ROCHESTER, N.Y. – A family bought their future home in early May but found out last weekend that another family moved in after they rented it off Craigslist.
       
There were so many bogus ads for the same house, the potential is there for more victims.

Marisa and Kristian Franco are active duty Coast Guard stationed in California. In May they bought their future home in Greece. But when a family member went to check on it on Saturday they found a different family had already moved in. The Francos say that the family refused to leave.

“I just trusted the police to take care of it,” Marisa said on Zoom from Los Angeles. “A little bit of feeling unsettled that I don’t have any rights to my home.”

“It’s all we’ve been able to think about and talk about the last three days,” Kristian said.

Chief Investigative Reporter Berkeley Brean: “What is that I’m looking at here?”

Annette Baldwin: “This is the rental lease agreement,” she said.
 
Annette and Erick Baldwin were the people in the house. In late May they answered a Craigslist ad renting the house for $970.

Brean: “And when you saw it you thought what?”

Erick Baldwin: “A dream come true.”

Annette Baldwin: “Thank you Jesus. Our dream has come true.”

They felt they could finally escape the drug-infested apartment complex they say they were living in.

But the ad was a fraud. And so is the lease agreement.

It used the names of the Francos and the previous owner and forged the signatures. The ads are now flagged by Craigslist. But a new one was posted every day from May 24 to the 27. 

When I was with the Baldwins Tuesday evening, they got a call from Greece Police who told them to be out of the house Wednesday.

Brean: “So what are you going to do now?”

Erick: “Right now we have no clue about what we’re going to do because the money we had, we spent it here.”

Brean: “Do you have anywhere to go?”

Annette: “No.”

The Francos believe the fraudster took details from the Zillow listing of their home to create the bogus ad.

Since Saturday, Greece Police mediated a deal. As long as the Baldwins leave Wednesday, the Francos will put them up in a hotel for three days and get some local family to help them move.

So, how did the Baldwins get into the home? They say the guy they talked to said he was out of town and couldn’t get them the keys. So he told them to hire a locksmith, change the locks and he would deduct that from their next month’s rent.