An Oklahoma City-area woman says the same man who threatened News 4 also tried to rope her into a bogus rental deal that leaned on an Opendoor self‑tour code. April Cobb says she answered a Facebook ad for a Moore house this month and was given what she believed was a legitimate one‑time access code to get inside. She says the visit cost her $70 and ended with calls to both Opendoor and local police, as per KFOR.
Cobb told KFOR that the poster identified himself as “George,” sent over a phony rental application asking for personal information and a debit‑card number, and then provided a code she used to unlock the front door through the Opendoor app. She says she created an Opendoor account, entered the address, chose a self‑tour and plugged in the code, only to notice once inside that the home had more bedrooms than the Facebook ad promised. That was enough to make her suspicious, and she says she contacted Opendoor and filed a police report.
Opendoor’s self‑tour system can be misused
Opendoor’s platform lets would‑be buyers schedule self‑guided walkthroughs of homes the company has listed for sale and receive time‑limited access codes through its app. As Opendoor explains on its help pages, those self‑tour tools are meant for purchase viewings, not rental showings. Scammers can twist that setup by copying legitimate listings, then passing along access codes to make a fake rental look real.
How fraudsters turn self‑tours into a hustle
In similar cases, scammers have been known to lift real for‑sale listings, repost them on sites like Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace at below‑market rents, then hand out lockbox or smart‑entry codes to seal the illusion. Atlanta News First has documented victims being pushed to pay deposits through apps such as Zelle, only to discover later that the rental was never legitimate. That pattern has fueled a steady stream of consumer warnings urging renters to verify listings and refuse to send money before they know exactly who manages the property.
Local expert: vacant homes attract fraudsters…