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Comment by jhfdbkofdcho | Hacker News Reader

Sounds like a hi tech version of a scam in my city where a guy rents an apartment (or just squats it) and then turns around and sublets it and stops paying rent to the actual owner. People actually living in the unit stuck holding the bag.

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Happened to me. I paid rent for a couple of months to a lady that I thought owned the appartement. Then one day someone knocked on the door, asked who I was, why I was living in his appartement, and why his tenant stopped paying rent.

In retrospect, it was eye opening how gullible everyone involved was (myself included), and how little the police did about it.

For every appartement I've since rented I checked the official register to make sure my future landlord actually owns the place...

> I checked the official register

Sorry for the stupid question, but what does this mean? How does one check this?

In my country (Austria) there is a registry (called the "Grundbuch") where the owner of every parcel of land (and buildings, appartements, etc) is formally recorded. It costs about 10€ to get a record online. You type an address, pay 10€, and the website tells you who are the owners of the land and buildings at that address.

Does it also tell you who is managing the property? At least where I live, renters deal with property managers, and very rarely the owners. It doesn't apply to houses and other single-home properties, but does for just about anything else.

In most (all?) states in the U.S., the local and/or state government has an official record of real property ownership. In some states it's available online; otherwise you may find it at the local courthouse, city hall, or county government.

How's that work? In every situation I've been in, the landlord opens the place for me, gives a tour, and eventually gives me a key.

Imagine the same thing, only it's the tenant showing off the place, not the landlord.

Scammer rents a place normally with a monthly lease, then they rent to someone else while pretending to be the landlord. Scammer collects rent while not paying the landlord and leaves before/when they're caught. A big win is if the scammer gets full payment upfront, usually by leasing short-term to someone who only needs a few months.

Landlord ends up no rent and new renter lost money and has no place to live. If scammer used a fake/stolen identity then it's practically impossible to do anything.

Why not trace renter's check that scammer cashed out through the banking system?

Geeze man, I’m sorry you had to go through that.

I’ve seen the commercial version of this scam where a guy rented out floor space at a mall, collected rent from subletting pop up vendors, and never actually paid the rent to the facility, then skipped town.

Subletting is entirely legal is it not? And it’s not a free ticket to do whatever you want with the property either.

> and stops paying rent to the actual owner

The idea is they take the sublessee's deposit and first rent payment, don't pay the owner the rent, and vanish. The sublessee has now payed deposit + rent but has nowhere to live (as the landlord is unpaid).

Right. That’s different, I misread.

This happened to my relative when someone owed her $9000 in rent. We were able to retrieve most of it via small claims court. It also helped he was dumb enough to leave bank papers behind when he was evicted so it made the process easier. A credit agency is handling the rest.

https://www.citypaper.com/bcp-cms-1-1034317-migrated-story-c...

No, it depends on the contract, and usually you forbid it, at least without approval, as things can get pretty nuts. There are some real horror stories.

Whether subletting is permitted depends on the terms of the lease (and in some cases policies of a homeowners association or coop board).

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