With economic difficulties all around, landlords are going to have to be extra careful doing background checks on future tenants. The combination of rampant identity theft, desperate times, and careless background checks could lead to terrible losses for a landlord.
The story below from Newsday discusses how a lady stole an identity to qualify for rent payments that were subsidized by the government.
Could the next story be about you being ripped off by a tenant?
A Bay Shore woman who used someone else’s identity to qualify for more than $32,000 in government rent payments was arrested Thursday, Suffolk County police said. She was also charged with possessing a forged immigration document.
Olufunke Fatimehin, 38, of 105 Howells Rd., got the federal Housing and Urban Development rent subsidies by fraudulently using another person’s Social Security number on an October 2005 application for the Section 8 money, police said.
When she was arrested at the Centereach office of the Community Development Corp. of Long Island, she also was carrying a forged Immigration and Customs Enforcement resident alien card, police said. via Newsday.com.
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