Gardaí warn of accommodation fraud
The public, especially 3rd level students, have been urged to wary of accommodation fraud.
The warning from gardaí in the Cork City Division came as a woman from France was reportedly the victim of accommodation fraud.
Gardaí on Leeside met with her on 3 September. She had just arrived in Ireland from France as she was due to start in a Cork college on the following Monday morning. Prior to coming to Cork, she had posted on a Facebook group looking for accommodation. She was messaged by a male who informed her his landlord had a room for rent.
He provided her with the details of the landlord who is French-Irish and his phone number which was also French. She proceeded to contact him and after some discussion paid him via bank transfer over €3,000 for a deposit and 2 months rent.
A spokesperson for An Garda Síochána said: “She transferred this money from her French bank account to his bank account. When she arrived at the rental property, the door was answered by a resident there who said there was no room for rent and that the name she had was not the name of the landlord.”
There have been 26 incidents of accommodation fraud reported in the Cork City Division to date in 2022 with a reported loss to injured parties of €60,000.
These losses have included domestic incidents and also incidents from this jurisdiction to another.
The spokesperson added: “For example, a student was going on an Erasmus Exchange to Spain and sent an online deposit of €1,500 which proved fraudulent. Another person in May was seeking a holiday home in Portugal and lost over €8,700 through a fraudulent site.
“In June another person was also looking for holiday accommodation and sent €10,000 to a company and when the communication stopped, a Google search of the company name linked fraudulent activity reported by others.”
There were also 2 separate incidents in Cork city whereby students paid out €2,200 and another student €1,200 as a deposit for the same premises in Cork that did not exist.
Another injured party paid over €2,800 as a deposit for a property and the house had been sold to new owners.