Tampa Bay 28 consumer investigator Susan El Khoury opened her report with a scenario that sounds almost unreal until you remember how fast scams move online: imagine someone posting your home for rent on social media, collecting attention – and potentially money – from strangers, and then when you report it, the platform shrugs and leaves it up.
That, El Khoury reported, is what a Tampa Bay-area realtor says happened to her when she discovered a rental post on Facebook that was using her photos, her property description, and her work as bait.
The realtor, Andrea Stoll, told El Khoury the moment she saw the post she felt a “pit in my stomach,” because it wasn’t just an annoying copycat listing – it looked like the kind of setup that can trick people into sending deposits or personal information before they realize there’s no real rental at all…