Couple trying to move to Toronto warn of elaborate online rental scam in red-hot market

Jake Eakley thought he'd found a great deal on the perfect Toronto apartment for him and his fiancée to start their life together.

But the Oakville, Ont., couple quickly learned that if something seems too good to be true, it probably is — and they narrowly avoided losing $4,400 in first and last months' rent to an alleged scammer.

Eakley and his fiancée, Alejandra Gil, are sharing their experience to warn other prospective renters about an elaborate rental scam they say is preying on those trying to find a quasi-affordable apartment in Toronto's red-hot housing market.

"It's very hard to find a place," Eakley told CBC News. "For people to have to also worry about this, it's sad."

Merchandise scams — which involve fake online ads for everything from puppies to apartment rentals — exploded in Canada during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Reports of those scams nearly doubled between 2019 and 2020, and the money lost through them ballooned from $4.3 million in 2019 to $14.4 million in 2020 and almost $12.3 million in 2021, according to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre. 

Earlier this month, Eakley came across an ad on the rental app PadMapper for a two-bedroom loft in a condo building in Toronto's Liberty Village neighbourhood for $2,200 a month.

"I woke up and Jake had his phone, and he said, 'I just found the next place we're going to live,'" Gil recalled. "This [rental] checked all the boxes."

After responding to the ad, Eakley was contacted by the purported owner of the condo, who introduced himself as David Terrance, a Canadian retiree living in Spain.

In emails reviewed by CBC News, Terrance explains to Eakley and Gil that he bought the condo for his son, but because his son is now studying abroad, he was renting the unit remotely from Spain.

To do that, Terrance told the couple he wanted to use a third-party real estate company.

The couple were told the company would send them the keys to the loft and a copy of the lease agreement after Eakley and Gil transferred $4,400 to the company for first and last months' rent. The money would be held in escrow until they visited the unit and decided whether they wanted to rent the loft.

"That's where the really big red flags came out," Eakley said. "We haven't seen the place yet, and you still want us to pay first?"

Terrance also said they'd need to send the third party a copy of their photo IDs to confirm their identities.