EYE recently received several phone calls over the course of a recent weekend in which a number of individual applicants asked, ‘Where is the rental property in XYZ street that I need to view, I am here now and I can’t find it?’

Given that Property Industry Eye is not an estate agency this came as a bit of a surprise but we very quickly ascertained that whoever had given our contact details to these applicants had also relieved them of £15 for the privilege of viewing a non-existent property, or one that exists but isn’t actually up for rent or sale.

We found the culprit, one ‘Elany Johnson’ on Facebook, quite brazenly using an image of part of the EYE website for their profile and further, having the gall to present themselves in the intro as a ‘Real Estate Agent/Salesperson at Property Industry Eye.’ No, they aren’t!

A brief glance and you might see they purport to live in Birmingham – but it’s the Birmingham in Alabama, USA. Yeah, right.

We got onto Facebook and used the reporting link though, being Facebook,  the system  is somewhat opaque and we’ve had no contact from Facebook to tell us they reacted.

But we suspect they might have done because last Saturday we received an email from another applicant…

Ashley wrote:

I was looking for a new place and found a place and I believe this is fake.

I’ve done my research and found that this is not connected.

This is the link https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/563072625089753/

Could you tell this is a person who works for your Company or is it fake?

The link led to this:

We confirmed to Ashley that it is fake but we were surprised to see that ‘Elany’ has now become ‘Eleanor Johnson’ and instead of the Property Industry Eye logo their profile now shows the logo of ‘Locate Estate Agents’ – which we believe is a legitimate company operating in Manchester. We have let them know that their identity is being misused.

The reason that Ashley contacted EYE rather than Locate is that the ‘agent’ had sent him a PDF of the property details – written in poor English – and using the Property Industry Eye logo and details. We have redacted Ashley’s personal details and the house number of the property – which does exist.

The bank details to where the applicant is to make the transfer of the £15 viewing fee shows a Sort Code of 04 00 75. This is Modulr Fs Limited which we will attempt to contact with the information, however some Google checking suggest we might not get very far in reporting the fraud…

So, Elany, or Eleanor, or whatever you are calling yourself this week – could it be ‘Lucie Filipova’ as shown on the bank details?, we are putting this story out there just in case anyone checks you out online and then, hopefully, they will be alerted to your activities.

Applicants beware – a reputable estate or letting agency in the UK is extremely unlikely to charge you for a viewing.