A listing is posted for an apartment on www.craigslist.org. The rent is quite reasonable and the location is great. The apartment sounds perfect.

A would-be renter accompanies the person who posted the listing to check out the place, falls in love with it, and hands over a deposit for a credit check in the form of cash, check, or money order.

The move-in date arrives, and the renter attempts to access the apartment, but to no avail. The renter then learns that the “agent” was actually a con artist, the apartment was not actually for rent, and the deposit money is long gone.

Many apartment hunters have experienced such a scenario recently in Manhattan. Grifters have seized on the eagerness of would-be renters to find a great deal and have used Craig’s list, an online bulletin board featuring extensive classified ads, to bilk them out of thousands of dollars.

This month, Justin Francis, 52, was charged with taking $6,200 from a 22-year-old man who thought he was paying to rent a room in Mr. Francis’s West 93rd Street apartment, according to a criminal complaint. On August 31, the victim gave the suspect a $1,200 money order as a deposit, the court document states. Two days later, the victim allegedly gave the suspect a $5,000 money order toward future rent. The men arranged for a September 15 move-in date. When the day arrived, Mr. Francis refused to let the man move in and would not refund his money, the complaint says. The defendant was charged with two counts of grand larceny and one count of scheme to defraud.

It was not the first time Mr. Francis was charged with carrying out the scheme, court records show. On March 14, 2004, an apartment seeker gave Mr. Francis $6,000, the district attorney’s office said. On June 1 of that year, another victim allegedly paid Mr. Francis $1,600. On January 15, a third would-be renter gave Mr. Francis $6,500. The allegations are part of another open case in which Mr. Francis is being charged with three counts of grand larceny and one count of scheme to defraud.

In addition to Mr. Francis, there have been a number of other such tricksters who have advertised on Craig’s list – and some have even garnered press attention. There was Steven Lay, who last year successfully swindled more than $15,000 from 11 people in phony real estate deals on the Upper East Side, police officials said. Lay purported to rent the East 95th Street apartment from which he was actually being evicted. The district attorney’s office charged Lay with six such crimes. In at least one case, a victim paid by check, according to the district attorney’s office. Lay turned himself into police on September 27, 2004, and eventually pleaded guilty to grand larceny.

Lay’s arrest occurred a couple of days after Frederick Forino and Carol Rodriguez were charged with posing as Village real estate brokers on the Web site and tricking prospective renters into giving them thousands of dollars, the district attorney’s office said. Forino and Rodriguez planned elaborate schemes to defraud their seven victims, the authorities said. The victims allegedly gave a combination of cash and checks to the impostors. At the high end, one victim gave Forino a $1,000 check for a credit check and security deposit as well as $900 in cash for the rent. Mr. Forino ended up pleading guilty to grand larceny, and his girlfriend pleaded guilty to petit larceny.

The founder of Craig’s list, Craig Newmark, said of the apartment scams: “While it does happen, it’s not very common.”

Of the 50,000 New York City postings on the site each day, 17,000 are for apartments, Mr. Newmark said. That is just a small portion of the city’s housing stock: There were 2,085,000 rental apartments in New York City in 2002, according to the New York City Rent Guidelines Board’s Web site.

Mr. Newmark said this kind of scam occurs more frequently in New York than anywhere else. His explanation? “In New York, real estate is a bit of a blood sport.”

Apartment seekers can become quite desperate.

“People tend to be pretty gullible because they know it’s a tight market out there,” an associate broker at the Corcoran Group, Tim Cass, said. “The safeguard,” he said, “is to use a reputable salesperson or broker.”