Do not take shortcuts on screening!

[Bob Romano]

Thought I had the perfect tenant. Did a background check, got copies of his pay stub, call HR and checked on his employment, I even called his HR Dept and verified all his info before he even gave my the persons name to contact just in case he set someone up to answer for him. Everything checked out fine. He is a VP of Operations and makes $2600 week. ( rent is $1900 mth) Well he moved in Nov 2018 , he paid Nov & Dec  no problem. He signed a 5 year lease to boot. Thought I was all set for 5 years with the perfect tenant, now im thinking I got scammed.    My bank tried to auto debit ( Cozy) his account on Jan 5th, 5 days past the rent due date and it was insufficient. I called him, he said there was a  mixup with his bank and that he will pay me cash for Jan and correct the auto debit for Feb. ( excuses) Well here it is 21 days later and still no cash.

Now  he is 21 days late for Jan. I sent him a 5 day demand for payment letter and got no response.

He wont return my calls, emails or text. I went to the house, see both cars in the driveway, no one answers the door.  I do not know what to do next at this point but turn over to the lawyers. Now the only thing that seemed fishy was  when I told him I was running his credit report early on, he said" I just ran it last week for something else and I do not want another " ding" on my report so could he just send me a copy of that one he has, so I agreed. now im thinking the report must of been forged somehow. Because why would someone with an 805 credit score risk having an eviction ? He had 0 cc debt, no evictions anywhere, etc   Moral of the story is : do not take any shortcuts on the screening process. Even if they have copies or whatever, due your complete due diligence on every tenant. I should of went with my gut feeling about this guy. I had a feeling something wasn't right but I took a chance and now im paying for it. Should I send this to the lawyers and get rid of him? I don't want to start the process, pay my lawyer then he comes up with money and now im back to square one.  AnyThoughts?