“We have seen an increase in fraudulent schemes where scammers are pretending to rent out homes they do not actually control,” a Friday Facebook post read.

North Ogden PD Sgt. Rob West, who made note of the effectiveness of such scams, told the Standard-Examiner that his department is currently investigating at least one claim related to a rental scam. However, he declined to say whether money had been exchanged.

He further noted that his community may be particularly vulnerable due to the relative age of its residents.

“I look at our demographics here in North Ogden … a lot of the residents, they’re the older generation,” West said. “They take things for face value and that’s not the day and age that we live in anymore.”

According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Elder Fraud Report for 2023, released in April, the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center received 101,068 complaints involving people age 60 and older last year.

Scams targeting those individuals were responsible for losses totaling more than $3.4 billion in 2023.

The Facebook post mentioned a number of red flags related to rental scams that people should be aware of, including:

• Unusual payment requests, such as via wire transfer or prepaid gift cards.
• Deals where one is unable to visit the property or meet with the landlord; no in-person meeting.
• Deals that seem “too good to be true.”
• Pressure by those offering the rental to act quickly.
• A lack of proper documentation.
• Incomplete or unverifiable information.

“Mostly, all of it’s done by phone; usually never in person, and weird ways of sending cash,” West said of such scams. “There’s a million different ways to send cash nowadays. It’s just something that we caution people against doing.”

Police are advising people to verify the ownership of rental properties, to research them and check for discrepancies or listings from other individuals, to use only trusted platforms/rental websites and to report suspicious activity.

“If they suspect anything at all, give us a call,” West said. “They can call the non-emergency dispatch number and get a hold of us and we’d be happy to investigate it and help them as much as we can.”