Connecting the dots on a landlord scam: how clues revealed a prolific con artist at work
This is part one of a three-part W5 investigation into how a convicted con artist bilked dozens of people in a landlord scam, digital loopholes that may make the scam easier to pull off, and how the justice system may be letting fraudsters off the hook to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars across the country when it comes to repaying their victims.
Earlier this year, artist Ryan Howe thought he’d found the perfect new home: a bright two-bedroom suite just outside Toronto in his price range.
Ryan Howe thought he found the perfect new home, but after putting down a deposit and showing up with a moving truck on Nov. 1, he discovered he wasn’t the only new tenant to show up that day (CTV W5)
He paid a $1,200 deposit to a landlord he knew as Tracy, and showed up with a truck to move in on Nov. 1. But he was surprised to discover he wasn’t the only one who showed up that day.
As he stood outside on the street, at least five other people tried to move into that home as well – including a single mom with two kids, Howe recalled.
All of them had a similar story of meeting a landlord and paying their deposit. All of them realized they had been had, and all of them had to scramble to find a new place to live.
“It was mind-blowing,” Howe told W5 in an interview, pointing out the cruelty of disrupting his life and temporarily making him homeless in a tight rental market.
Ryan Howe thought he found the perfect new home, until he realized he was one of a number of victims of a scam, and had to scramble to find a new place to live (W5)
‘Everything seemed legit’
A W5 investigation showed they had all been scammed by the same convicted con artist, with a history of allegations of doing almost exactly this to dozens of people – and who was supposed to be stopped by the criminal justice system years before.
For Howe, it started while looking for a new place to live on the social media listings site Facebook Marketplace.
He saw the home, in Oshawa, and talked to Tracy, who said the rent for a piece of the suite would be $600 a month.
“Everything seemed legit, so I took it,” he said. “I was very excited about it.”
But when they tried the door, they found tourists inside. The home wasn’t actually for tenants: it was a short-term rental, through the company Airbnb.
“All of us that showed up were kind of stunned and shocked and wondering, what’s going on here?” recalled Howe’s mom, Tracy Henderson.
The group compared notes from their online chats, looked at the Facebook profile of the supposed landlord, and Howe copied a picture that he knew was the woman who had shown him the home.
Payment details offered clues that her name wasn’t Tracy at all. In one, the money was listed as being paid to a person named Amelia Hull.
In another email, the woman signed her name as Colleen. The group wondered: could her name be Colleen Hull?
W5 went to several Ontario courthouses to find the paperwork on a Colleen Hull, charged with defrauding a few people almost every month, off and on, over the course of four years.
W5 went to several courthouses to find paperwork on Colleen Hull, who has been charged with defrauding a few people almost every month, off and on, over the course of four years (Source: Facebook)
There were more than 90 charges in total, including breaches of orders to stay off other listing websites like Kijiji. Put together, she was accused of pulling similar scams to upwards of 50 people.
W5 tracked down one of those people, Lesh Sowunmi, who crossed paths with that Colleen Hull in 2023.
He said he paid Hull a deposit of $750 to rent a house on Telford Street in Ajax, Ont. But she disappeared before he could move in, and he couldn’t access the home. It turned out Hull didn’t own the place to begin with.
“It was very stressful, very, very stressful,” Sowunmi said.
W5 showed him the picture of Hull, and he recognized it as the woman who scammed him.
“If one, two, three, four, fix, six, 10 people report this, I think it should be taken seriously, because then it stops it from spreading, proliferating,” he said.
Lesh Sowunmi said he paid Colleen Hull a deposit of $750 to rent a house in Ajax, Ont., but alleged that Hull disappeared before he could move in and he couldn’t access the home (W5)
Rental scams on the rise
Hull was convicted of defrauding him and about 20 other people. Records show she served about six months in pre-trial custody, and then about six months of a conditional sentence.
Hull is out on probation now, so W5 started checking the listed addresses for her. We weren’t the only ones. One man who lived at the listed address said she had actually never lived there at all – and the police had also visited recently.
In a statement to W5, Durham Regional Police confirmed they’re looking for her as well.
A lawyer who had previously represented her declined to comment.
Nationally, rental scams are on the rise, with about $730,000 in losses reported in 2022, $840,000 in 2023, with 2024 on track for some $900,000, across hundreds of victims a year, according to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre.
Howe says Hull shouldn’t have been let out so soon.
“It doesn’t make sense to me that she was arrested for the crime, released, and able to continue the exact same thing,” he said.
The search for Hull would take us to examine the safety features of a huge short-term rental platform, and help reveal a systemic issue that’s depriving victims of crime across the country of nearly half a billion dollars.
For tips on landlord scams, or any other story, please email Jon Woodward (jon.woodward@bellmedia.ca)
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