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When a constable banged on the front door of a home in Burlington, Massachusetts, nobody answered.
The tenants who had occupied the property for nearly two years were already gone, but they left a nightmare behind. Trash and dirty dishes littered the floors. A large hole gaped in the wall of the hallway. For the property owner, a Syrian immigrant who speaks little English, eviction day marked the end of a nearly two-year ordeal that would cost him over $100,000, according to an NBC10 Boston investigation (1).
The tenants, Bryan Coombes and Nicole Inserra, moved in December 2023 and immediately stopped paying rent. What makes this case particularly shocking: taxpayers kicked in $23,000 in rental assistance through a state program before the couple was booted for failing to hold up their end of the bargain.
The landlord got stuck with the rest.
“While everyone describes Massachusetts as tenant-friendly, I’ve come to the phrase that it’s ‘landlord impossible,'” attorney Robert Lee, who spent more than a year fighting the eviction in housing court, told NBC10 Boston. “You really don’t have to try that hard to stay in a place without paying money.”
This wasn’t the couple’s first scheme. Housing records show this was Coombes’ 13th eviction in Massachusetts, a pattern stretching back two decades.
Leo Behaj, an Ipswich resident who previously rented to Coombes, lost nearly six figures due to the couple and had to sell his property to climb out of debt.
“These people are professionals,” Behaj said. “They have been doing this for 20 years. They have a PhD. They know everything to screw the system.”
The tactics are straight from the “professional tenant” playbook: filing health complaints about items in disrepair, then refusing to let contractors in to fix them. Submitting multiple appeals. An 11th-hour bankruptcy filing, the couple’s 10th in the past decade, with all but the most recent one dismissed.
When NBC10 Boston confronted Coombes outside housing court last May, he was unapologetic: “I use the law and the law helps me do what I need to do.”
The Massachusetts cases aren’t outliers. Across the country, landlords are grappling with a surge in fraudulent tenants — and the costs hit everyone.
Nearly all rental housing providers (93.3%) reported experiencing fraud in the past 12 months, according to a 2024 survey by the National Multifamily Housing Council (2). Of those, 70.7% said fraudulent applications and payments had increased, with respondents reporting an average 40% spike compared to the previous year.
The most common tactics were: falsifying pay stubs, employment references or income documentation (84.3% of respondents); misrepresenting information on applications (80%); and committing identity theft or using fraudulent ID documents (70%). Perhaps most striking: respondents reported that nearly one in four eviction filings (23.8%) were tied to fraudulent applications and subsequent failure to pay rent.
The financial damage is severe. Survey respondents wrote off an average of nearly $4.2 million in bad debt over the past 12 months, with about a quarter attributed to fraud-related nonpayment.
For individual landlords, evictions typically cost $3,500 to $10,000 after factoring in legal fees, court costs, lost rent and property turnover, according to property management platform Innago (3). In tenant-friendly states like California and New York, longer notice periods and slower courts can push costs even higher (4).
For the Burlington landlord, costs spiraled to include legal fees, moving expenses and storage for the tenants’ possessions — a legal requirement in Massachusetts. Lee said his client borrowed from friends and family just to avoid foreclosure.
Perhaps the most troubling question is how these tenants with 12 prior evictions qualified for state rental assistance?
The state’s Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities cited privacy laws and declined to discuss individual recipients.
However, it’s not an isolated concern. Emergency rental assistance programs, which ballooned during COVID-19, have faced fraudulent claims nationwide. In Chicago, a former city employee and a sham property management company obtained over $200,000 by filing fraudulent applications, according to a 2024 city lawsuit (5).
The federal government disbursed $46 billion in emergency rental assistance through two rounds of funding in late 2020 and early 2021, according to the U.S. Treasury (6). The programs helped millions of legitimate renters — but the rapid rollout created openings for abuse.
For small landlords relying on rental income to pay mortgages or fund their kids’ education, the threat can be existential. But thorough screening can help catch serial offenders. Eviction records typically stay on tenant screening reports for seven years, according to Experian (7).
Run your own background check and never accept documents provided by the applicant — professional tenants often submit falsified reports.
Verify employment independently. Call the company’s main number, not the one the applicant provides. Some scammers use friends posing as HR reps. Search their previous two or three landlords. The current one may be trying to pass along a problem tenant.
Watch for other red flags. Tenants who quote obscure legal statutes at the first meeting, offer several months upfront to skip screening, or pressure you to move fast should raise concerns (8).
In 2024, landlords filed over one million eviction cases across the U.S. With total costs ranging from $500 to $10,000 per case, thorough tenant screening has never been more essential.
Tools like Baselane can help. The platform makes it easy for landlords to screen tenants with income verification, a credit report and eviction history at their fingertips.
The platform’s automated rent collection gives both landlords and tenants peace of mind. Landlords can set up automated rental payments, monthly reminders and late fees in just 2 minutes. They can also receive direct deposits directly into their bank account.
This story might lead you to believe that real estate is an unattractive investment. Dealing with incessant tenant calls and going into debt to cover missed rent payments is a potential reality for some landlords.
But there are more platforms that offer real estate investments without the headaches that come with being a landlord.
For instance, you can tap into the real estate market through Arrived, earning a passive income stream without the extra work that comes with being a landlord of your own rental property.
The platform, backed by Jeff Bezos, is designed so you can start investing with as little as $100. To get started, simply browse through their selection of vetted properties, each picked for its potential appreciation and income generation. Once you choose a property and start investing, you can potentially earn quarterly dividends.
Plus, you’ll gain access to their newly launched secondary market, where investors can buy and sell shares of individual rental and vacation rental properties directly on the platform.
This allows you to buy into properties you may have missed at the initial offering or sell shares before a property reaches the end of its hold period.
Mogul is a real estate investment platform offering fractional ownership in blue-chip rental properties, which gives investors monthly rental income, real-time appreciation and tax benefits — without the need for a hefty down payment or those pesky 3 A.M. tenant calls.
Each property undergoes a vetting process, requiring a minimum 12% return even in downside scenarios. Across the board, the platform features an average annual IRR of 18.8%. Their cash-on-cash yields, meanwhile, average between 10 to 12% annually. Offerings often sell out in under three hours, with investments typically ranging between $15,000 and $40,000 per property.
Every investment is secured by real assets, not dependent on the platform’s viability. Each property is held in a standalone Propco LLC, so investors own the property — not the platform. Blockchain-based fractionalization adds a layer of safety, ensuring a permanent, verifiable record of each stake.
Getting started is a quick and easy process. You can sign up for an account and then browse available properties. Once you verify your information with their team, you can invest like a mogul in just a few clicks.
For Coombes and Inserra, eviction day in Burlington finally arrived — but not before they’d racked up 13 evictions, 10 bankruptcy filings and collected $23,000 in taxpayer assistance along the way.
The Syrian immigrant who owns the property now faces months of cleanup and repairs. He’ll likely never recover the lost rent. And there’s nothing stopping Coombes from finding his next landlord.
For small landlords, the takeaway is clear: screen rigorously, verify everything, and know that in some states, the law won’t be on your side when things go wrong.
NBC10 Boston (1); National Multifamily Housing Council (2); Innago (3); LeaseRunner (4); City of Chicago (5); U.S. Department of the Treasury (6); Experian (7); Bornstein Law (8)
This article provides information only and should not be construed as advice. It is provided without warranty of any kind.
