DA's office in South Lake Tahoe to film story on vacation home fraud

While vacation rental scams are nothing new in South Lake Tahoe, law enforcement has seen an increase in their numbers.

South Tahoe Now ran a story on January 11 of this year, highlighting the recent rash of fraud through Craigslist. Over the Christmas and New Year's holidays in South Lake Tahoe, there were over 30 vacation rental scams, with more happening each week. On January 6, 2016, there was one home "rented" twice on Merced Avenue, followed by a home on David Lane being "rented" on January 11 and 14. None of these homes were legitimately rented and all four parties were out money they paid to the criminal(s) via Craigslist.

"This is an epidemic," said Robert Leach who is the real estate fraud criminal investigator for the El Dorado County District Attorney's Office. "The best way to stop the fraud is not to rent a home on Craigslist. Don't send money to people you don’t know. Mail payment only to a company with a physical address."

The El Dorado County District Attorney's office had a team come to South Lake Tahoe this week to create a film on the scams for their community outreach campaign to educate the public on the perils of renting a vacation home on Craigslist and not through a reputable rental company.

Kathy Jo Liebhardt, owner of Tahoe Destination Vacation Rentals had one of the homes she manages be the target of a large scam on New Year's Eve. The large, high-end home on Saddle Road was rented to a group of 15 that went through her company. They were enjoying their evening when a party of 20 people came to the door, saying they rented the home on Craigslist for $8,000. That group was scammed out of a large amount of money and ended up with no place to stay on the busiest night of the year for hotels in South Lake Tahoe.

Liebhardt has been working closely with the District Attorney's office since several of her homes have been targeted, though the three story Saddle Road home gets the most attention because of the high nightly rental costs.

"I'm constantly having to change my website, change descriptions of the homes and their photos," she said. "The crooks are taking the photos and descriptions, copying my documents." She said the people who have been scammed get a fake rental agreement that looks legitimate, uses her verbiage, but it doesn't have her company's name on it.

Liebhardt said some people are doing their due diligence and calling her company before paying money to the fraudulent people after they see . "They call me and ask me why the prices for the homes are so much less on Craigslist," she said. The scammers will get more people to fall for their ads because of the low prices.

District Attorney Investigator Dave Stevenson was at the Saddle Road home with Liebhardt this week, along with his film crew as well as Fox40 News from Sacramento.

This will be an infomercial to warn people of the problem," said Stevenson. "We'll distribute the film on our website and through social media."

Stevenson has had success with his "Wednesday's Most Wanted" social media campaign with 80 percent of the criminals being captured. He also films a cold case series in hopes for solving old crimes, a series that has been picked up by the network show 48 Hours.

Many of the South Lake Tahoe area vacation home rental companies experience the same thing as Liebhardt's company. Most of the people who rent a home through Craigslist from the scammers never see their money again. The scammers don't accept credit cards so they rely on wire transfers or money orders and checks being mailed to a post office box. Once the scam is over the bank account is closed with no proof on who had the account when it was opened. Leach said he knew of one case where the victims paid through paypal and were being refunded, but that is rare and the only instance he knows of money being returned.

Austin Stevenson and Nick Krohn of D & A Productions of Placerville filmed the story for the District Attorney's Office.