5 Day Notice to Cure in Milwaukee

[Darren Budahn]

I was wondering if I could get some input regarding a situation I just encountered.  

At the 4plex I closed on about a week ago, I inherited 4 tenants.  Only 1 of the tenants is on a one year lease that runs for another 10 months. The rest are MTM.  When I went to the property with my contractor to do some maintenance, I had a tenant inform me that another tenant was running an extension cord to their unit to steal electricity.  When I went into the tenant's unit who was accused of stealing electricity (to do unrelated work), I saw the extension cord running towards the common area hallway where they would be stealing the electricity.  The power was turned off at that unit by WE Energies.  

Now, ideally I would like to boot the tenant immediately.  However, under WI law (and I may be wrong), it seems as though I would have to give a "5 day notice right to cure for cause."  Is this correct?  My understanding is that I cannot give a "14 day no right to cure" notice to the tenant unless this is a repeat violation.  Therefore, it seems that I am stuck in that I cannot get rid of the tenant for this act unless they do it again.  This seems to go beyond the normal breach in that the tenant is committing a crime, not just a violation of the lease. Not to mention the extreme fire hazard they are causing by doing this.  Of course, the previous landlord only had a one page lease that is very minimal and I have all my tenants on MTM leases, so I have zero experience in dealing with one year leases.  Any help would be much appreciated.  

[Dawn Anastasi]

When I dealt with an inherited tenant, they were running an extension cord down to the basement and stealing electricity that way.  I had the outlet removed and put a blank plate over it.  (There was no need for an outlet there.)  In this case, the tenant DID have electricity, they just wanted someone else to pay the majority of it.