Roommate lied and stole, now we owe $33k in rent

From: Vania Ruiz, Gabriel Palmer, & Bianca Marchionni.

In March of 2020, Vania, Bianca, and Gabe & Roommate X (we won’t be naming him) signed a lease for a house in Arizona. Roommate X listed himself as the individual whose account the rent money would come out of every month. We agreed to send him the rent and in turn he would pay our leasing company.

Due to COVID-19, Bianca never moved across the country from Florida into our home in Arizona. She sublet to a friend. 2 months later in May 2020, I moved out and sublet to roommate X's friend. Gabriel has lived in this same house for years and has never moved since we signed our lease.

That same May that I left, was the last month that rent was ever paid by roommate X. Over the course of the next few months, roommate X would, unbeknownst to us, continue to collect the rent money from Gabriel and the two subletters, pocket the money, and would not pay rent. Our rent was around $1,800 a month for a 4 bed during the course of the lease which ended in March of 2021. After the lease ended the lease was switched to month-to-month where the rent increased to $2,214. He would then pocket the entire rent payment that was being sent to him by the roommates . As he was the individual who was paying rent, the housing company only reached out to him for any monetary requests (this is important).

In ordinary times, an eviction would have ensued almost immediately after the first monthly default. However, due to COVID-19, we were not evicted because of the eviction moratorium that was in place. Roommate X never paid a dime and the rent went on to be delinquent for 16 months with late fees added every single day that passed.

2 weeks ago the house received a letter from the leasing company. One of the subletters gave it to Gabe. It was a final notice informing the household of the $32,500+ that was delinquent and owed to the leasing company. Gabe thought it must be a mistake, so he called the leasing office. The leasing office told him they would get back to him. After that, Gabe called roommate X to confirm if this was an error or not and roommate X told Gabe not to worry about it. Then the leasing office called Gabe back and they confirmed our worst suspicions. They informed him that we were liable for this insane amount of money and if we did not make a minimum payment which is a quarter of the amount in two weeks time, the house would be vacated and this amount would go into collections for the four of us.

Roommate X was NEVER going to tell us. For months he had been in communication with the leasing office trying to work out some sort of payment plan but never fulfilling his end of the deal or making any payments, since entering a payment plan required all of our consent, and he was NOT going to inform us.

The night that Gabe found out, he wrote a suicide note and attempted to take his life. Thankfully, some friends intercepted and were able to make sure that Gabe received proper care. Once Gabe was released from the hospital, the next day he called Vania and informed her of the situation. Vania then proceeded to have a panic attack for a few hours and this was followed by the course of actions that occurred when Vania then informed Bianca. Bianca has still to this day never even stepped foot in Arizona. She is experiencing health issues and already has numerous other medical bills to pay. Until this is resolved, Bianca has decided to put her medical issues on hold since the odds are not likely that she will be able to pay for this issue and her medical bills.

Roommate X also lied and told Bianca and Vania that they were off the lease in March of 2021. This never actually happened because instead of signing the new roommates on (the subletters), roommate X had the lease roll over into the next year, so Vania, Gabe, Bianca and roommate X remain on the lease currently. We have spoken to several lawyers and at this time our legal course of actions are looking slim seeing as the 3 of us are still on the lease.

Once we are off this lease, we can look to other legal actions but right now, we're at our last resort and are 3 people asking for your help in getting out of this mess that someone else created for us. The total amount we are liable for is over $32,500.

This is arguably the worst thing that someone has ever done to us and we'd appreciate anything you can spare and if you can't then please help us spread the word by sharing/reposting wherever you can. We appreciate any and all help from our friends, loved ones, and strangers. Thank you for helping us through this.

If you can please donate to our Venmo's/CashApps before donating to this GFM, as GFM takes 2-3 business days to process and we must make a minimum payment within a week.

Venmos: @ogbobbygabriel, @beee_x13

CashApps: $VaniaVR, $ghpalmer, $beeex13