‘Too good to be true’ Hilton Head house appears to be rental scam, says police report

A man contacted the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office on Tuesday after concluding that he and his friend might be victims of a rental scam, according to police report.

The man told a deputy he sent a $200 security deposit on Monday to an individual identified on a Craigslist ad as “Smith Roberts” to secure what was advertised as a $500-a-month rental on Hilton Head Island.

The rental looked “too good to be true,” the man told a deputy, but he and his friend — both of whom had just relocated from New York to Beaufort — were “desperate for a place to live.”

Currently, the man said, he and his friend are homeless and living out of a Jeep.

The man said the Craigslist ad was for a property on Barony Lane in Port Royal Plantation on Hilton Head. He told deputies he later found the same property listed on Zillow, a real-estate website, with a pending offer for “$500,000.”

A house at that address is listed with a pending offer for $499,000 as of Thursday afternoon, according to Zillow.

There is no listing for the property on Craigslist as of Thursday afternoon.

The man said he had only been communicating with “Smith Roberts” through text messages, and that he promised to send keys via FedEx once in receipt of the security deposit.

But the man said he has not received any keys, and “Smith Roberts” has stopped responding to messages.

The deputy advised the man to not send anymore money, and to contact Western Union to attempt to reverse the $200 transaction.

The deputy also asked the man to send him screen-shots of his text message conversations so they could be entered into evidence.