Warning: Bad tenant.

That’s what Adam Buttigieg — a man with a long history of bouncing cheques and fraud convictions — thinks prospective landlords deserve to hear.

“There should be a way for landlords to be able to see some of the issues, or see a little bit of a red flag” if a tenant habitually fails to pay rent, said Buttigieg, who has taken the unusual step of speaking about his checkered past in an interview with the Toronto Star.

Based on his history, he admits, “I should have a big red flag.”

An ongoing Star investigation has revealed how tenants can delay eviction by exploiting protections offered through Ontario’s Landlord and Tenant Board, and how privacy rules keep landlords in the dark about bad tenants.

Previously, the Star’s investigation revealed the hidden history of Toronto tenant Nina Willis and how a half-dozen landlords had no way of knowing she had been evicted from multiple properties.





The 36-year-old Toronto man said he has been before the board five times since 2008, each time because he wrote rent cheques that bounced.

He has also been convicted in provincial offences court of providing false and misleading information to the landlord and tenant board and of fraud in criminal court.

Buttigieg met with the Star to respond to questions about those convictions, his poor rental history and the 147 criminal charges he is currently facing, most tied to allegations of theft and fraud that have not been proven in court.

During a 90-minute interview, he explained how he forged cheques and credit reports and how he lied, stalled and used what he described as a “loophole” to occupy luxury rentals, including a $1.1 million home, and expensive condos and lofts, without paying.

“The system is so flawed because there is no verification process on any of it,” Buttigieg said, describing how it is possible to stall eviction by using a last-ditch payment option at the landlord and tenant board.

The Star interviewed two women Buttigieg lived with who said he used his relationship with them to make himself seem more credible, financially stable and desirable as a tenant when meeting landlords.

One of his former girlfriends, Crystal Murphy, 34, said she never would have signed a lease with him if she had known he had been evicted from multiple rentals.

“Had there been some safeguards, where landlords could be tipped off about chronic or habitual evicted tenants, then I could have maybe been spared financial ruin and emotional ruin,” said Murphy, who lived with Buttigieg in 2011.

“It was almost like I was used as a part of his ploy to win over landlords,” she said.

Buttigieg, a graphic designer who sometimes uses the last name Galea, swears he is seeing a psychologist and is now committed to an honest life.

Landlords who have lost money to him say they have the right to know a tenant’s history. The board declined to comment on Buttigieg’s case, as is its practice with all tenant-landlord matters.

Buttigieg met his last three girlfriends — including Murphy— through online dating. In his profiles, he advertises as someone looking for a best friend.

The girlfriends who spoke with the Star describe how, at first, Buttigieg came across as kind and eager for a committed relationship. They say he was always well dressed and spoke of a well-off lifestyle, chatting about living in high-end condominiums, properties he sometimes claimed that he owned. Typically, within a year of meeting them, Buttigieg convinced the women to move in.

In the Star’s interview, Buttigieg said he realizes he has not always been honest with women, but said he was never abusive and insisted he always intended to pay rent but was troubled by a run of bad luck.

Court records reveal Buttigieg has had numerous run-ins with the legal system.

The 147 criminal charges include allegations of attempting to defraud two former landlords, the landlord tenant board and three banks. He is also accused of making fake cheques and credit reports, defrauding and stealing from his former fiancée, stealing computer equipment and cash from a former employer, and forging a cheque with his employer’s logo on it and depositing it at the bank.

Of the total, 66 charges were laid in 2011. The remaining 81, all related to a former fiancée, were laid in May.

Last month, on June 12, he appeared at two different courthouses. He was also charged with violating a probation order and for failing to pay $9,900 in court ordered restitution to one of the girlfriends.

In Ontario, Landlord and Tenant board hearings are open to the public, but unless a landlord somehow knew to sit in the hearing room each time Buttigieg appeared there is no way to know his record.

Prior to 2003, rental histories were released for a fee, but that stopped after the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario ruled tenant files could be sealed because they contained personal and private information. The result is that all files are sealed.

The first case the Star reviewed was from 2009. Two of Buttigieg’s criminal convictions came after the landlord and tenant board reported Buttigieg to the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing after he made several attempts to stall eviction from an Etobicoke home.

Buttigieg moved into the $1.1 million two-storey property in the Sunnylea neighbourhood with his then-wife and infant daughter in early 2009 and right away the first $3,500 rent cheque bounced.

When the landlord pushed for the rent, Buttigieg wrote more bad cheques and made partial payments in cash, according to documents prepared for the prosecution by an investigator with the housing ministry.

He paid what he owed for four months, but the following month when no rent came the landlord took him to the board and he was ordered out.

He asked for and was granted another hearing because he wrote a cheque for $10,170, to be held in trust pending the outcome. When that cheque bounced he wrote a second cheque for $17,670 and asked for and received another hearing. That cheque bounced as well.

“It was an effort to stall the system if I could, so I could come up with a plan, so I could get back on my feet,” Buttigieg told the Star. “I just needed a little more time.”

His next request to defend his case was denied.

When the Sherriff showed up at the Sunnylea home, Buttigieg showed paperwork he claimed proved he had a new hearing. That document was later found to be a fake, according to the ministry documents.

In January 2011, he pleaded guilty to two counts of providing “false or misleading information” in violation of the Residential Tenancies Act and was fined $4,300, plus fees.

