Erin Eliza spends the first hour of her day trying to keep scammers out of the “Girls Isla Vista Housing” Facebook group that she created and administers.
She goes through member requests, deletes posts about properties that the poster doesn’t actually own, and messages group members who she fears might be talking to a scammer.
She ends her day doing the same thing.
Eliza is a landlord in Isla Vista and created the housing Facebook group to connect with potential tenants, and to try to have a group safe from scammers. Despite her best attempts, scammers infiltrated the group immediately.
Christopher Dalbey, deputy district attorney for the Santa Barbara County District Attorney’s consumer and environmental protection unit, told Noozhawk that often people will post pictures of a house or an apartment pretending that they own it when they really don’t.
“They might be in England, they might be in Kentucky, they might be here in Santa Barbara. We just have no idea,” Dalbey told Noozhawk.
Eliza warned that if a prospective rental feels too good to be true, it often is just that.
She also told Noozhawk that if someone won’t give a specific address or if they don’t work for a leasing company, that’s usually a sign that they don’t really own or run the property.
Scammers typically aim to take someone’s application fee or deposit, Eliza said. For many, losing their deposit means they are homeless or that they no longer have the money for housing.
Eliza once had an international student walk to her leasing office to pick up their key, only to discover that the lease they had signed was fake and they had lost all of their money.
“It’s really sad, and his whole future was at risk,” Eliza said. “These are really not victimless crimes. These housing scams can start a spiral where people become homeless.”
Eliza said she frequently sees students and non-English speakers falling victim to the scams.
Anyone trying to join the Isla Vista girls housing group has to be approved by Eliza herself. As the group admin, she’s able to go through potential members’ profiles and see what groups they’re in.
Often, she finds profiles for people who are in housing groups for cities all across the county. While she doesn’t admit those profiles, scam accounts still sometimes find ways into the group.
Dalbey recommends that anyone who falls victim to a scam report it to their local law enforcement.
He noted that the crime is wherever the victim is. If a person is in another state and trying to move to Santa Barbara and then they get scammed, the crime still took place where the victim currently resides.
He also recommends alerting the FBI if the scammer is believed to be abroad.
“If people are wiring money abroad, sometimes the FBI is the only agency with the resources to track that money,” Dalbey said.
However, Eliza said that reporting such scams is often a waste of time.
“It’s kind of a fruitless effort,” Eliza said. “They just don’t take this type of stuff seriously, because it’s in other countries. It’s just sad, but there’s nothing really that can be done.”
Many renters are able to realize the person they’re communicating with is a scammer before they send their money. In those cases, the victims feel as if there isn’t anything law enforcement can or will do.
That’s how one renter felt after her family was nearly scammed out of $13,000 while trying to rent a house in Santa Barbara.
The family was moving to Santa Barbara from the East Coast, and they thought they were getting a good deal on a house on Santa Barbara’s Westside, until some red flags caught her attention.
The renter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said she was mostly looking at houses to rent on Zillow and Redfin. But, like many others in the housing search, they began to get desperate and expanded their search to Craigslist.
That’s where she found a place to rent on the Mesa and messaged the poster. She received a response saying that the house on the Mesa was no longer available, but that there was another house available to rent on the Westside.
The supposed landlord was communicating using the same name as the homeowner and invited them to an open house.
“In retrospect, a big red flag was that the fake owner told me they currently have it listed on the market (for sale), but had cold feet about selling, so they were considering renting it out,” the woman told Noozhawk.
The renter’s local family members went to tour the house since the renter was still on the East Coast.
After a day or two, the fake property owner accepted their application and asked the renters to wire them $13,000 for the deposit and first month’s rent.
However, warning bells went off in the renter’s mind when it came time to wire the money, because the scammer wanted them to send the money to a bank that was in a different state.
“At that point, that was where the intuition in me thought this was really weird,” the prospective renter said.
The scammer began to send aggressive texts to the renter, demanding she wire the money immediately.
At that point, she decided to call the real estate listing agent and ask whether the homeowners had really decided to rent out the house instead of selling it. The agent told her that the homeowners were not renting the house, but noted that she wasn’t the first to ask. The listing agent had received other calls about the same situation.
“Thank goodness we did not wire all that money,” the renter said, “but we came very close.”
While the family didn’t make an official police report, they did relay the incident to an officer they know.
“We hadn’t actually lost any money, so I don’t think they were all that motivated to do anything about it,” the renter said.
After almost losing their money, the renter felt relieved but also embarrassed.
“I felt a little bit foolish,” she said. “We had thought we had this place, and we were all excited about it. And then it’s like, oh, not only did you get scammed, but now you don’t have anywhere else. You’re back at square one.”
Wendi Gale has been a UCSB parent since 2016 when her son became a student. Her daughter now also goes to UCSB, giving Gale seven years of experience trying to help her kids secure housing in Santa Barbara and Isla Vista.
Gale told Noozhawk that she recently has seen scammers not just pretending to be landlords renting out a place, but people pretending to be someone looking for a roommate with a place all lined up.
Her daughter currently is looking for housing, and Gale is in eight housing groups, trying to help.
“It’s hard. We have almost fallen victim,” she said. “She’s really good at connecting with me, and then we kind of look together and figure it out.”
After seven years, Gale is able to recognize the names and profiles of people she knows to be scammers.
“There are names out there and they will infiltrate the group quickly,” Gale said. “They make multiple profiles, and I will private message people and tell them, ‘Hey, this person’s likely a scammer. Be careful.’”
Recently, Gale came across a smaller housing group on Facebook for Santa Barbara and Goleta. The admin had posted that they were looking for someone to weed out scammers. Because of her experience, she messaged the admin.
The admin told Gale to send them a screenshot of a scam post. As a test, Gale sent them a picture of a property in West Virginia. The admin told Gale that the place was in Santa Barbara and needed a deposit right away.
“So I knew right away it was a scammer,” Gale said. “They are posing as someone doing good, which really stinks.”
In her experience, the people most at risk for such scams are those coming from out of the area, especially international students.
“International students are at a disadvantage because they don’t know this area,” Gale said. “They don’t know the addresses. They don’t know what places look like.”
For parents, Gale recommends working with their children to ensure they’re not taken advantage of during their housing search.
“If parents are willing to just work on it together with their students is probably my best advice, and also to educate themselves on what these scams entail,” Gale said.
