When the apartment listing is too good to be true

I have first hand experience with a similar fraud in Zürich. I had an apartment which I looked for a new tenant to. During my search there was a ”woman” that contacted me and said that she was interested. She behaved really weirdly and couldn’t come on the showing, but requested some videos. I didn’t think more about it and send over a ”digital showing” where I showed certain parts of the apartment. We later found a new tenant and she moved in. I didn’t think more about it.

Fast forward 3 months and a random man knocks on my door during the morning. He asked if I was <insert my name>, and I said yes. He then asked if I rented out the apartment above (which was my old apartment). After explaining that we’d already found a tenant for it, he just said: ”F*ck, then I‘ve been scammed“.

It turned out that this strange ”woman” actually just used me as one side of their scam, getting credible videos where I talked and showed the apartment. The scammers then used all my ad pictures, my name and address to put up a fake ad.

He moved from Austria and paid ~2000 euro in deposit, then arrived to an apartment that was already rented out. He showed me a fradulent contract and my videos I previously sent.

After all of this, I did an image search using my apartment pictures, and found and took down 3 fake listings on different websites.

I think it's because we have different expectations - when you move out of a place here it has to be the same exact condition as when you moved in which means you have to pay to have it painted, get the carpets cleaned, have the oven, etc inspected and maintained... also, you have to bring your own ceiling light fixtures so you remove those too.

There's a whole industry of cleaning companies that handle you moving out.

> Rent noticeably below market, with every utility included.

Seriously, it's nice that Kimi did the investigation, and it's good that that's disclosed at the end (would be better at the top). But please, do a pass of human review for the most grating inconsistencies and style issues.