I had this happen and caught it right at the beginning. But it goes on. Three years ago I had a friend of a good friend want to rent my condo. Our Condo was in Myrtle Beach SC. At the time I still lived many hours away. I didn't have time to get a smart lock or a Lockstate lock on the unit so I went with one of the over the handle lock boxes. I went to SC and looked up the top ten cleaning companies at the beach. The 2nd one on the list came out and told us all they did and priced it and such. We hired them.
Everything was fine until about the 2nd month. The cleaning company called and said they needed to check the schedule. I told them the last guest was leaving on July 9 and the next one was coming in on July 21. Those were Airbnb guests. I forgot to tell them about the friend coming from July 11-18. The friend goes to the condo on the 11th and calls and says someone is there. I said what do you mean there. He said there were pizza boxes out, tvs were on and cloths and phones on chargers. He offered to wait until some one showed up. About 30 minutes later a man and his wife and 5 kids showed up trying to get into the condo. The friend called me on the phone. I asked to speak with the man. I asked him who he was and how he got into the condo. He said he rented it for a week from a listing on Craigslist. I asked from who. He told me the name. It was the lady who owned the cleaning company.
I told him he couldn't stay there and could get his stuff. He asked about the $800.00 he paid for the week at the condo. I told him that I wasn't the one who rented it nor the one who took the money and that he had been scammed. He still asked about his refund. I told him it could be handled one of two ways. He could leave or I could call the police to have him leave. He left with no problem. I called the cleaning company and they denied it. I reported it to the police and they acted like it was the first they had ever heard of anything like that. Needless to say it did no good.
I know this goes on in a big way and people need to be aware of it.
