Tenant Gets Satisfying Revenge After Scammer Rents Him a Fake Apartment

Scammers are everywhere you turn these days. And, often, they’re so much more sophisticated than pretending to be a Nigerian prince and asking you to wire money.

Some scammers use real estate and property rentals to swindle people out of their money, like a woman in Canada. She tried to rent the same room in her house to multiple people — as many as 30 — and milked them out of a couple hundred dollars for a deposit along the way.

One of the people who got scammed was able to get some semblance of revenge, however.

You can read the full story from Reddit below:

I rented a fake apartment, and accidentally got pro revenge…

So this happened a long time ago, it’s probably ok to post here.

It was 2010 November 2009, and I was jamming to I Got a Feeling by the Black Eyed Peas, looking for a cheap apartment. I find a great ad in craigslist, and arrange for a viewing.

I meet the landlady; a portly shrew with a Betty Page haircut. I wasn’t here for the company however, but for the cheap room. It’s not great looking, but it is cheap, so I tell her I am interested. She tells me the place is mine if I can get a deposit by end of day.

Sweet. I rip to the bank and grab the $450 bucks needed; a half a months rent. She and I cross-sign a standard lease, and ask when I can get a key to move in, and she says a couple days as the current tenant has yet to collect all of their stuff.

So, I am sleeping on the couch at a buddies pad for now, and so I just chill, seeing sites, enjoying the first few weeks in a new city. A couple days roll by, and I haven’t heard from the landlady, so I get frustrated and leave a few salty voice mails, but alas I was ghosted.

Finally she leaves me a voicemail and says shes sorry, but she cannot rent the place to me.

I start to get angry. But I am a pretty cool customer, so I do the research, find out my rights in an unfamiliar new municipality, and discover that if someone backs out of a lease without a legal reason, the other party is entitled to double the deposit they placed, so I figure, she owes me about $900 clams.

I leave more messages and emails. Again with the ghosting, not answering the phone, no responses via email either. I get fed up.

Now, I had just accepted a new job, but it didn’t start until the turn of the month. I would guess its about the third week of November 2009. I have some spare time, so I hop on the bus, buy a magazine, and sit at the bus stop across from the rental house, and just, wait. And wait. For a couple hours I waited, but man was it worth it.

I see her showing the unit to another smart Mark! I hold my cool, and wait for her to finish with her newest ‘renter’, and make my way over to the house to confront her. As soon as she sees me, she starts to wail about how the tenant changed their mind, blah blah blah, and that’s why she couldn’t rent to me.

I’ve heard enough. I square my stance directly opposite this clearly upset charlatan. “Now you listen to me, you will get me $900 as required by law by the end of the day, or I will go directly to the police station and let them deal with you.”

She turned white. For a minute I thought she was going to puke on the ground right there in front of me. She says, hold on, I will get you your money. I remember thinking, “Shit, that was easier than I thought”

She goes upstairs (the unit was a basement unit in the house she was living in), and I shit you not, hands me a wad of cash and says, “Here, this is ruining my Christmas, but here!”. She almost pushed me off balance as she jammed the messy wad of cash into me.

“Thank you. Good day”, I say and take the money, count it, and walk away.

I didn’t turn around and look back, got on the first bus that stopped nearby heading back toward the direction of my friends’ house. Not until I was home did I calm down and realize it was going to be a sweet Christmas, all thanks to a lying phony cheapskate.

However, this is not the end of the revenge. About a week later, I get a phone call from a friend asking me if the lady in the news is the same crazy lady I got the double damage deposit from.. I’m like whaaaaa?

Sure enough, it turns out this lady was running the same scam in parallel with a bunch of other victims. I am mortified, not just because I almost got scammed, but it immediately occurs to me that the money I got was someone else’s money, and they are homeless for the holidays!

I head right down the the police station, where there is, I shit you not, a line of crying people filing reports about being scammed by this woman. I feel awful, and when it’s my turn, I get to the intake officer, and start to give my story. I lay it all down, how I fell for it, how I left a snotty voicemail, how I staked out the rental to confront her, my demand of double the money back, my threats of legal action against her, and finally the skillful execution of the law by getting double the deposit back.

I tell the cop, I took some of the money that belonged to the other victims, and she looks at me and says, “Man, you were the only one smart enough to confront her in a reasonable way, you earned that money. Don’t worry about it”.

A young lady who was now homeless and desperate couldn’t help but overhear, and as I am leaving the police station, she approaches me and says, “Hey, did you get your money back from that bitch?”

To which I sheepishly reply, “Actually I got double my deposit from her when I threatened her with the police..”

The girl blinks a couple times, and finally grins, starts a slow clap, and announces to the other victims still waiting to give a statement in the lobby of the police station, “This guy took her for double the damage deposit!”. I cringed.

But then, in the most unexpected turn of events, the line of victims began applauding, I suppose with the realization that while their money was gone, someone had really screwed her back, and that made them happy. They cheered, I felt better, the cops laughed, and we all (there had to be twenty people in all) had a joyful cosmic moment of holiday schadenfreude at her expense.

I left the police station with a clean conscience and a smile on my face, and enjoyed every last penny of that worthless bitch’s nasty stack.

For the non-believers, here are a couple media reports of the woman who tried to scam me, with bonus pictures of her getting hauled away:

https://www.pressreader.com/canada/times-colonist/20100318/284550174206387

https://bc.ctvnews.ca/b-c-landlord-facing-multiple-fraud-charges-1.469910

Happy holidays!