DENNISPORT, Mass. -- Summer rentals are big business on the Cape, but some vacationers may have been taken for a ride if not for an astute property owner.

NewsCenter 5’s Amalia Barreda reported that a man who owns a rental home in Dennisport found scammers offering up his home for rental on the Web site Craigslist. Peter Harback said that he spotted the house advertised on the site once last fall, and it turned up again last week.

The 3,500 sq. foot rental home, which has five bedrooms and four bathrooms, rents for $6,800 per month, but scam advertisements on Craigslist were soliciting less than half that amount to supposedly rent the property.

“I just would hate to have seen the look on people’s face if they came here thinking that, you know, here they are and they’re going to have a beautiful week and have nothing,” said Harback.

Realtor Debra Johnson, who has the exclusive listing on the property, said that she discovered the fake listing only after a tenant who had arranged to rent the property from her called up two days later and questioned why the home was available at a severely discounted rate online.

Johnson said this is also not her first experience with a fake rental racket operating through Craigslist. Last summer, another tenant came to Johnson and asked for helped, after discovering that a supposed rental transaction had been a scam.

“If they can just do something like this to me and we find it, how many other people are they doing it to and with what else?” asked Harback.

Efforts to reach a spokesperson for Craigslist on Monday were unsuccessful.