House emptied after hoax ad

[faceless]

Home emptied after hoax online ad

A house near Seattle in the US was emptied of its contents after a hoax advertisement invited people to take whatever they wanted for free. Landlady Laurie Raye's rental home was stripped of appliances, windows, light fixtures and even the kitchen sink. The adverstisement stayed on the Craigslist website for two hours before being pulled. Neighbours said they had seen people removing items in the middle of the day but did not suspect anything was wrong. "In the ad, it said come and take what you want. Everything is free," Ms Raye told Seattle's King-TV.

An off-duty police officer in the city of Tacoma, outside Seattle, where the house is located, happened to see the advertisement. When he later saw Ms Raye's burglary report, he realised the two events were connected. Ms Raye had recently evicted a tenant from the house, when the ad appeared. The fact that the evicted tenant is Ms Raye's sister has led to speculation that a family feud may be behind the case. But Tacoma police say they are treating the case as a civil matter, not a criminal one.

Craigslist chief executive, Jim Buckmaster, said his website receives 25 million posting every month, but scams are rare. "It's as difficult to prevent crime online as it is offline," he told Associated Press news agency.

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I'm sure there will be copy-cat incidents of this now...

[Marcella-FL]

Can you imagine having to evict your sister? Nice!

[cori]

I saw this on the news, I mean they even took the kitchen sink! What a cruel thing to do particularly if the sister put in the ad

[Skylace]

I had seen it in the news also. It's disgusting to me.

[girldorksrule]

sheesh

[IRiSHMaFIA]

It's actually sort of funny in a disturbing way, but that's just my sense of humour.

[eefanincan]

That's a pretty nasty thing to do, for sure. That sister must have been pretty mad!