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Kenneth W. Brackenhoff

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Kenneth W. Brackenhoff Reports & Reviews (2)

This man posed as a realtor on craigslist in San Diego. We reached out to him about a property we were looking to rent for the summer, we'd been saving money all spring to pay upfront to not worry about money once we were there. We ended up making a few calls and signing an agreement. The day before we got there we sent over the payment and he told us he'd be ready onsite to hand over the keys. We ended up stranded when we got there. We tried reporting to the police and reaching out to our bank and zelle but ultimately nothing has been resolved. This dude is a huge [censored].

- Oakland, CA, USA

My husband and I are U.S. citizens who work overseas and were looking for a summer sublet in Berkeley. Airbnb rentals were very expensive for a family of four (we have two children) so he looked on Craigslist and found a sublet in North Oakland. It was at a good price and good location, so we were hooked. The guy who wrote back identified himself as Kenneth Brackenhoff ([email protected]) and claimed to be a certified property manager and gave us this website as his: https://kbrackenhoff.wixsite.com/mysite. It looked professional and we didn't want to lose what we thought was a good deal so we agreed to sublet the unit.

“Kenneth” initially told us to transfer a sum of $3,200 to this account, which he said belonged to the owner’s attorney:

Desmond Ronald, *** ***, Account Number 9197924617, Routing No. 121042882

But later, he told us to transfer the money to this account instead, claiming it’s that of the owner.

Account Name: Tom Barnabas

Account Number: 383565378

Routing Number: 072000326

Bank: ***

*** Code: CHASUS33

Bank Address: 28925 Ford Rd, Garden City, MI 48135

Our bank overseas told us *** said the account number was wrong. The guy insisted it was right. My husband then unfortunately managed to make four separate transfers from our BofA account to the *** account - 3 transfers of $1,000 each and one transfer of $220. The guy said he had received the funds and would have someone meet us at the sublet and let us in on the day we arrived.

We arrived after a long flight on July 5, 2019, the first day we were supposed to start living in the sublet. My husband called the guy who identified himself by email on the phone number listed on the website. Unfortunately, we had neglected to call him and at least have a chat with him before wiring the money to him. We carried lots of luggage from a BART station to the sublet and realized it was a scam when the owner of the house in North Oakland, which was an Airbnb, seemed to know nothing about the sublet agreement. He let us use his porch and phone to call the police and our bank, as well as *** bank. But so far, no one has been able to help us.

The picture of the house on the Craigslist listing looked like the Airbnb’s exterior, but not the interior.

We've since heard a lot of people have fallen for such scams in this area, especially foreign students.

These scams are not only totally wrong, they also leave a really bad image for our country. We’ve since heard from banks that some banks do not verify identification before letting people, including foreigners, open bank accounts, so there’s no way to track down these criminals. We find this to be irresponsible of financial institutions, especially in this day and age.

We're also unable to accept why given “Kenneth” has supplied us with two bank accounts, the banks and the police cannot track him or his cohorts down, freeze his/their assets and return the money and justice to his victims.

This kind of experience makes the United States look really bad. We've traveled to 3rd world countries before and have years of experience renting overseas. Never before has anything like this happened to us.

We admit we were not on guard because we were very busy and desperate to find a place to live quickly and didn't want to trouble relatives and friends to go and check out the place and meet with the guy, though one friend did drive by the house and told us it was in a good neighborhood.

Our two adopted children were really looking forward to their rare American summer experience, but no longer believe what we had taught them, that America is a great nation; now unfortunately they see it as the land of scam artists and lawlessness. They've learned with us that banks, Craigslist, Airbnb, etc. routinely allow people to open accounts without checking the authenticity of who they claim to be. They've also learned sadly that banks do little or nothing to help us and no matter how powerful a country the US is, it offers little protection for ordinary consumers against Internet-related scams.

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