A one-bedroom in Cary for $660 a month.

That was the pitch on a TikTok video that organically showed up in my feed last week, filmed inside what appeared to be an empty apartment with a Cary address stamped across the screen in large block letters. Below it was a phone number and a Telegram handle.

The price immediately stood out. The going rate for a one-bedroom apartment in Cary is more than double that. Looking up the address raised another problem: the property was not listed for rent or sale, and the supposed “one-bedroom apartment” was actually a 3,100-square-foot single-family house.

I ended up texting with the person behind the listing, who asked me to buy an Apple gift card to approve my rental application, claimed to own a house he appeared to have never seen, and eventually called to yell expletives at me after learning I was a journalist. More importantly, the account was advertising the addresses of real homes where real families are currently living, without the homeowners having any idea it was happening.

The account posted under the handle trustedhomereant45. Its profile photo featured the Philadelphia skyline and the words “Rental Account, Philadelphia, PA,” despite the account exclusively advertising properties in North Carolina.

The listings stretched across Cary, Morrisville, Holly Springs, Durham and Louisburg. There was a two-bedroom on Crinian Drive in Cary for $930 a month, a one-bedroom on Midori Circle for $720, along with properties on Alumroot Road in Holly Springs, Plank Bridge Way in Morrisville and Halifax Road in Louisburg. Every price was dramatically below market rate, and every caption ended with the same phone number and Telegram handle.

The videos themselves also did not appear to show the properties being advertised. On one listing, TikTok’s own related-content bar surfaced an out-of-state apartment complex whose marketing footage appeared to be the source of the clip. The account was essentially taking footage from one property and attaching the address of another.

I texted the number using a burner app and posed as someone looking for a place to live. The reply came quickly, and I was sent an “application” through Google Forms asking for basic information including my monthly income, how soon I wanted to move in, and whether I had any pets.

After I submitted it, the person asked whether I had Cash App or Chime. I told him I could use Venmo, PayPal or even write a paper check. He ignored all three options and instead asked which store was near me.

“I’m in Cary, so a bunch,” I said.

“Can you going to store and buy apple gift card to approve your application from now.”

This is the entire scam in a nutshell. No legitimate landlord or property manager needs an Apple gift card to approve a rental application, and gift cards are very useful to scammers because once the victim sends the code, the money can be difficult or impossible to recover. Scammers can then sell those codes at discounted rates for cash or cryptocurrency. 

I stalled and told him I bought the gift card online instead of going to the store, then sent him a link. He became increasingly agitated and spent the next roughly 20 minutes repeating variations of the same request: send the code, send the code now, send it to my Gmail. When I offered to meet him at the property and show him the code in-person, he ignored the offer and again told me to go to the store.

Then I told him I was a journalist, and asked if I could ask him a couple questions.

“I will never in my life do anything to tarnish my image or put the trust you have in me in the mud....no never!! This is my property and we can a perfect time to meet at the property today in afternoon once the application form is approved.”

That was a direct claim of ownership, made after he knew he was speaking with a reporter, about a house that belongs to somebody else.

I asked where he was located, how long he had been doing this and whether it was his full-time job. Instead of answering, he began insulting me, including several messages in Yoruba (a language primarily spoken in West Africa, where many of these scams originate), before calling me directly. The call lasted 37 seconds. He yelled a series of expletives at me, hung up, and blocked my number.

I looked up the owners of several properties advertised by the account and started reaching out.

“This is our primary residence, and it definitely is not for rent,” one homeowner, who asked not to be named, wrote back. “This is all news to us.”

The video, which listed their address on top of the footage, was not even their house.

The actual address, however, is real. It appears on Google Maps. It has property records, tax records and photos online. Someone unfamiliar with the area could reasonably assume the video they were watching showed that same property, particularly if they had already been drawn in by a rent price far below the local market.

The people actually living there, meanwhile, often have no idea their home is being advertised.

The homeowner I spoke with said nobody had shown up at the property looking to rent it. That is fortunate, as in other stories of this rental scam, victims have arrived at homes believing they had paid to move in, only to discover that the person who collected their money never owned or controlled the property.

Before contacting the person behind the account, I reported it through TikTok’s in-app reporting tool under the fraud and scams category.

The response came back less than an hour later: “No violations.” TikTok said the reported content did not violate its Community Guidelines, and the account remained online, continuing to advertise properties using real residential addresses.

I then emailed TikTok’s press team, identified myself as a reporter and explained what I had found, including that the person behind the account had attempted to collect payment through an Apple gift card and falsely claimed to own one of the advertised properties.

The account was removed the next day.

A TikTok spokesperson said the company’s Community Guidelines prohibit attempts to defraud or scam members of its community. The company also said that during the first quarter of 2026, more than 98 percent of videos removed for violating its fraud and scam policies were identified proactively before anyone reported them, and encouraged users to report suspicious content by holding down on a video and selecting the fraud and scams category.

I reported the account exactly the way TikTok tells users to, by holding down on the video and choosing the fraud and scams category, and the report came back clean. The account came down the day after a reporter emailed the press team, not from a user report.

TikTok did not answer my question about why the original report was closed without action.

While reporting this story, I found four other accounts essentially running the same play under a different name. One listing advertised a three-bedroom home in Cary for $1,400 a month, while also advertising houses in Porter and Georgetown, Texas.

The structure was identical: dramatically discounted rent, footage presented alongside a residential address, and one phone number handling inquiries for properties spread across multiple cities and states. As of publication, these accounts remained online.

Rental fraud is also not a small category of online crime. The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center received 12,368 complaints in its real estate category in 2025, accounting for $275 million in reported losses. The category includes rental fraud, timeshare fraud and real estate investment fraud, so those numbers do not represent renters alone, but complaints increased by roughly a third from the previous year while reported losses increased by more than half.

North Carolinians filed 25,940 complaints across all types of internet crime in 2025, reporting approximately $431 million in total losses.

I asked Shannon Basner, a Wake County Realtor with LPT Realty, what she tells renters to watch for.

“Rental scams on Facebook and TikTok can be incredibly convincing,” she said. “Scammers often copy photos and information from legitimate listings, advertise the property at an attractive price, and then ask for a deposit or application fee before the renter has seen the home.”

“I always encourage renters to verify the property and who they're dealing with before sending any money. If the price seems too good to be true, there's pressure to act quickly, or someone won't allow you to see the property first, those are major red flags.”

There were several ways to catch this particular scam before sending any money.

Gift cards are an easy warning sign. No legitimate landlord, property manager or leasing office should require an Apple, Google Play or other gift card to approve a rental application or pay a security deposit. If someone asks for the numbers from the back of a gift card, the conversation should end there.

Renters should never pay a penny before touring the property themselves. This is the easiest way to not get scammed.

If you have already lost money to a rental scam, you can file a complaint with the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center at IC3.gov.