After he was evicted from the house, Buttigieg moved on to a penthouse unit in a towering building known as The Tides, near the Gardiner Expressway and Park Lawn Rd. in Etobicoke.

That tenancy started in early 2010. Landlord Theresa Torres said by the third month the rent had stopped coming. Buttigieg emailed her images of his online bank account to prove he had cash, made promise after promise and never paid, she said.

“He was literally buying minutes of time with me just to try and not pay me,” said Torres, who estimates she is out $8,000 in landlord tribunal fees and rent.

Buttigieg later admitted to Torres he had lost his job. He had been working for a retail design company in Toronto. His company was served with four separate garnishment notices, according to documents filed in small claims court. The people owed included the landlord from the Etobicoke house, a man he borrowed $20,000 from and two companies that make private loans.

Torres took Buttigieg to the board, where she said he was given several chances to pay what he owed, but didn’t.

When the sheriff showed up he was gone, she said.

By this time, Buttigieg was dating Meghan, 36, who had a young daughter. Buttigieg met Meghan online in late 2009. He told her that he owned the condo at The Tides and a nearby loft, a property they lived in together for a few months. The Star has agreed not to publish Meghan’s name to protect her daughter’s privacy.

Buttigieg borrowed thousands of dollars from Meghan. He claimed it was for lawyers and closing fees for the loft, she said.

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Meghan said they were planning their future, even looking at buying a house in Vaughan, but Buttigieg wouldn’t answer questions about the sale of the loft. She looked the property up online and saw that it was a rental.

She confronted Buttigieg and he denied everything. The next day while she was at work, she called the real estate agent handling the property and he told her Buttigieg was a tenant and owed rent. She immediately withdrew all her money from their joint account, picked up her daughter up at daycare and went to stay with a friend.

Buttigieg was furious, Meghan said. He visited her at work and displayed a highly pixelated document he said proved ownership. Meghan called the police, and had them meet her at the home so she could pick up her things. She estimates she lost $25,000.

“I thought we were buying a house for our family,” she said. “That was one of the reasons it was so hard to think that somebody would be taking advantage of me and was being so abusive.”

Buttigieg told the Star that when he was later questioned by police he offered to help with other fraud cases because he figured he had a way to trick any of the systems other people were exploiting. The police declined his offer, he said.

He later pleaded guilty to four counts of fraud under $5,000 in relation to the loans and was sentenced to two years probation.

Buttigieg met his next girlfriend, Crystal Murphy, online in 2011. Six months later, they moved in together.

Murphy said she felt things were moving fast, but she agreed to rent with him as they were spending a lot of time together and he mentioned his current lease was about to end.

By this point Buttigieg had been evicted from several properties, but with his rental history kept secret he had no problem convincing a landlord to let him sign a lease.

The couple rented an airy condo inside a newly constructed building on the Queensway with two pools and a tennis court. They both signed the lease.

Two months into the rental, the landlord called Murphy to say the first two $2,200 cheques were not going through and Buttigieg was making excuses and not returning her calls.

Shortly after, Murphy found a box of documents Buttigieg had left in her car. They revealed that her boyfriend had been evicted many times from other apartments. She confronted him, and the next day, when he was at work, her family rushed to move her out. Murphy turned the information over to the police.

She estimates she lost more than $10,000, including savings she had planned to use to buy a home. She also lost intangible things, such as trust. “This person you thought was a good person and your partner and possibly the person you are going to spend your life with is a liar,” she said. “So immediately your sense of stability, your sense of trust, your sense of safety are all compromised.”

Murphy said she believes that Buttigieg counted on the landlord being eager to rent to what appeared to be a financially stable young couple, especially since he brought a copy of his credit report and a money order when they toured the apartment.

But the credit report Buttigieg had brought with him had been faked, the couple’s former landlord, Christina Arcangioli, 41, told the Star.

Arcangioli has been a landlord for 12 years and manages four properties. She has used her experience to educate other landlords and believes there should be a public registry for bad tenants.

“It’s one thing if somebody has been laid off and can’t pay their rent,” she said. “It’s another thing when you have somebody who is beyond three strikes and somebody else is left holding the bag again.”

In October 2011, Murphy and Arcangioli appeared before the board and agreed to sever the lease.

Two months later, the police laid 66 criminal charges against Buttigieg, many in connection with Arcangioli’s case.

After Murphy, Buttigieg lived in another unit in the same building, where he also failed to pay rent, tribunal records show. Buttigieg didn’t appear at the April 2012 board hearing where he was ordered out. That landlord tried to recover $3,800 in small claims court.

In his interview with the Star, Buttigieg would not say where he is living now. He said he met another woman online after Murphy and became engaged, though that relationship ended in allegations of theft and fraud.

In May, he was charged with 81 counts of theft and fraud, all for allegedly stealing from and defrauding his fiancée between September 2012 and November 2013.

He said he feels deep shame for his actions, and attempted to explain the “how” and “why” of them.

“ ‘How’ is the easy part, it’s the ‘why’ that is complicated,” he said.

“The ‘why’ is feeling so insecure about who I am and the feeling that without money or possessions, perhaps I am not a worthwhile person,” he said.

“The ‘how’ is, um, in the digital age we live in it is not very difficult, to be perfectly honest.”

Buttigieg’s next court appearances are scheduled on July 21 at Old City Hall, August 6 at 1000 Finch. Ave. W. and August 20 at 2201 Finch Ave. W.

Emily Mathieu can be reached at emathieu@thestar.ca or (416) 869-4896