Colorado's mountain communities are often targets for rental scams

Carla Rosenblum said she's something like this before, so when she saw three women in her driveway she didn't recognize and one of them started taking pictures, she called the cops. 

The Summit County Sheriff's Office was able to make contact with the women and said their story was this; they claimed to have seen her home online for rent and were just excited to see the property they were hoping to move into after being evicted.

Rosenblum said she's not sure what to believe, but either way, it seems like there's something fishy going on with a rental scam. 

She said 9 years ago when she was trying to sell the house, her realtor called her angry that they had found a listing for rent on the home... which she said she never put out.

"I was able to pull up the description of the house right there on Craigslist and low and behold, there were the photographs of inside the house that she took for the MRS ad for the sale of the house," Rosenblum explained.

"From what I understand some people did send money to a bank account in Sunnyvale, California at Wells Fargo through a routing number," she said. "I felt really bad, they used my name and everything."

The Vail Police Department says it is getting an uptick in both short- and long-term rental and security deposit scams. Their advice is as follows:

• Scammers often target desperate people who need a place quickly. 
• Be cautious of a deal that seems too good to be true.  
• Renters should be cautious of sending the first month's rent or a security deposit to anyone they haven't met with in person.   

• Many fraudulent transactions involve the scammer requesting payment via PayPal or Zelle or other internet-based money transfer services. Only send money to known, trusted recipients. Those requesting payment via electronic funds or wire transfers, as opposed to known, trusted sources should be considered suspicious. 
• If you can't meet in person in a safe location, consider asking the landlord for a U.S.-based address to send payment, and try to verify their identity and location. 
• Consult your bank and read the fine print about what protections are in place when sending money. 
• Many scammers are successful because they operate overseas, outside of U.S. jurisdiction.  E-mail messages and ads often have misspelled words as well as punctuation and grammar errors. 

• If you book a vacation rental on a short-term by-owner rental site, only use reputable platforms, and avoid requests to make the payment as a separate transaction outside of the platform. 
• If in doubt, don't send your hard-earned money until you are 100% sure the transaction isn't fraudulent.  

Rosenblum said she's not trying to incriminate the women in the video out front of her house, but she just wants to make sure everyone is on their guard, especially right now as people are desperate to find housing.