Scammers Targeting French People Moving To Malta By Pretending To Be Landlords And Robbing Their Deposits
Scammers are targeting French people who plan to move to Malta, pretending to be tenants and landlords only to fleece them off their deposit money.
Pierre Bigot, a Malta-based representative of the Alliance Solidaire des Français de l’étranger, a voluntary global organisation to help French expats, explained to Lovin Malta how the scam works.
A French national planning to move to the island would announce to a Facebook group for French expats in Malta that they are looking for a flat to rent or share.
Shortly after posting, a person claiming to be a flat-sharing tenant would send them a private message in French, telling them they are about to leave their apartment and sending photos of the place.
In reality, it would be a scammer using a fake Facebook profile, often one created recently. The location photos are sometimes also obviously false to people who know the country; for example, the one below was purportedly Valletta’s Strada Stretta.
Once the expat agrees, the ‘tenant’ would send the incoming expat a French phone number of a supposed landlord, which is only contactable via WhatsApp.
The ‘landlord’, who also speaks French, would say he has an available property, ask the tenant for their ID cards details and send them a draft of the rental contract for them to sign, as well as a copy of their own IDs, which would be fake or stolen.
One version of this ‘contract’, seen by Lovin Malta, is replete with grammatical mistakes.
A copy of the fake rental contract
Once the tenant has signed the contract, the ‘landlord’ would ask the tenant to pay them a deposit, sometimes even a double deposit, via bank transfer. Bigot said the recipient banks are usually online banks, although sometimes French and Belgian banks are used.
After the transaction is complete, the ‘landlord’ would block the tenant from WhatsApp and vanish, leaving the tenant high and dry.
Bigot warned he has heard of at least ten similar cases over the past year, with the scammers using different numbers, names and Facebook profiles for each case.
He said many of these tenants were unaware that they had been scammed until they actually turned up with their luggage to the location of the alleged apartment.
Part of a conversation between a scammer and a French expat
“Sometimes the tenant would knock on the door and the actual owners would tell them the property is actually an Airbnb, that it’s already rented and that they have no idea what they’re talking about. Sometimes the scammer would even give them an address of a home that doesn’t exist.”
While police have been informed of the scam, the anonymous nature of it all means pinning the culprit could be a tough ask.
Bigot had the following tips to French tenants to avoid getting scammed.
- Always check the Facebook profiles of the people offering apartments as many scammers’ profiles are brand new
- Ask several questions, ask for more photos and request a phone call
- Reverse search the photos of the apartments on Google
- If the photos include a view from a window, corroborate it with Google Street View
- Ask for a second opinion. If it’s too good to be true, it probably is
- Don’t hand money over online before actually seeing the property
- Move to Malta first, book a hotel or Airbnb and visit properties afterwards
- Contact him personally so he could have a look at it. Bigot is working on tenancy issues with Patricia Graham from the EU Nationals Advisory.
Have you been the victim of a property scam in Malta? Feel free to reach out on [email protected]
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