Dennis Romero over at our big sis' paper LA Weekly has a post about a craigslist rental advertisement that sent a bunch of lookiloos to a San Clemente pad that was going to be leased out for $3,500 a month.
The problem was the couple living in the 2,800-square-foot home had not yet placed the ad–and whoever did listed the rent at only $1,400 a month.
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The fake ad apparently worked, sending over scores of people encouraged by the notice to come on in and take a look. No worries, claimed the ad, the place is vacant.
Actually, it isn't. And the Orange County Sheriff's Department is now trying to figure out who placed the phony ad.
“I had somebody look in the window while I was making dinner,” current occupant Melissa Van Nostran told a TV reporter, “and they
kind of looked at me like 'who are you?' And I looked at them like,
'can I help you?'”
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.