Scammers used fake documents and real N.W.T. homes to cheat would-be renters from across the country
'There was no fanfare, no huge red flags,' says Ryan Planche of Barrie, Ont.
Would-be renters looking to move to Hay River, N.W.T., say they're being targeted by scammers using fake documents and real house listings to convince them to e-transfer hundreds of dollars in rent and damage deposits.
CBC News interviewed five renters with identical stories of being strung along by people offering homes to rent in Hay River. Two lost money.
CBC News has also viewed documents and records of messages and emails between the alleged scammers and each of the renters, and has attempted to make contact via text message with a phone number associated with the alleged scammers, without success.
Their names and locations change, but their correspondence has all been the same — right down to spelling mistakes.
It works like this: You post on Facebook looking for a place to rent. Someone messages you, saying they know someone with a house. They pass along your information, and you're contacted by someone who sends you pictures associated with a real listing.
The scammer then claims they've recently moved to Saskatchewan with their fiancé. They say they couldn't sell the house due to the pandemic — but they'll mail you the keys if you sign a rental agreement and e-transfer them the damage deposit and rent.
Conned out of rent money
Ryan Planche is a Ph.D. student living in Barrie, Ont., who had planned to move to Hay River. After posting in the Hay River Homes & Apartment Rentals Facebook page, Planche received a message from a Facebook account bearing the name of Claudia Einstein, who said they knew someone with a house to rent. CBC has reached out to the Facebook account bearing that name, but has not received a response.
From there, he was passed off to someone using the name Twyla Fayant.
"There was no fanfare, no huge red flags. She said she was recently trying to sell her house [but] it didn't sell," Planche said.
He asked a friend of his who lives in Hay River to go look at the home, and it matched up with the information he had been given. He signed a rental agreement and sent proof of employment — documentation which, he says, contained a lot of personal information.
A day later, Planche was told he was approved, and he e-transferred $750 for a damage deposit as well as $1,500 for the first month's rent, on the understanding he would be mailed keys to the house.
Instead, he received tracking information that was clearly fake — the ultimate red flag that tipped him off to the con. By then, it was too late to recover his money.
"I felt like I did a little bit of due diligence, but obviously it wasn't enough," he said.
His plans to move are now on hold until the new year, and he says he's been left with a sour taste about moving.
Not the real Twyla Fayant
Scammers have used the name Twyla Fayant, and a decade old photo of her, to run rental scams in Okotoks, Alta., as well, according to Facebook rental forums in the community.
CBC has learned the real Twyla Fayant was scammed out of her personal information in August. She told CBC she hasn't used that last name for years — it's her married name, and she's been separated for decades. She goes by Twyla Beston-Gleave now.
Beston-Gleave recently moved to Calgary with her son and her grandson. She said she fell for a rental fraud in August and sent the scammer a photo of her driver's licence, which bore her married name. The person who scammed her went by the name Marie Sunflower — the same name told to the CBC by one of the other would-be renters in Hay River.
"I was very angry in the beginning, but now I'm just sad. I hope it doesn't happen to anybody else," Beston-Gleave said of the scam.
She said she has been having a hard time finding a place to rent in Calgary, and now she's worried it's because people associate her name with scammers.
"I just don't understand how people can do this," she said.
Beston-Gleave said she called Calgary police, who passed the information along to Okotoks RCMP.
Not the real Marie Sunflower
The name Marie Sunflower actually belongs to Sunflower Marie Okemaysim, a Saskatoon, Sask., resident who says she fell for a rental scam a year and a half ago.
Okemaysim shared a photo of her ID with the scammer. It's the same photo that's now being sent to potential renters to convince them of the scammer's identity.
Okemaysim said she has been contacted numerous times by other victims since she was scammed. She says she has gone to the Saskatoon RCMP, and was told she should file a statement with them every time she learns of another victim.
"I just want it to end. I really want it to stop," she said.
Homeowner 'shocked'
When Planche realized he had been the victim of fraud, he called the real estate agent on the online listing of the house. The agent confirmed the owner is Sue MacKay, who now lives in Peterborough, Ont..
MacKay told CBC she was shocked to get a call from her agent about the scam.
"I'm a trusting person, so when things happen like this and you get taken, it's awful," she said.
"I don't know what homeowners can do, because we don't even know it's happening."
At least two other N.W.T. residents, Shawna Trevelyan and Andrew Gallop, said they were contacted by people using the names Claudia Einstein and Twyla Fayant as well.
Trevelyan told CBC she and her sister were looking for a place to rent, and commented on a Facebook post. Soon after, she received a text message from the scammer and they began corresponding.
"She was asking for our information, like pay stubs or what kind of income we've got ... and we basically gave her everything," she said.
"She said for us to send her the damage deposit and she would send us the key for the place."
Trevelyan sent $750, but never received the key. The scammer stopped responding to her messages.
Because it was an e-transfer, her bank couldn't help her get the money back. She told CBC she was waiting to see if she could recover her money before going to police.
Different names, same scam
Two other people said they were contacted via different accounts. Both were tipped off to the con by fake documents sent to them.
Monica Piros of Calgary said she was looking at job opportunities in Hay River and joined some rental groups on Facebook. She was contacted by someone on Facebook she didn't know, who connected her with someone using the name Luann Christyn Fuller, who claimed to be living in Saskatchewan.
"There were just a couple things that struck me as odd. You know, you hear about these scams all over — they're pretty common," Piros said.
When she asked to view the property, she was told to just peek through the windows instead. When she asked for proof they owned the house, they sent her a photo of an Ontario driver's licence that seemed off.
"That was it for me," she said.
CBC was unable to track down a Luann Christyn Fuller living in Saskatchewan, but the CBC traced the photo of the licence back to a 2007 image that circulated widely with media stories about Ontario adopting a new driver's licence at the time. The image is not of a real licence, and the photo Piros was sent had been doctored to add the name Fuller to the licence.
Fake power bill, real company
Kevin Douglas told CBC the person who tried to defraud him faked a power bill in the name of a Marie Sunflower to convince him they owned the house.
The bill uses the logo and information of a real Hay River company, Power Surge Technologies Ltd. — but that company sells office supplies and computers.
CBC confirmed with Power Surge Technologies general manager Brian Lefebvre that they do not, and never have, offered electricity services.
The name on the power bill is Marie Sunflower. The scammer also sent Douglas the photo of Okemaysim's ID.
Douglas said he called the Northwest Territories RCMP to report the scam, but because he didn't lose any money, he got the impression they wouldn't be investigating.
Police response
If you're exposed to a fraud or a scam in Canada, you can report it to your local police service. That means the reports for this scam went to several different areas.
N.W.T. RCMP spokesperson Marie York-Condon told CBC in an email a search of Hay River RCMP files in general didn't yield any file related to the rental scam described.
York-Condon shared information with CBC from the N.W.T. financial crime unit, which encourages anyone with information on fraud to call their local RCMP or Crime Stoppers.
There's also the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre — a partnership between the RCMP, Ontario Provincial Police and the Competition Bureau of Canada.
Jennett Mays, a spokesperson for the Barrie Police Service in Barrie, Ont., where Ryan Planche filed his complaint about the scam, said in an email that there have been reports of similar occurrences in Barrie.
"For those that have encountered a fraud attempt, but have not lost any money or personal information, it can be reported to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre," Mays wrote.
"If you have lost money through fraud, it should be reported to your local police service."
Mays said Planche's file has been assigned to the police service's alternate response unit (which responds to non-emergency crimes reported online) to investigate with the help of their fraud unit. The fraud unit also collaborates with other police services to keep informed about common frauds.