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The Williamsons leave their rented townhome in Pickering this week. (March 19, 2010)
DALE BRAZAO/TORONTO STAR
If Gregory or Suzanne Williamson knocks on your door wanting to rent your property – run.
That’s the advice from a group of landlords who have been stiffed, stung and strung out by a couple they have dubbed the “Tenants from Hell.” They’ve even created a website to warn other potential victims not to fall into the same trap.
The Williamsons, who are divorced but continue to live together, have left a trail of debt totalling tens of thousands of dollars, stretching from Chicago to Toronto, a Star investigation shows.
The documented evictions, foreclosures, bankruptcies, bill collectors and police activity in two countries show the couple uses the landlord-tenant system to their advantage, renting fine homes and then defaulting on payments.
But the Williamsons claim they are not out to screw anybody. they are victims of circumstances, bad luck, bad health and very bad money management which have seen them evicted from the last five houses they have rented.
“I’m no con artist,” Gregory Williamson, 60, said recently after the Star tracked him down at an upscale townhouse in Pickering, where he is already $3,300 in arrears and under threat of eviction. “I think I’m bipolar.”
The five GTA landlords who were left holding the bag for some $30,000 in unpaid rents in the past five years use other words to describe him. Only one has managed to collect anything after evicting the couple.
“A professional scam artist. a mastermind,” said Sukumar Gosh, who is out more than $14,000 in rental income and court costs after leasing his house to the Williamsons for five months in 2005. “They want a luxurious lifestyle but they want somebody else to pay for it.”
“They truly are the tenants from hell,” landlord Afshin Tajarrod said of his rent tribunal and court battles with the Williamsons, which at one point saw him offer to pay them to move out. “They are horror stories that will make every landlord’s toes curl.”
Frustrated by the nine months it took to get the couple out of his Pickering home, Tajarrod took matters into his own hands. He ended up charged with assault, and said he spent $30,000 in legal fees to extricate himself from the mess.
To add insult to injury, Williamson then used the conviction to get an award of $3,000 from the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board for pain and suffering, claiming severe bruising to his right arm.
Gregory Williamson lives on a disability pension and Suzanne gives piano lessons part-time.
Cruising websites such as Craigslist and Viewit.ca, the Williamsons look for upscale rental homes, in Scarborough and Pickering, usually close to water or nature parks.
they present themselves as a very likeable couple, he a “retired” executive and she a piano teacher. they love dogs.
Somehow they manage to talk landlords into allowing them to move in by paying only the first month’s rent, usually in cash.
None of the landlords did credit checks on them.
Once ensconced in the properties, they stop paying. angry landlords spend months chasing them through the rent tribunal or courts.
The Williamsons are either evicted or move out just ahead of the sheriff.
Then they start over again. Tenants who move into homes vacated by the Williamsons are left to fend off bill collectors ranging from utility companies to rent-to-own furniture depots.
After months of stakeouts and car chases, Amy Filice was in no mood to take prisoners when she finally caught up with her former tenants last month at their new waterfront digs in Pickering, which they share with two poodles and a Shetland sheepdog.
“Every month he had a new excuse as to why he can’t pay,” Filice said of her year-long odyssey to collect the $2,400 owed when they finally vacated her Scarborough townhouse in June 2009.
“One month it was his dog broke his leg. The next month his ex-wife died. then the next month it was, ‘me and Suzanne, we’re gonna break up.’ I said ‘okay, break up. I’m not Dr. Phil, break up, but you still have to pay the rent.’”
When Williamson again said he couldn’t pay, she jokingly suggested she could take one of his dogs as collateral. She was shocked when Williamson picked up the Sheltie and told her: “Here, take Chester.”
“I told him: “I don’t want your dog, you idiot. I want my money. What kind of person gives up their pet?” Filice said.
Williamson later said it was a joke.
Noticing a gold ring on his finger, Filice demanded the jewellery as collateral instead. When he pretended he couldn’t get the ring off, saying it was his father’s retirement ring after 30 years with Molson, Filice marched him to the sink and made him use soap.
Leaving the house with two rings and a promissory note, Filice called their current landlord, Lisa Hutton, warning that the “tenants from hell” were now her problem. She also directed Hutton to the website where other landlords and debtors have posted their stories.
Filice has since been paid in full for the back rent, but said she is hanging on to the rings against a $200 carpet-cleaning bill.
