Southport couple left "Homeless" after being scammed on Facebook

The couple had saved hundreds of pounds to use as a deposit for a flat.

Kaitlin said on the  Gofundme  page set up for them

Me and my partner had been looking for a place with our newborn for a while to start our family, We had been searching and searching. This man known by Daniel morris messaged me one day saying he has seen that we have applied for properties to rent and he has a flat to rent, we didn’t think anything of it.

I went to view this property and put a £250 deposit down that day and an extra £50 for a pet deposit. He gave me a fake handwritten receipt and forwarded me a fake digital copy. He said we could move in 2 weeks from that day. In the meantime I started packing all out belongings and I bought at least £200-£250 worth of stuff for the “flat”.

During this time I had messaged him on numerous occasions asking questions etc etc he took a long time to reply and when he did he said he’d had a family bereavement and had been to a funeral, this is when I started to question but I though no no one would ever do that especially to a young family starting out in life. I was wrong.

The night before we were supposed to move in he contacted me saying “there has been an issue with the property and it will take a day or two to fix”. I told my friend, I had a strong feeling this was a scam. She then sent me post from Facebook scams he has done to other people and my heart sank.

 Me and my partner went round to the address the next day wanting to speak to him and to get out money back but he wasn’t there. This woman came out and we explained the situation and she said that the properties don’t belong to them, it’s supported housing.

She rang the staff of the house on her phone so we could speak to them a woman said that she would be there at 4pm and to come back we reported all this to the police in the meantime. We came back and she wasn’t there.

We did manage to speak to her she basically said there is nothing their company can do! This man has left us with nothing, he made us think we were finally starting out our life. Not only has he took my hard earned money and left me with nothing. He’s done this to a young vulnerable family. I can’t even put into words how devastated I am.