Woman scrambling for housing after apartment scam

A Torontowoman may be left without a place to live after being bilked by what appears to be a long-time rental apartment scam run bythe prime suspect in a string of similar incidents.

Earlier this month, Jeannette Langton agreed to rent a sunny loft on Queen Street West for $1,100 per month. A man had posted the apartment on Craigslist and she thought it would be the perfect place.

When she met the man to view the unit, she wasn't the only one looking at it, she says. But the man called her and said he wanted to rent the loft to her.

"All I needed to do to secure the place was send him a deposit of last month's rent by email transfer, which I did," Langton told CBC News on Friday.

She knew something was wrong when the man stopped responding to her calls, texts and emails.

"I asked my bank, 'did the email money transfer go to the person I sent it to?'" she said. "And they said, 'we can't tell you who accepted the money but we can tell you it didn't go to Lee Walder."

The man had told her that was his name. In fact, when she found a picture of him online, it was actually Robert Charles Reid, a man who police say is a career scam artist who has been operating primarily in Toronto and Vancouver over the last 38 years.

Toronto police currently have three arrest warrants out for Reid. Det.-Const. Avtar Ghuman, who first dealt with Reid in 2010, has a warrant out for Reid's arrest in connection with an incident from last year. And there are warrants from both 11 and 14 Divisions as well.

The last time Toronto police arrested Reidwas back in 2011. In June of that year he pled guilty rental scam-related charges and was sentenced to four months in jail.

Other victims come forward

He is the main suspect in a number of recentincidents in Toronto, including a scam that costEnrique Miranda$500. Miranda said hemet with a man he believes was Reidabout a short-term rental at an apartment on St. George Street for his father, who is visiting from Nicaragua.

On Sept. 1, when he expected to move his father into the apartment, the man was nowhere to be found. Like Langton, Miranda looked up the man he had met, who identified himself as "Brad," and the pictures he found online matched Reid's.

• Long-time rental scam artist back in business in Toronto, police say

Another woman was also scammed by a man who matches pictures of Reid. Liat Feldman just moved back to Toronto after living overseas for 18 years. She says that she, too, was scammed out of $1,100 at the same apartment on the same weekend as Langton.

"You can't go onto the internet anymore and find legitimate apartments," she told CBC. "You don't know who you can believe."

For Langton, the scam has left her without a place to live. She sublet her apartment after agreeing to rent the Queen West condo.

She now has to find a place by the end of this month. Otherwise, she will have to couch surf with friends or stay at her sister's place in Guelph and commute to Toronto.

'20 or 30 offers go in for a rental'

One realestate agent who specializes in rental properties said with a shortage of rentals in Toronto, he's not surprised to see renters get desperate and take shortcuts.

"We're finding we're coming up against bidding wars in the rental markets," agent Isaac Saragossi said.

"There are people offering more than asking price to get into a unit. In some cases, 20 or 30 offers go in for a rental unit."

According to Saragossi, it's impossible to find an apartment for $1,100 in the downtown core.