“Anyone who has a vacant house could be victimized,” Dulberg said.

No one knows how pervasive the rental hoax has become in a state beleaguered by a shadow inventory of foreclosed-and-vacant houses. Utilities report an increase in sham accounts for getting water turned on, and law enforcement has made numerous arrests in other parts of the state.

There are different variations of the scam, but here’s basically how it works: Someone sees a vacant-looking house listed for sale. Using the listing information, they locate it and access it using the lockbox, a locksmith or some other means. Then they have the locks changed and advertise it as a rental. When a prospective tenant come to see the property, the person posing as the leasing agent or landlord collects what can amount to hundreds or thousands of dollars in cash or money orders for a deposit and first month’s rent.

Dulberg alerted the two homes’ owners and law enforcement, and the victim-tenants have since left the properties. One of the would-be renters paid $1,800 for a deposit and first-month rent on a three-bedroom home. The person who represented herself as the property’s leasing agent told the woman that appliances had been ordered for the house and would be delivered.

One factor that has made it easier for con artists to pass off these rental houses as their own is that they are able to get the utilities turned on, Dulberg said.

Among examples of the crime in this part of the state: A Polk County man was charged with an organized scheme to defraud using manufactured leases. Charges were filed against a 37-year-old Pasco County man who was operating a foreclosure-prevention business. And a Hillsborough County man recently pleaded guilty to organized fraud, theft and burglary for breaking into houses and moving tenants into them.

Jamie Ampel, a broker with Assist2Sell of Apopka, had one of the vacant houses in Rose Point listed as a short sale and was scheduled to close on it in 45 days. Meanwhile, the owner had relocated to Chattanooga, Tenn.

“I have heard about it from other Realtors and, frankly, I never thought it would happen to a house I was involved with,” Ampel said. “Some banks are taking five years to foreclose on homes. It seems like this problem has been going on a lot.”

Ampel said she reviewed the “bogus” lease signed by the tenant. The people who advertised the house must have gotten the owners’ names through public records and forged one of their signatures on the document, Ampel said. She added that the document looked more like a generic one downloaded from the Internet rather than one generated by Florida Realtors or The Florida Bar.