I sympathize with the victims here, and these scams are very horrible. Knowing victims of similar scams, there are a few forces at play that make people unable

I sympathize with the victims here, and these scams are very horrible. Knowing victims of similar scams, there are a few forces at play that make people unable to see the tell-tale signs of phishing that are unique to real estate and rentals: 1. Desperation for "deals." The prices are almost always below market, and people intuitively assume things will not be around for long. The city, friends in the emigre/imigrant areas, the new employer, etc. are all to blame for increasing the desperation and help the scammer without any coordination to pressure the mark to close. 2. Intense peer pressure. Moving is stressful, but people deal with stressful stuff all the time. The difference is she has a partner, a family member or a boss who depends on her to be living in a certain place by a certain time, and rarely contributes to decisionmaking. This is a pretty common sales pressure tactic that car salesmen and conventional real estate agents use; for rentals it's pretty much guaranteed you'll have a second person pressuring the mark to close quickly at any cost. 3. Non-reversible payments being the norm. Real estate is paid with non-reversible payments. Banks could easily reverse these charges. Usually the recipients of the payments are themselves marks--ordinary people who are used as blank-check businesses and cooperate, unwittingly, as the settler of payments for the scammer. The paper trail is there and it's super easy to reverse, but banks have no mechanism to report inter-bank fraud with the proper urgency. There simply is no number to call or teller to communicate to. The banks, in this way, pressure the mark into putting it all past them because it's no skin off their back. Society does no one favors to see past these scams. Real estate rental puts the mark into an incredibly vulnerable position. The solutions are simple. If payment is digital, it should be the norm that it is reversible. Flexible start dates for jobs that require moving enshrined in the law (moving benefit does not alleviate the pressure to save). And a place where you can see rental rates and turnover to indicate to people when a deal is too good to be true.