mfi

Zürich has such a big problem with apartment fraud that the police has a specific department working on just this.

I have first hand experience with a similar fraud in Zürich. I had an apartment which I looked for a new tenant to. During my search there was a ”woman” that contacted me and said that she was interested. She behaved really weirdly and couldn’t come on the showing, but requested some videos. I didn’t think more about it and send over a ”digital showing” where I showed certain parts of the apartment. We later found a new tenant and she moved in. I didn’t think more about it.

Fast forward 3 months and a random man knocks on my door during the morning. He asked if I was <insert my name>, and I said yes. He then asked if I rented out the apartment above (which was my old apartment). After explaining that we’d already found a tenant for it, he just said: ”F*ck, then I‘ve been scammed“.

It turned out that this strange ”woman” actually just used me as one side of their scam, getting credible videos where I talked and showed the apartment. The scammers then used all my ad pictures, my name and address to put up a fake ad.

He moved from Austria and paid ~2000 euro in deposit, then arrived to an apartment that was already rented out. He showed me a fradulent contract and my videos I previously sent.

After all of this, I did an image search using my apartment pictures, and found and took down 3 fake listings on different websites.

The article was well written, really enjoyed it and I learned something as a Swiss citizen using this outlet every day! But I agree with the other commenters, I would replace the AI generated images with something else, they drag drown the articles credibility IMO

A bit of cold water on a hot pan isn't a problem, but one should be a bit careful when pouring a lot cold water on hot pans, as they can warp