In the '90s the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC), set up and funded by the US Gov't (ie; the taxpayers) bailed out the bankers who had made the bad loans, the developers who had taken on too risky of ventures and the PMI companies who had backed those risky loans.By mitigating the losses for those parties they saved some people from being civilly sued, prevented some criminal prosescutions and made sure that many of their "friends" got preferential treatment when it came time to buying the real "wholesale" deals.We had looked at a condo development in Houston on the theory that we could get the entire place for about $3K PER UNIT.

OK  now that I am done laughing .. of course you have to pay income taxjust think of all the criminals that were put into jail not because they got caught doing criminal activities but for tax evasion.check your state.. there is a minimum where you don't have to pay tax.. but if your total income is over that then you do.good luck and by all means pay your tax's us old guys will need our SSI benefits

So I look more at other factors: - Criminal history - especially nothing to do with drugs - Eviction history - don't want it but I have taken people with one eviction in the past - Rental history -- are they hopping from place to place every year?

Turns out he has a bunch of criminal charges, a bunch of them are for theft and other various dishonest types of things.

Also, crime websites show hardly any criminal activity there, so seems pretty safe.

Criminal penalties are not outside the realm of possibility depending on how egregious the conduct was. 

And get the criminal & eviction report as well. 

I use rentecdirect.com, which charges me $29.45 to run a criminal/credit/evictions search and I check references (employment and landlords) myself IF the reports come back looking good.  

Assuming they have good references and no criminal history, it might be a good idea. 

We are so lucky in Virginia that all our civil and criminal records are not only public, but we are able to easily view them on-line.