Was Wilmington family booted from home victim of Craigslist scam?

Alexander Pratt had been living in a rented Wilmington home with his fiancée and his son for nearly 10 months when he said he returned last Sunday to find a locksmith changing the locks and police warning him that if he entered, he would be arrested for trespassing.

"All our things are still locked in the house," Pratt said. "We’re basically out on the streets."

Pratt said he quickly called the man he says leased him the three-bedroom, Harlan-neighborhood home. He said the man's phone number had been disconnected.

The 28-year-old Wilmington native and professional boxer said he rented the house through an advertisement on Craigslist. Pratt said he paid a man purporting to be the owner $4,000 for the year.

But the real property owners had no idea anyone was living in the house until just recently, they said.

Pratt said he is the victim of a fraud, but "felt like I was being treated like a suspect when I’m a victim."

Last Wednesday, with uncooked Thanksgiving fixings and everything else he owns locked in the home, Pratt asked a Wilmington Justice of the Peace Court for an emergency order to get back into the house.

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At that hearing, an attorney for the landowner questioned whether Pratt's family were the victims.

"We believe these people squatted," said James Landon, an attorney representing the property owner, Katherine A. Sahm, a surgeon affiliated with the Christiana Health Care System.

Landon said Sahm had not authorized any tenant to live in the home and argued the Pratts had no right to return to the property.

Sahm did not return a phone call seeking comment.

"We do not know how the plaintiffs got into the property. They never dealt with us," Landon said.

Pratt's fiancée took offense to the idea that they had done anything wrong.

"I work two jobs, ma’am, I’m not a squatter," said Faizah Taylor.

So-called "home takeover" scams occur when a con artist either moves into a vacant home or leases the residence to an unsuspecting renter, unbeknownst to the real owner. Often, the con artists break in, change the locks, present keys and legal documents to their victims.

Such scams are not new to Craigslist. Researchers at New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering analyzed more than 2 million rental listings in 21 major markets found that Craigslist failed to identify more than half of scam rental listings.

It can be difficult for law enforcement to figure out if a person is a con or the victim of a scam. In other cities, those claiming to be victims of Craigslist fraud have been prosecuted as squatting scammers.

Susan Upberg, a magistrate in the Justice of the Peace Court who presided over the hearing, said Pratt's ouster is unlike any such conflict she had seen in Delaware.

"This is an emergency hearing just to solve the emergency that is before me," Upberg said. "I see this is an emergency because a family has been put out on the street days before Thanksgiving."

Pratt told Upberg he rented the home from a man who called himself Jonathan Gilmore.

Gilmore said he was the property owner, Pratt said, and he offered a remarkable deal: $4,000 up front for the year to rent the three-bedroom, one-bathroom house.

Pratt said he jumped at the opportunity to pay what came out to $333 a month, “a steal” for a home within walking distance of his 9-year-old son's school, Harlan Elementary.

Another three-bedroom home in the neighborhood is currently listed for $1,350 a month on the real estate website Zillow.

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“We thought it was a blessing for us,” he said. “We met with the guy. He seemed nice. Everything seemed legit.”

Pratt said he signed a lease on Feb. 28, paid the $4,000 in cash, and moved in on March 1 with keys for the front door, back door and basement.

Pratt said he realizes that his account of how he leased the home is difficult to prove.

He exchanged no emails with Gilmore. He did not keep a copy of the original Craigslist ad, he said. The only copy of the lease is now out of reach in the house, he told Upberg.

The judge also noted the peculiarity of the property owner's situation.

"It is odd to me that someone would own premises for months and months and months without knowing someone was living in it," Upberg said.

Sahm has owned the property for years. It had previously been used as a rental, but Sahm thought it had been sitting vacant, Landon said.

"There was no need to check up on it," Landon said.

The Pratts' presence in the home was discovered when the owner went to winterize the property and noticed the locks had been changed, Landon said.

Landon declined Upberg's request to let Pratt back into the property to retrieve the lease, telling the magistrate the property owner feared damage to the home.

Instead, in an attempt to prove his side of the story, Pratt gave Upberg copies of electricity and internet bills showing he was paying for services at the home as far back as spring. Faith Brown lives next door to the home and attended the hearing to testify that Pratt had been living there for months.

In an interview after the hearing, she said Pratt and his fiancée have improved the block and are "real considerate."

"I don't know them no more than to say 'hello,'" Brown said. "But I see them coming and going. It is a quiet house, thank God."

Under a traditional landlord-tenant dispute in Delaware, those renting a home are given at least 11 days to vacate, Upberg said.

"Even if they are ripping the place apart, they always get 11 days," Upberg said.

Landon argued that those rules did not apply because the property owners never had a landlord-tenant relationship.

"Honestly, I have an objection to this whole thing," Landon said.

Upberg said Pratt's claim of a relationship with someone purporting to be a landlord was sufficient to allow the emergency hearing to proceed.

"I think there will be a solution to this case," Upberg said. "The solution is not to lock them out on a Sunday."

Ultimately, that solution was a settlement between Pratt and the property owner that dismissed Pratt's attempt to get back into the home.

Pratt received $2,000 as well as compensation for moving expenses in return for vacating the property. He'll be allowed to retrieve his belongings under the supervision of the property owner next week.

Pratt is staying with family in Philadelphia but doesn’t know where he’ll go next. He also has to figure out how to get his dog back after it was taken from the home.

"It helps us get back on our feet," Pratt said of the ruling. "We are thankful."

He said he intends to file a criminal complaint against his now-phantom landlord.

As Pratt pulled away from the courthouse, Landon recognized that Pratt could have been scammed, but remained unconvinced.

"(Similar scams) are rampant across the county," Landon said. "There was nothing presented during the hearing that shows they were not squatters."

Contact Xerxes Wilson at (302) 324-2787 or xwilson@delawareonline.com. Follow @Ber_Xerxes on Twitter.