Summer Rental Was a Scam

When Edward Orr Sr., a driver for Road Runner Taxi in Montauk, picked up three people from Manhattan Friday morning at the Montauk train station, there was nothing unusual about the call. They were headed, on the first day of the big holiday weekend, to a summer rental on South Fulton Drive, a dirt road off Old West Lake Drive.

When they arrived at 99 South Fulton Drive, though, something was wrong: The house at that address was occupied. The photo they had seen online looked more like 93 South Fulton.

“The door to the house was open. They were saying, ‘Hello? Hello?’ ” Mr. Orr said Friday afternoon. But almost immediately, with the group already inside the house, the homeowner pulled into the driveway.

It turned out that the three, who had arranged the rental via Craigslist from an “Amanda McCall,” had been scammed. They were not the only ones who wired almost $3,000 apiece for the house, which was not for rent.

East Hampton Town police said that Joshua Meyers of New York was a victim of the same scam. He had been taken for $2,800.

Mr. Orr eventually took his three now not-so-happy visitors into downtown Montauk, where they rented rooms for the weekend, though not at the bargain price they thought they had gotten for a long-term stay on South Fulton.

“It is really too bad,” Mr. Orr said, adding, though, that by the time he left them, the three seemed to have cheered up a bit.