New 'Kidless' Tenants Forged Lease to get their Kids out of LA Protective Services

[Account Closed]

Young (20ish) couple presented as working 'wife' making 3x the 2-bedroom rent monthly, and non-working ucla grad student 'husband', recently relocated from midwest, and with no children. Employment checked out so I accepted 1mo deposit and 1st mo rent and gave keys and we signed mo to mo lease that authorizes occupany by their names, and states a total of 2 occupants. (I dont run credit nor purchase backround check reports, but will now seriously consider for all future tenants!)

Barely a week later, I meet 'wife's mother (who flew in from the midwest) at door who explained her daughter's boyfriend needs to stop lying to people, that his real situation is they're not yet married and were living in a converted garage and he left the kids home alone while wife was also at work and police were called because one of the kids somehow was found alone wandering the streets and subsequently placed in foster care til she (mother's mother) came to LA area to file for being their legal guardian in the interim.

That LA Child Services would not release the kids back to the parents, but agreed to place the kids with a relative if the relative owned or had a lease on an apartment within Los Angeles County, so he found my Signal Hill 2-bedroom apartment (in my 2-family house) for her since they could not use the converted garage as a safe home for daughter's mother to take over the 'lease' on.  Their ('wife' and 'husband') names are on the lease here, not hers!

She said her daughter's boyfriend created a new lease naming her as the tenant and signed it with my signature copied from the original lease, and filed it with Los Angeles Child Services in order for them to get the kids out of foster care and placed with a relative! She said parents aren't allowed to live with kids until approved later this month after a hearing, but that they can and are visiting.

She explained the kids are 1, 2, and 7 year old and one of them has autism (daughter had the oldest at age of 16, boyfriend is several years older). Already the noise and banging of apparently the autistic? child is annoying my housemate on the 1st floor as well as myself when I'm actually home. She also explained that her daughter quit her job permanently on like the day after I verified employment in order to go to court and stuff for the kids and so now its like 3 adults and 3 kids suddenly living up there, none of them working.  She also explained that the brand new fridge isn't working, so I've ordered repair service for that but dang, what a predicament; damned if I do in a way, but damned if I don't!

I've already asked them to find a new place ASAP as their tenancy is now already in breach from the start as based on false premises/occupancy and seems like some major fraud. I asked the 'husband' isn't he worried about losing his kids permanently based on what he's now done? All he did was cry and apologize for lying, and agreed to look for somewhere else but that it will take a while because he has bad credit and now his 'wife' is no longer employed because she is putting being there for her kids first and can live off her tax return in the interim. 

Hoping caseworkers come out to visit or whatever when i'm around to appoach this for what it really is.. but how should i deal with this? Should i contact LA child services (if so, where do i begin?!) or could that make things worse? Heeeelp! =(

[Matt R.]

@Account Closed That is unfortunate Neil. Hopefully that can be resolved shortly. I can recommend using mysmartmove as part of the screening process. It will report things like, this applicants past address is associated with multiple incidents of fraud etc. 

 Good Luck!