The next landlord, Edit Pal, said the Williamsons admitted to a bad credit rating due to some problems south of the border, but she still rented them her townhouse on Port Union Rd. for $1,650 a month because they seemed like a nice couple.
Six months later she was out $9,000 in unpaid rent.
She has sent the bill to a collection agency.
The Williamsons paid cash for the first month and issued postdated cheques for the next six. “They all bounced, every one of them,” Pal said.
The Williamsons seem oblivious to the hardship they have caused.
in a wide-ranging interview, Gregory Williamson portrayed himself as a victim of financial difficulty, ill health and job loss.
at one point he buried his face in his hands and cried, saying he has a long history of depression and psychiatric problems and is now battling prostate cancer. “I’ve never set out to screw anybody, honestly I haven’t,” he said. “I’m just not a very good money manager.”
Turning to his wife he asked: “Am I bipolar?” as if looking for confirmation that he has been diagnosed with a disorder marked by extreme episodes of depression and mania.
“That’s what you told me,” Suzanne answered. “Some doctors have said yes, some doctors have said no, but I think you are.”
Williamson said his money woes started in the fall of 2007 after a series of “mini-strokes” left him unable to work. but documents obtained by the Star show serious financial problems dating back to 1996. in June of that year, he married Suzanne in Nassau, Bahamas.
six months later he declared bankruptcy in Toronto with debts of over $277,000 and assets of $216,000.
Williamson had been working for Siemens Building Technologies as a “risk manager” and that same year the company transferred him to their offices in Buffalo Grove, Ill., just outside Chicago.
In 1998, he declared bankruptcy in the U.S., citing debts of $269,000 and assets of $245,320. among the assets listed were “$20 cash in hand,” and a baby grand piano valued at $10,000.
Siemens fired him in June 2004, at which time he returned to Canada. Williamson won’t say why he was fired. but court documents filed in Chicago show the company successfully sued him for failing to repay a loan of $19,000 and $5,000 in personal expenses he had put on a company credit card.
A month after his firing, Suzanne Williamson filed for divorce, citing “extreme and repeated mental cruelty” and alleging her husband was “guilty of fiscal cruelty without fault or provocation on the part of the Petitioner.”
His failure to “maintain employment and to pay bills on a timely basis” led to their eviction from their rented townhouse, and repossession of their car, Suzanne said in the divorce petition, in which she also asks for court permission to revert to her maiden name of Marfise.
“Yes we are divorced, but we live together. Isn’t that funny?” said Suzanne.
Williamson blames both bankruptcies on a vengeful ex-wife (he said he was married before Suzanne) who he said pursued him through the courts here and in the U.S. for child support and other matters. When he returned to Canada in the fall of 2004, his money woes followed him across the border. And so did Suzanne. but not before she spent a night in jail for bouncing a $400 cheque.
On Oct. 1, 2004. the couple moved into 6 Winding Court, a large four-bedroom house owned by Sukumar Ghosh. The property was listed for lease with a real estate company which apparently did not do a credit check and took personal cheques as deposits.
The first month’s rent cheque bounced and so did the others, for five consecutive months, until Ghosh changed the locks and called in the sheriff to kick them out.
Despite a court order to recover $14,000 in rent and legal expenses, Ghosh said he has given up trying to collect.
Landlords are not the only people victimized by the Williamsons.
Jolene Janke said she lost more than $20,000 and her credit rating is in shambles after she used her credit card to pay for cosmetics after Suzanne Williamson persuaded her to bankroll her as a Mary Kay representative. After five years and dozens of attempts to collect, the single mother has not been able to wring out a single penny. a court order gives her the right to peruse the Williamsons’ bank accounts for cash, but they are always empty.
Williamson blames landlord Tajarrod for most of his current problems. at one point during their nine-month battle, Tajarrod moved his own belongings into one of the spare bedrooms in an attempt to get rid of the couple.
On the day of their eviction, on March 13, 2008, Tajarrod denied them access to the house and sent the movers away, Williamson said. The Landlord and Tenant Board awarded Williamson $2,750 after finding Tajarrod illegally disposed of some of their belongings.
according to Williamson, Tajarrod also went through his private papers and later posted the most incriminating documents on the website, which he entitled “Tenants from Hell.”
Williamson said he has contacted a lawyer about suing Tajarrod for defamation of character – but the lawyer wants money up front before launching any legal action.
Dale Brazao can be reached at dbrazao@thestar.ca.
'Tenants from hell' avoid rent, leave trail of debt
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