Petersburg, like many small towns, has increasingly been under attack by scammers. One of the newer schemes showing up is the rental scam, in which fraudsters create fake listings and advertise them on platforms like Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace.

Recently one of those scams went further than most.

Matt Duddles and his wife had listed their home for sale with Petersburg Properties realtor Sarah Holmgrain when someone lifted the listing photos, posted them to Craigslist and advertised the property for rent at $1,100 a month — well below Petersburg’s going rate.

Victims of the scam had fallen for the ad, sent the scammers thousands of dollars and already moved into the property by the time the problem was noticed.

“People had moved into our house,” Duddles said. “What the heck.”

Holmgrain cited the incident during a community fraud-awareness presentation in Petersburg on Feb. 26 organized by First Bank fraud specialist Meghan Moreno.

Holmgrain said she has tracked at least five rental fraud attempts in Petersburg over the past 18 months.

“It’s happening here,” she said. “And people are being successfully scammed, unfortunately.”

Rental scams prey on the fact that in communities like Petersburg there isn’t enough housing available. When a listing appears that seems well-appointed, immediately available and priced below market, the instinct is to move before someone else does.

That urgency is exactly what scammers count on.

The mechanics are straightforward. Fraudsters lift photos from Facebook, real estate websites, realtor.com, the MLS or Zillow, then assemble a convincing-looking rental ad on Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace. They list the property at a tempting low price and wait for inquiries — Holmgrain noted the $1,100 figure on the Duddles listing, compared to a realistic Petersburg rate of $1,600 to $2,000 or more for a full house.

From there, Holmgrain said, the pattern is consistent. The fraudster communicates only through email or text, brushing aside any requests for a phone call. They skip tenant screening entirely, eager to get a lease signed and money transferred as quickly as possible. If a prospective renter pushes back, the fraudster manufactures urgency: sign now, wire the deposit or lose the opportunity.

Holmgrain said she has personally engaged with scammers, just to observe their tactics. The refusals to call, to show the property, to slow down at any point — all of it was consistent across cases.

In the Duddles case, Holmgrain learned about the fraudulent listing after speaking with a Petersburg resident who had been hearing talk around town about the Hungerford Hill property being available to rent. Multiple people, Duddles later learned, had been in contact with whoever was running the scam. One neighbor told him afterward that as many as five or six people had been talking to the fraudster about moving in.

The couple who actually did move in — Duddles asked that they not be named — had paid roughly $2,500 for a deposit and first month’s rent, then simply walked through the front door. Duddles believes he and his wife had inadvertently left it unlocked during a recent visit to check on the property.

“They were totally unaware. They thought they were being completely legit,” Duddles said. “They were very apologetic. They stated they were embarrassed and so sorry.”

Investigator Eric Wolf of the Petersburg Police Department came out to speak with everyone involved, and the couple agreed to vacate within 24 hours. They had been in the house for about two days.

Duddles said he came away from the episode feeling worse for the victims than for himself. His home suffered little more than some shoe prints. The couple lost $2,500.

“I just felt really bad for them,” he said. “They thought they were getting a nice rental ... and the gross part is, the person who perpetrated it is probably getting away scot-free and has the money.”

He and his wife posted a notice on the front door of the property warning anyone else who had been contacted that they were being defrauded.

As for legal recourse, Duddles said there was little available. He filed a report through the FBI’s internet crime complaint program. That was essentially the end of it.

During the fraud presentation, Blake Jones spoke up and shared that he, a former cybersecurity engineer who moved to Petersburg from New York about two months ago after landing a job at Homeport Electronics, had encountered a rental scam when looking for Petersburg housing as well.

When Jones was preparing to relocate, he did what many people do when hunting for rental housing in an unfamiliar town: He went on Craigslist. He found what looked like an ideal listing — a fully furnished place, tucked away, with a nice driveway. Exactly what he and his wife needed for the move.

He reached out. After a few days he followed up with the listing directly and became suspicious.

He flagged the situation to Holmgrain, who investigated and confirmed it was fraud, said Jones.

The outcome was a lucky one. But Jones — whose professional life has been spent thinking about exactly these kinds of threats — was candid about how plausible the listing had seemed. He told the group that in his view, the question for anyone online isn’t really whether they’ll be targeted. It’s when.

“It’s not about if,” he said. “It’s just when. So it’s important to be prepared for it and have steps in place.”

Petersburg residents have lost more than $60,000 to various scams so far in 2026 — and that figure, First Bank’s Moreno said, represents only what has been reported. Victims who are embarrassed or simply don’t want to revisit the experience often say nothing.

Moreno, who works fraud cases daily and maintains contact with law enforcement agencies across the region, said the most common schemes she sees locally are romance scams and impersonation scams — fraudsters posing as IRS agents, Social Security officials, or bank representatives. With tax season underway, she said, impersonation attempts will increase.