When I moved to Manchester I was looking for somewhere to move to, and someone attempted to scam me online, posing as a landlord and asking me to send me money to them for a “holding fee”, despite never seeing the property, the contract, or even meeting the landlord. As I have lived in a number of different places and have moved quite a large amount of times, I knew this wasn’t genuine. Looking into it further, I noticed the individual had three different Facebook profiles and didn’t even live in the UK, let alone near Manchester.

Being a journalist, I started to dig a bit deeper and I noticed that this was problem not only in Manchester, but nationwide, especially on online platforms like Facebook.

I researched and broadcast a report for the Breakfast show on BBC 5live with statistics from Action Fraud that highlighted the number of reported cases of rental fraud were rising – and fast.

In the 6am hour, I did a report with pre recorded audio from Luke who was based in Manchester, and Sarah who was based in Bristol, about the scammers they experienced when looking for a property. In the 7am hour there was a live interview with Johans who was based in London about his experience, and at 8am, a fraud expert who used to be involved in the crime himself.

After my 6am 2 way, the story was picked up by Radio London, Radio Wales, I was interviewed by Radio Oxford, it was then picked up by BBC South Today, shared in our central news service which is shared across all BBC local radio stations, ran in bulletins on BBC Radio 1, played in smart bulletins and was picked up by BBC Sounds.

Listen to hear their accounts and a full statement from Facebook, all copyright belongs to the BBC.