“Landlords From Hell” Face Prison Sentence
San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón announced this week that husband and wife landlords have entered guilty pleas to 2 felony counts of residential burglary, 1 felony count of stalking, and 1 felony count of attempted grand theft.
The defendants were recently extradited from Italy to face charges stemming from a landlord tenant dispute dating from September 2005 to December 2007.
The actions of these defendants are so outlandish and brazen that it sounds like the plot line of a horror movie, said District Attorney George Gasc’n. This case shows you cannot flee this country and avoid the consequences of your actions. These defendants will be held fully accountable for their crimes.
According to court documents, the landlords wanted to evict tenants out of an apartment building they owned in the South of Market. In August 2006, the wife sent a fraudulent email, from an email account which she created, to the victim’s civil attorney in a civil matter against the defendants. In the email, she fires the victim’s attorney while pretending to be the victim. Additionally, she sent a fraudulent email from another email account that she created, this time to her and her husband’s own civil attorneys in the civil matter. In that e-mail, she threatens to kidnap and dismember the attorneys children while still pretending to be the victim.
The situation escalated to more dangerous behavior. In September 2006, there were two separate incidents where the defendants cut holes in the floor of one victim’s living room with a power saw while he was inside his apartment. The defendants also cut multiple sections out of the joists below the victim’s floor, in an apparent attempt to make the floor collapse while people were standing on it. Before cutting the joists, the wife had asked a Department of Building Inspector which beam she would need to cut to make the building structurally unsound in order to red tag the building and order all tenants out.
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