The tearful calls started coming into Bohemia Realty Group about a year and a half ago.
Clients would say they had just sent money to a broker for a deposit on an apartment — except they hadn’t. They’d sent it to a scammer impersonating a Bohemia agent.
“People call the office and they’re like, ‘That was all the money I had. What do I do?’” said Sarah Saltzberg, co-owner of the brokerage. “And people are crying and your heart just breaks for them.”
Online scammers have been around as long as the internet itself, but industry professionals say the frequency and brazenness of fake-broker scams has grown with the use of social media to advertise listings.
The remote nature of the crimes and reluctance by social media companies and law enforcement to intervene has left brokerages and agents scrambling for solutions.
“It’s gotten increasingly worse to the point where I now have an impostor, [as] the head of the firm,” said Saltzberg. “It really feels like such a violation.”
The hubris of scammers adds insult to injury. Doug Heddings, a manager at Compass, has communicated directly with one of his Facebook impersonators.
“Please remove this fraudulent account immediately,” Heddings messaged the impostor from his own Facebook account. “You have been reported to the FBI and local law enforcement for internet fraud as you are impersonating me!”
The impostor replied: “Send me $5,000 and I’ll delete the account. I promise.”
The Real Estate Board of New York has pledged to take action “in the near term”, though it’s unclear what and when that will be.
“This is an increasingly frustrating issue for agents and we are discussing it with numerous members,” said a representative. “More effective anti-fraud policies on social media platforms are necessary and we are exploring ways to further engage platforms and law enforcement on this matter.”
One of Heddings’ agents, Dennis Laronga, has been pushed to his wits’ end by scammers on TikTok. He does not see REBNY’s advice, which was to Google himself and to report any fake accounts to the social media platform, the police and New York’s Department of State, as the answer.
“I hate that I have to Google myself every day just to make sure there’s nothing new,” said Laronga, adding that he was “crushed” by the lack of help from his trade group. “It just repeats itself. It’s Groundhog Day.”
He wants REBNY to create a liaison to push social media companies to take down fake accounts, saving brokers valuable time.
An assistant delegated by Saltzberg to scour Instagram every morning recently tabulated more than 20 fake profiles impersonating 18 Bohemia brokers, the boss included.
Knowing that scams are being committed under his name has Laronga worried about going to the office and open houses.
“What happens if one of these people that are swindled shows up here?” he said from a Compass office. “Or shows up to one of my listings … saying I swindled them? How do I know if they would get physical?”
Impostors are hard to deter because their scams don’t require any hacking. They simply find a photo of the broker online and create a profile that displays listing photos or videos pulled from the internet with an AI voice overlay. The listings usually offer a deal that’s too good to be true, like a spacious Midtown apartment for $1,050 a month.
Scammers sometimes take extra steps to appear legitimate, posting an agent’s license number or declaring in their profile bios that they’re the real agent and that the real agent’s account is fake.
“It makes you feel incredibly vulnerable and victimized,” said Heddings.
Laronga and Saltzberg both had a hard time getting the police to take them seriously — the NYPD didn’t want to take a police report from Laronga — and Saltzberg’s complaint to the Department of State produced a bumbling response that culminated with a promise to investigate Bohemia Realty.
“No, no, no, I’m Bohemia,” she told the agency. “I’m not complaining against myself.”
Social media platforms have not been very responsive either. Instagram and Facebook have refused to remove the fraudulent Bohemia Realty and Heddings accounts.
“Every single day Instagram comes back and says, ‘We investigated this and it’s not a fraudulent account,’” said Saltzberg, echoing Heddings’ experience with Facebook.
Laronga has paid for verification on Instagram — something Saltzberg said she hadn’t done — a $15 a month cost he seems confident will inspire action from the platform should an impostor show up there.
TikTok ignored his complaints for weeks until a colleague sent him a link to submit one. Each time he does, he has to upload a photo of himself holding an ID, but the platform eventually gets around to deleting the impostor account.
Agents can take some preventative measures to discourage impostors, said Madison Sutton, a Serhant agent with a large TikTok following. They should include their email or name in photos and videos and add watermarks that are hard to edit out. They should also include a call to action at the beginning and end of videos, with instructions on how to find them.
“I gave them a very clear path if they did want to contact me,” said Sutton. “Make content around the subject … talking about what the process would look like if it was legitimate.”
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