Hello, I am 22 years old who was looking for the house for a long term rental as a 1-year lease. Since I live in Canada, I was looking for one in Kijiji and places4students. However, somehow I found this great house on craigslist.org which seemed like the price was really good but not too low that I would think of this as a fraud. I have contacted the owner and he mentioned that he is in Greece. The owner wanted this lease agreement to be through the Airbnb as he quoted, "In Canada it's your legal right to check the place and verify the documents before I will receive any funds. Therefore I want to use Airbnb (www.airbnb.com). They are an online marketplace connecting landlords with tenants and also they provide the most secured payment platform worldwide. " However, I had no account with Airbnb and I never knew about the Airbnb providing a long term lease. After that, I have received an email from 'airbnb@global-management-rental.com' stating where the place is and that I will need to pay the first-month fee and the damage deposit. they also wanted the money transaction through a Moneygram. The biggest worry was that apparently, I will need to pay the first month and the damage deposit first, then they will send me the required documents and keys for the apartment then we can go check. They also stated that I can go check the place whenever and if I do not like the place, I will be given a full refund. This all happened in 2 days. Up until then, I had no idea this could be a fraud but when I when to the MoneyGram to send the money, they advised after hearing the situation, this could be a fraud and since they felt that strongly, they did not proceed with the transaction. Also when I asked for the unit number to the owner, he said "The unit number will be provided after you will confirm the payment with Airbnb. The building management has a strict policy regarding private properties and they can't provide with any information about the apartment until the transaction is completed." all the number that owner and the Airbnb gave to call for any inquiries are international numbers where I was not going to call. please help me with if this man is lying to me or if this is a serious business where there is an actual department of global-management-rental and that the situation I have been through seems reasonable.
