Hacker News Reader

Comment by xyst | Hacker News Reader

Straight to jail. Assets seized by insurance underwriter.

Is this a joke? It's unclear to me, a person without much understanding of the law. Aren't debtors prisons illegal?

Vandalism is a criminal offense, and >$400 damage is a felony here in California.

Luckily you can steal more than twice that at your local Best Buy in California and it's a misdemeanor. So take good care of your AirBnB but feel free to go to town at a Walgreen's. If you can find one.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_California_Proposition_47

I'm not seeing what your point is. The two things aren't really related. They aren't even the same crime.

Not even true, at best a civil case after months and you must provide service to the defendant or defendant attorney - depending on who booked and who stayed can be different and will not proceed normally.

tl;dr mostly nothing if they don't value their airbnb account.

At least in New York:

"A person is guilty of criminal mischief in the second degree when with intent to damage property of another person, and having no right to do so nor any reasonable ground to believe that he has such right, he damages property of another person in an amount exceeding one thousand five hundred dollars.

Criminal mischief in the second degree is a class D felony."

https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/PEN/145.10

Class D non-violent felonies are worth up to seven years in prison, likely varying widely depending on the circumstances.

I guess most states probably have similar statutes on the books. Whether you could get a prosecutor to charge it probably depends on the exact circumstances. I reckon you could find cases of people being charged on much less than $1M in intentional damage, though.

Good luck dragging the offender to court. Especially if she lives in a foreign country.

No one in the comment chain above me stipulated that the proposed violator was a foreigner. Most Airbnbs in the US are rented by domestic renters. And anyway, I'm only responding to the notion that civil action is the worst case scenario. That is plainly false.

Also, yea, you can commit minor crimes that don't rise to the level of extradition then skip town. That's always been the case. So? Who is going to go to the U.S., trash an AirBNB, risk getting charged with a crime and potentially banned for life from coming back? The people who trash AirBNBs are not the same people who can travel internationally, by and large.

Nonsense. He's long gone back to his own country, scot free.

Proceeds to trash jail.

This is also a felony, a friend of mine got destruction of government property for drawing on the walls of his cell while in county jail.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com