trulia.com, giving specifics that you are the owner, and this is fraudulent. They took it down within 10 hours, but in the meanwhile, I put an alert on my real ads to look out for “Keisha Jones”, the name the scammer gave.

(In the future)… get at least your main photo watermarked with a phone number and email address, fairly prominently. I use picmonkey – choose “Edit”, upload your photo, then select Tt on the far left to create a textbox. Pretty easy, even for non-photo-editing savvy me.”

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