2007 Press Releases
Warning: Email Scam Involving Craigslist Ads and the RE/MAX Name
(November 21, 2007) - RE/MAX is concerned about on-line consumer fraud. It has come to our attention that classified ads for rental properties featured on Craigslist have attempted to convince potential renters to pay rental deposits by incorrectly stating that a RE/MAX office would be facilitating the transaction.
Responding to email inquiries, the landlord says that she/he is out of the country and is working with a RE/MAX office in the country where she/he is located (in some versions of the scam, Greece) and has arranged for U.S.-based RE/MAX office to send keys and a lease. In return, the potential renter was asked to pay a deposit using an online payment service or to overnight a check to an address that was claimed to be a RE/MAX office. However, there was no RE/MAX office involved in any of these transactions. We are aware of a similar scam involving the web site rentalsestate.com.
If you encounter any online advertisements like this, please be very careful! You can check the name, address and contact information for any RE/MAX office or agent on remax.com using the "
Find an Office" or "
Find an Agent" features. In some cases, the scam has referred to the name of an actual RE/MAX agent, so please feel free to contact the appropriate RE/MAX office or agent directly, using the information on remax.com, to verify that the transaction is legitimate.
If you believe you have been the victim of an on-line scam involving the RE/MAX name, e-mail it to us at
abuse@remax.net. If possible, please include the URL of the ad you responded to, and include full e-mail headers of messages you received so we can try to determine the message's origin. In addition, you may wish to report the incident to the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) at
ic3.gov, or to
Craigslist.
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