Scam victims lament lost cash after Marketplace fraud

By JEAH DIÑO & SOFIA MOHAMED

Prince Delos Reyes and his mother, Mherzie, found themselves among a growing number of unsuspecting buyers falling prey to online scammers lurking behind fake listings.

Months before arriving in Vancouver as an international student in the fall of 2023, Delos Reyes and Mherzie searched through Facebook Marketplace for affordable housing.

After finding a one-bedroom apartment, his mother sent a deposit of $600 to the landlord to secure the place. Mherzie flew to Vancouver with her two weeks before his semester at Douglas College to help him settle in.

“We were supposed to check the place first before we moved in. There were red flags everywhere. She showed us the apartment, but she said the wrong room number from the post,” Delos Reyes said.

The move-in date kept getting pushed back, and the explanations made no sense. They were told the existing tenants were in a “car accident,” and needed to “keep their addresses for a police report.”

“I’m not used to the laws here so we believed her,” Delos Reyes said.

They were starting to get suspicious when they found a Facebook post from someone who went through a similar circumstance. Mherzie connected with the poster and found out that there were multiple victims of the same scam.

“Once we all started talking, we realized that we were all scammed by the same person and made a group chat,” Delos Reyes said.

The similarities were uncanny. All of the victims fell for the same excuses made by the scammer. They never heard back from the scammer, but collectively submitted a report to police.

Delos Reyes and Mherzie jumped between various short-term rentals waiting for the place they were promised. They were out of pocket more than $4000 because of the scam.

While scammers may lie, the numbers do not

Delos Reyes is not alone. According to Statistics Canada, scams have been on the rise in recent years. While the data does not look specifically at online scams, overall fraud cases are increasing.

In StatsCan’s 2019 General Social Survey of all crimes, fraud was the most common. That year, 2.5 million people reported being a victim of fraud in the past year. In the five years before the survey, the financial losses of all fraud amounted to over $16 billion.

Among all crimes recorded by the police, fraud saw the largest increase. Since 2011, fraud rose from 87,174 incidents in 2011 to 168,483 incidents in 2021. Police-reported fraud rarely led to charges, with 90 per cent of the cases remaining unresolved.

Deposits and deception

Scammers use a variety of methods to obtain money. One method is requesting a deposit and never delivering the product. Last year, Nadeem Mohammed found this out the hard way while attempting a Facebook Marketplace purchase.

After moving to a new house in Gibsons, he turned to the popular site to furnish his house. Mohammed found the perfect grey couch for just $100 being sold by “Milka.” She was a mother – her profile was a picture of her smiling at her baby in a carrier. She was offering free delivery, an “incentive” for Mohammed to buy the couch.

After setting up a time to meet, Milka asked for a $50 deposit, which he promptly sent via e-transfer. As the minutes approached their meeting time, Mohammed tried contacting her, only to be “ghosted.”

He said that looking back, there were “signs” that the posting was a scam. While the profile contained pictures of a woman and her family, it was only made a few months prior. In his previous Marketplace experiences, both as a buyer and seller, Mohammed only exchanged money after meeting the seller in person.

“In hindsight, the couch looked too good,” Mohammed said. “It looked brand new. The fact that they asked for a deposit was definitely a red flag.”

Mohammed reported the Facebook profile, however, it remained up as of March. He thinks that Facebook owner Meta should “implement monitoring systems” on Marketplace to prevent scams from happening.

“Facebook has seller ratings, which works decently. But I think they should at least verify a profile before they’re allowed to post to Marketplace,” Mohammed said.

Counterfeit crisis

Apart from cheating people out of their money, scammers also sell fake merchandise to turn a profit. The Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre reports that fake merchandise accounted for $400,000 in loss for victims in 2024.

David Tran, a fashion enthusiast, frequently uses online marketplaces to source his clothes. Tran found a special edition VlonexPlayboy shirt being sold on the Vancouver Streetwear Community Facebook group.

After meeting the seller in person and paying him $130, Tran’s friends saw inconsistencies in the shirt’s tags when compared to an authentic shirt.

“It turns out the shirt was a fake, which I didn’t learn until after I had bought the T-shirt already,” Tran said.

He said that he was inclined to trust the seller as they had shown him a receipt for the shirt.

“People can make fake receipts very easily,” Tran said. “They can fake merchandise. They can fake emails.”

Tran said that despite the fact that Facebook warns against sending money online, the site has few safeguards for fake merchandise.

“Facebook does absolutely nothing. They’re completely useless when it comes to stuff like this. They don’t really have a support for users in that regard,” said Tran. “It’s pretty concerning actually.”

As an avid buyer and seller on Marketplace, Tran has been scammed three times on the site. While he said the situation was unfortunate, he highlighted a community aspect of avoiding scams amongst fashion enthusiasts.“How we did it back in these community groups is that, if they had bought something from the person before and they see them selling again, they throw a comment under the post so others can see they’re legitimate,” Tran said.

With the community taking things into their own hands, Tran said he would see specific people getting “blacklisted” from groups for scamming buyers.

“The community became aware that these people were not to be trusted,” Tran said. “It was a pretty cool thing to see.”