CORONADO SHORES RENTAL SCAM

Do you own a rental property in Coronado? Have you been the victim of a rental scam? Could you be the victim now - and not know about it? Do you know what to do if someone or someones are scamming your Coronado rental property?

My husband and I own a 2BR2BA Coronado Shores condo. We bought it in 2005 and rent it out by the month when we are not staying in it ourselves. This week, I received three separate emails from individuals who were checking out an advertisement for renting our condo, posted on Craigslist (http://www.craigslist.com) by someone one claiming to be a rental agent acting on our behalf. The Craiglist ad was posted by someone named (or using the name) Nelson Zola. The three individuals all were suspicious, tracked down the actual listings and emailed me. Here is one of their emails to me: "Hi, I saw this ad on San Diego Craigslist and when I contacted for 2 day rent (labor day), a person named Nelson Zola asked to pay by western union, which made me doubtful. Your calendar shows it is occupied and it has to be monthly rent. Please confirm if the craigslist is a scam. Thanks.”

I checked the Craigslist website and yes, we were being scammed by Nelson Zola. While on Craigslist, I looked through the various rental postings for Coronado and discovered that our condo was listed on another rental scam, which I also flagged to abuse@craigslist.org, and it’s down now also. That one was identified as John Peterson at johnrentals40@yahoo.com.

Two of the individuals who contacted me passed along an email to them from Nelson Zola with his email address: nelson_zola@yahoo.com . I put that address in Google and discovered there are several postings about him scamming or attempting to scam people for rental of vacation condos in places other than Coronado too, including Hawaii and Arizona. One of the postings identifies a second name and mailing address where checks were to be sent: Lawrence Schollenberger in Allentown, PA. See http://800notes.com/Phone.aspx/1-206-339-0186/7. I then googled Lawrence Schollenberger and found similar complaints about rental scams. Scholleberger also appears to use the email address louislove188@gmail.com and Tara Zola (tarazola@live.com). Our condo was also scammed on Craigslist in July 2010 by someone called Steven Hernandez with the email address: steven_hernandez@hotmail.com, and his name crops up on the internet as associated with Nelson Zola and Lawrence Schollenberger. I got that rental scam Craigslist advertisement shut down quickly too, but only after someone emailed to tell me about it. These individuals may all be the same person, using different names; postings on the internet suggest that they may be using the names and accounts of real persons who do not know they are being used as a cover in this fashion.

I called Craigslist and was told to email the information with the weblink to the actual advertisement to abuse@craigslist.org. Within six hours, the rental scam ad was taken down. Here are two of the rental scam links for our condo; if you click on them, you'll see the ad has been removed: http://sandiego.craigslist.org/csd/vac/1918362568.html and http://sandiego.craigslist.org/csd/vac/1919913750.html. In looking through the rental ads on Craigslist there were a few other Coronado rental postings that were obvious rental scams. When the ad asks for $100 per night or $199 per night when nothing at the Shores rents for less than a month (28 days) is a good flag that it’s a rental scam.

Do you have a Coronado condo or house that you rent out as a vacation rental? If so, have you been scammed through an internet rental scam? Do you know whether you are being scammed NOW???

If you have a Coronado rental property, I recommend that you:

(1) REGULARLY check Craigslist to see if you are being scammed. Look under the keywords “Coronado condo” or "Coronado vacation rental". Do not wait for someone to email you to check a rental scam listing of your condo. Be proactive.

(2) You should also regularly google your own listing, or the key words for your listing, to see if it comes up elsewhere on the internet besides Craigslist.

(3) If you have your own listing for your condo on http://www.vrbo.com, http://www.vacationrentals.com, http://www.homeaway.com or one of the other rental sites, edit your own listings so (a) they state very clearly at or near the top of the posting that your condo is not listed on Craigslist and that all rentals must be done through you, and (b) that your condo rents only by the month (28 days minimum) and cannot be rented by the day or week.

If you find that you are being scammed on Craigslist, here is what to do:

(1) Make a copy (PDF, TXT or HTML) of the webpage first so you have a copy as once Craigslist takes down the advertisement, you will not be able to make a copy. You need this to flag to other agencies such as Western Union and the US government. I am attaching a JPG image of one of the rental scam postings by Nelson Zola for our condo. (You can save PDF files as JPGs to convert a document to an image.)

(2) Email abuse@craigslist.org, give them the information and ask them to shut down the website. If the scam is on another website, email/call the website to get the ad taken down.

(3) If the rental scam asks for money using Western Union, email spoof@westernunion.com and send Western Union a copy of the emails so the firm can stop the individual from using Western Union as a way to move funds.

(4) You should also email the information to the Internet Crime Complaint Center at http://www.ic3.gov/default.aspx so that the US government is aware of these illegal activities.

(5) I also recommend publicizing the rental scams - as I have done here and on my Facebook page - to help warn others, both owners and renters.

I hope my blog post is helpful to other Coronado owners/renters. Coronado is one of the most beautiful parts of the world. Coronado welcomes visitors - and as a major tourist destination -- benefits enormously from these visits -- but doesn't need individuals arriving for a one or two night stay at the Coronado Shores or elsewhere on the island, only to find out their booking was bogus. Please help stamp out these rental scams in Coronado.