Sleazy subletters beware.
The landlords of swanky Manhattan buildings are hiring private investigators to smoke out tenants who use Airbnb to illegally rent rooms – including to prostitutes and drug users, the investigators said.
Posing undercover, investigators respond to ads featured on the online home-sharing service, saying they want to stay for a single night at posh apartments in Tribeca, Greenwich Village and the Upper West Side, investigators said.
Instead, the private investigators gather evidence — including photos, receipts and copies of keys — to help landlords evict the rule-breaking tenants.
“Landlords are fighting back… There are all sorts of heinous activities going on in these apartments. There are wild parties and orgies and rampant drug use,” said Vincent Parco, a private investigator who has worked roughly 30 Airbnb cases and charges $250 an hour.
“The worst of the worst happens inside these apartments,” he said.
In one case, a tenant offered up her pad as a temporary brothel, telling Tattianna, one of Parco’s female investigators, “Do anything you want here…Bring as many guys as you want over,” Parco said.
Landlords often hire the private investigators after law-abiding residents in the buildings complain to landlords about “unsavory” and unfamiliar visitors in the building, Parco said.
He and other investigators sometimes agree to pay the tenants roughly $125 a night to stay in the “gorgeous apartments,” Parco said. Sometimes he offers up an excuse such as, “My apartment is being painted.”
Parco also uses a team of attractive women — who sometimes pose as hookers — to catch the bad tenants in the act, he said.
“We use attractive P.I.s because, obviously, these people are more inclined to talk to them. It’s a good way to get these guys. Bingo, they get busted,” he said.
Landlords hand over evidence to their lawyers, who use it to evict the bad tenants.
It’s illegal for tenants in New York to rent out apartments while they’re not on the premises.
Parco performed the undercover operation at upscale buildings, including 460 Greenwich Street and 250 Elizabeth Street, he said.
Another private investigator, who charges $200 an hour to bust tenants who use Airbnb illegally declined to comment.