A This Morning guest opened up to Cat Deeley and Ben Shepherd on Monday about being conned out of £8,000 in a sick rental scam that could happen to anyone. 

Anna Gonzalez appeared on the ITV show to talk about her experience as they spoke about the new government data that has shown that there was £9 million lost to rental scams in 2024. 

The 27-year-old was desperately looking for a new home over the Christmas period of 2022 after being given two months notice, so turned to platform Open Rent in a bid to find a place to live. 

After going to view a property in person, which five other couples were also interested in, she decided to offer six months rent upfront (£8,100) to make herself look more appealing to the landlord. 

However alarm bells didn’t start to ring until moments before she was about to move in. 

Anna said: ‘The day we moved in, I’d already started to transfer my bills over, you know, get ahead of the game. 

I was conned out of £8k in a sick rental scam – it could happen to anyone but I managed to turn the tide with a very lucky step

‘It was early January the move in date, it got to 5 o’clock on the Friday, I hadn’t heard anything back, but we had been speaking in the morning.

‘It got to 6 o’clock, 7 o’clock, this doesn’t feel right.

‘The landlord had told me he lived outside of London I thought oh my goodness, what if something had happened to him. 

‘I went over to the property, I got in the Uber, I rang the bell to let someone let me in.

‘I knocked on the door and somebody answered the door.

‘It was an Australian guy who had the property for four days, until the Monday. 

‘He said this is my Air B&B, I’m staying here, I don’t know what you’re talking about, I’m sorry this has happened.

‘You spiral at that moment. You can’t connect any dots.

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‘Housing is your safety, it’s a basic need.’  

Anna explained that she called the police before she’d left the property and they deferred her to action fraud.

She decided to go to her local branch and refused to leave until something got sorted and HSBC allowed her to upload documents and she got the money back.

But currently nothing else has been done to stop the fraudsters. 

Anna admitted that she checked everything to make sure it was legit before signing the contract and handing over the cash.  

She said previously: ‘I went as far as comparing the contract sent, there were multiple people involved, what struck me, you think these are faceless impersonal things.

‘I’d built a rapport with this person, I’d met people, his ᴀssociates on the phone.’ 

This Morning airs from 10am weekdays on ITV1 and is available to stream on ITVX.