Impostor rented out someone else's home

Melissa Maldonado and her boyfriend, who asked not to be named, recently moved into this South San Francisco home, only to find out that the woman renting it to them was not the owner. Melissa Maldonado and her boyfriend, who asked not to be named, recently moved into this South San Francisco home, only to find out that the woman renting it to them was not the owner. Photo: Kurtis Alexander, The Chronicle Photo: Kurtis Alexander, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close Impostor rented out someone else's home 1 / 3 Back to Gallery

The scam was brazen and damaging, and appears to have worked out just as planned.

A woman posted an ad on Craigslist last month offering to rent bedrooms in a South San Francisco home. The price was reasonable - $450 a room - and a pair of young couples attending school in the area toured the vacant house with the woman, forked over $1,800 to secure two rooms on the top floor, and moved in Nov. 1.

Two weeks later, the couples' lives are in shambles.

The problem, a police investigation found, is that the reddish five-bedroom home on the 100 block of Francisco Drive wasn't the woman's to rent. When the real owners discovered people living there, they ordered them out, leaving the swindled tenants with no place else to go.

"We'd have to get a two-bedroom," said victim Melissa Maldonado, 20, who recently moved from Los Angeles to attend Skyline College in San Bruno. "We can't afford that right now. We don't know what we're going to do."

The surprise - for everyone - came last Thursday, when two men showed up at the house saying the property was theirs and demanding to know what Maldonado and the three others were doing.

"I had left the door open because I was unloading groceries, and some people just barged in and started yelling that they wanted us out," Maldonado said.

The men, who said they represented the owner, called police, and the truth emerged: The students had been duped by an impostor landlord - a woman who has now disappeared.

The property agent, Shoreline Assets Group of Foster City, gave the couples until the next day to leave, but on Wednesday the foursome were still there.

A representative with the agent declined to comment.

"I feel sorry for the students," said neighbor Raul Lavarias. "The day after they moved in, we introduced ourselves, and they seemed really nice."

According to police, the impostor landlord probably scouted out vacant homes in the area before breaking in and changing out the locks. She showed her face when she gave the tour Oct. 13. But other than that, she communicated only through her Craigslist e-mail address and a phone number that no longer takes calls.

Maldonado said she never suspected that the woman wasn't affiliated with the home. Maldonado even checked property records and saw the woman's name there. She didn't realize the suspect had apparently done the same research and adopted the name.

"The woman was very nice, talkative," Maldonado said. "She looked normal."