Seattle Times – April 5, 2007:
Many people have had success buying, selling and swapping goods on the Web site craigslist, but one Tacoma woman says she was robbed.
Laurie Raye said she had everything stripped from her home after someone placed a fake ad on the San Francisco-based Internet site, a collection of online classifieds.
“The instigator who published this ad invited the public to come in and vandalize me,” Raye told Seattle television station KING.
Raye had recently evicted a tenant and cleaned out the rental.
The ad posted last weekend welcomed people to take for free anything they wanted from the home. It has since been pulled from the site, but not before the residence was stripped of light fixtures, the hot water heater and the kitchen sink.
Neighbors said they saw strangers hauling items away, apparently looking for salvage material.
Even the front door and a vinyl window were pilfered, Raye said.
“In the ad, it said come and take what you want. Everything is free,” she said. “Please help yourself to anything on the property.”
Sounds like a revenge action on the part of the tenant.
Apparently the home was unlocked too… which is.. well… that’s just asking for trouble.
Uhh…did anyone actually read this? She didn’t lose all her possessions. She’s a landlord and the tenants were already gone. She lost the fixtures in the apartment she owned.
Not quite the same thing.
The interesting part of the story is that the evicted tenant was her sister:
http://tinyurl.com/yrf86r
Here is more information and a nice video to go along with it.
[Use embedded links, dammit! just type (a href=”put link here with no spaces between these quotes”)your comment text that will be highlighted goes here(/a) Just replace the “(” and “)” with “< " and ">” and you’re good to go. – Ed.]
In as much as the most tragic elements of life have a lining of comedy, this is a little funny. I feel bad for the owner. Seems the sister placed this add on the site when she had moved out and left the door open for others to enter with ease.
That being said, what moron reads craigslist and thinks its cool to go into a fairly decent home and start removing the molding and toilets?
3,
What in the first two comments makes you think we didn’t read the item? I pointed out it sounds like a disgruntled tenant as the article makes a point of mentioning that it was an eviction. The second post refers directly to security of the apartment, and does not mention items at all. That commenter did overlook the probability that the renter just left the door unlocked when they left or came back on the day of the “clearance” (pun intended) and unlocked it then.
However, in no way do I see either comment as indicative of misunderstanding the situation described. You always seem to spin negative, even in situations where there is no real reason to. I don’t want to be inflammatory with that last statement, but I would suggest you read the first two comments again and tell me how they justify in any way your very inflammatory one.
Going back to topic, that the renter is the sister is even funnier. Family fueds are the bloodiest. You just want to kill anybody else, but if you’re that pissed at family that you get eviceted and want revenge, they must suffer (I’d say “especially if women are involved, but that would be sexist). Having the rooom stripped is a fantastic prank in that sense. To paraphrase the Sherrif in Kill Bill, some will almost admire the act fopr its excellent execution. She didn’t have to touch a thing.
This is weird. I saw the exact same thing on the local news at a friends last night….only it wasn’t an apartment, but a whole house that the lady had just renovated and was about to rent out. It showed the place and it was a disaster….the yard and house was destroyed, they took everything and left trash(mattresses, doors wood trim, flooring) all over the yard of the house and the inside looked like a bomb had gone off.
It had been her Mothers home and she just remodled it.
Is this an epidemic of phony Craigslist stuff?