A 22-year-old Westchester Circle resident reported that she was scammed out of $500 by someone she thought was leasing a home on Highland Drive, Athens-Clarke County police said.
The woman said she responded to an ad for the home on the Craigslist classified ad site and spoke with the purported owner, who said he lived in Florida and asked her to wire $500 as a security deposit, police said.
The woman became suspicious after he claimed to need an additional $500 “on the advice of his lawyer.” When doing some research, she found that the name the man used belonged to a deceased person who used to live in the home she was trying to rent.