COMMERCE CITY, Colo. (KDVR) — A family new to the Denver metro area was scammed out of thousands of dollars from what they thought was a deposit on a new home to rent.

Antion Gray is the man who was planning on moving his family into that home in Commerce City on 104th Place.

He’s in the Navy Reserve and used a military website to start this process. He’s used it before and never thought it would be a place he would get scammed.

“You think you’re coming out here for something great and somebody just destroys what you have,” Gray said.

Everything seemed to be golden for their move. They even did a walkthrough of the home. So they paid the first month’s rent and deposit totaling $2,700, but things went downhill fast. Their first red flag was how the “said owner” wanted them to pay $700 for a locksmith.

Gray put his family in a hotel for the night before move-in day, but then all he got was silence — to the point the number he’d been communicating with completely stopped working.

“He stopped making phone calls to me. He stopped answering my calls and text messages. And then finally, after a while, I’m like, this is getting ridiculous. What’s going on?” Gray said. “We find out this guy is not the owner of the home; he doesn’t work for the company. So right then and there, we were like, we just got scammed.”

That house is now listed on the market for sale, leaving his disabled wife and three children with nowhere to call home.

“I am highly frustrated. But it’s rage, it’s anger, it’s depression, it’s all that,” Gray said “God’s got us and God’s going to get you and you’re going to wish you didn’t mess with this family.” 

Gray did make a police report, but they said there isn’t a lot that can be done because the number he was using was untraceable. The family has a GoFundMe account set up to help.