Tenant was stealing utilities. Now in jail.

[Rob K.]

I will give the shortened version. I had sold a house to a guy on a land contract a few years ago. He disappeared. Literally. His buddy was living in the house. I went through the court and foreclosed on the house. While I was going through the redemption period, I worked a deal with the buddy to live there and pay me rent. He ended up being a deadbeat and I had to evict him.

When I called to transfer utilities into my name, I found out that the buddy had been stealing gas and electric. I gave all of his information to the fraud department at the utility companies. I never heard anything else on it.

Recently, I was on the county court site looking at information on someone else. All of the court cases are posted on the internet here. I looked up the utility thief's name to see if anything ever came of his stealing. To my suprise, he is in jail and pled guilty to a felony of stealing utilities. I was happy that finally the justice system had a positive outcome.

The reason that I'm posting this is because I want to encourage all other landlords to report these deadbeats to the utility companies when you see theft. I hate criminals and if enough poeople get busted for stealing, it will benefit all of us.