Florida is ground zero for moving scams where companies demand extra fees — or steal your stuff

• Moving company scams are on the rise, and almost half originate in Florida.
• These fraudulent moving brokers and carriers will charge additional fees or take customers' stuff hostage.

More Americans than ever are moving to Florida. The state had the largest population gain last year with nearly 320,000 new residents moving in from elsewhere in the US.

But the Sunshine State is also increasingly home to scammers operating fraudulent moving companies targeting Florida residents and people across the country. These companies will often offer customers a low estimate and deposit price, and then demand additional exorbitant fees after taking their belongings hostage. Moving company scams doubled between 2015 and 2022, and Florida-based companies made up almost half of all customer complaints nationally, Newsweek reported based on data from the Department of Transportation.

The scam usually begins with a moving broker, who solicits a customer, sets up the move, and then finds a carrier to pick up and transport the person's belongings. It's easy to become a broker in Florida, where establishing an LLC costs just $125. For $600, the Department of Transportation will then approve a broker's license.

"You just go online, make up a fake name, and that's it and you're up and running. No one's regulating," Susan Chana Lask, a New York-based consumer rights attorney who settled a lawsuit last year with a Florida-based moving company, told Insider. "It's just a name with an LLC for 100 bucks."

The Florida Attorney General's office says the warning signs of a moving scam include low moving cost estimates, estimates given sight unseen, demands for full payment before the move, storage fees, and a moving business that's had multiple name changes.

A couple's possessions vanish to a storage unit 1,000 miles away

Nissa Wisuttismarn was desperate for a mover in October 2020 when she needed to take the contents of her storage unit in Santa Clara, California, to Missouri City, Texas, where she and her husband had relocated during the pandemic.

After the first company she hired backed out just days before the move, Wisuttismarn reached out to a Florida-based company called Compass Movers. She paid Compass, which she didn't realize was just a broker, an initial deposit of about $2,400, then another $350, and an additional $2,500 when the movers picked up her things, according to a receipt Wisuttismarn provided Insider.

The couple's belongings — nearly all of their possessions — were supposed to get to Missouri City between 10 and 14 days later. But that window came and went and nothing arrived. Wisuttismarn said she repeatedly called and texted the broker to no avail. She said she had no luck with the police department in Santa Clara, so she began her own investigation and eventually tracked her things to a Public Storage facility in Bothell, Washington.

"I'm a project manager for a living, so documentation, tracking down things is a big part of what I do," Wisuttismarn told Insider.

But the bill for the storage unit with Wisuttismarn's belongings had gone unpaid and its contents were auctioned off. Wisuttismarn eventually got in touch with the man who'd bought her belongings and negotiated with him to purchase the items that he hadn't yet sold off for $3,000, according to a copy of the check Wisuttismarn provided.

Wisuttismarn's husband has since been up to Washington to take control of the unit and begin the process of finding new movers. But most of the couple's prized possessions, including the piano Wisuttismarn got while she lived in China years ago, were gone, she said.

"I met my husband in China, and I spent a lot of formative years there and, you know, to one who plays music, these things are special," she said. "At the end of the day, we all die without anything, but, you know, I do miss that."

Wisuttismarn said she never got any help from the offices of the Washington State and Florida attorneys general, which she said she contacted, in addition to the Bothell police department.

The owner of Compass Movers, Christopher Ruwe, didn't immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

Few legal consequences

Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody says she's cracking down on the criminal scams. Her office announced last November that it had shut down 19 fraudulent moving companies and recovered $27 million in fines and restitution from the scammers.

"Stopping these scams may be more important now than ever before, as Florida continues to experience a population boom fueled by people fleeing other states to enjoy all we have to offer here," Moody said in a video statement last year.

A spokesperson for Moody didn't immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

Federal law enforcement officials have also gotten involved. The Justice Department in September charged two South Florida residents with operating an interstate moving company scam.

The sharp increase in moving scams across the country has also prompted the Biden administration to announce it's taking action.

Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg announced last week that his agency is "cracking down on moving companies that hold people's possessions hostage, and the brokers who facilitate that fraud."

Buttigieg said the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration would do more to investigate moving companies with the worst customer ratings, but didn't specify how the agency would do so. While a few members of Congress have expressed concern about the issue, there's little evidence that lawmakers will do much about it.

Wisuttismarn insisted there need to be legal avenues for customers to hold these companies accountable.

"As a consumer who's doing everything right, I just felt extremely helpless," she said. "I did everything I was supposed to do and, you know, still nobody's helping me."