Rental Scam Artist in Amsterdam

End of 2008 my wife and I were wrapping up the sale of our house. The real estate contract had been signed, however during the appraisal our foundation was found to be poor. This added quite some time before we could actually close the real estate transaction.

However, we had not arranged temporary housing - we would be emigrating shortly and needed a place to bridge over that time.

The day after the close we put out requests wherever we could. Friends, family, anti-squatters organizations (welcome to Amsterdam!) and perusing Marktplaats.nl. On Marktplaats I found a guy, Rene, who I could meet an hour later who might have an apartment within our price range.

I called him when arriving on the Rokin (main street between the Dam and Central Station). He told me to meet him at Teasers, a bar known for its mini-shorts, low cut T-shirt, large-breasted waitresses. This should have alerted me, but I was too frantic for need of a place to stay. He told me he was a carpenter and that he'd completed an apartment some weeks ago that was still not rented. He would call the owner and see if he could arrange that we stay there. He made the call and the apartment was available and the owner was willing to rent it to him.

At the time, an acquaintance of his showed up and joined us. However this acquaintance called him Ron and not Rene. I asked him why, and Ron told me that he used this to filter his calls between jobs and apartments. If they asked for Rene, he knew they were calling for the apartment. Sounds logical, or not?

Next step was to meet at another bar a couple of hours later to sign the contract. Calling him later he told me and my wife to meet him at Cafe Thijssen in the Jordaan. We showed up there and signed two contracts, one for him and copy for us. He only half filled in his information, mostly illegible and said that we now needed to drive to Amsterdam North in order to do the transaction and get the keys to the apartment. I thought my wife had taken our copy and she thought I had taken it - it turned out neither of us had it. Furthermore, as we were under such pressure (it was Tuesday and we wanted to move out Friday the latest, as Monday was the turnover of our house) that even though we saw the illegible names, we were afraid to jeopardize this opportunity. Silly thought actually, when you look back at it.

Another thing we checked was the legality of his sub-letting this apartment to us. He said it was completely legal. Again, here we should have pushed through and gotten more information, which we didn't. It is illegal in Amsterdam to sub-let a whole apartment.

We drove to North, I gave him one month's rent with two months deposit. He went to the back entrance of an apartment building while I waited in the car, and when he returned he told me the contracts needed to be drafted. So we went to another cafe there and waited, and thereafter went back and he said the contracts were signed and he had received the keys. He also told me that owner would not know that we were staying there. Getting shadier and shadier. Damn the pressure of needing an apartment - you don't see much anymore!

I dropped Ron off in Amsterdam and made an appointment later to meet with him and my wife at our apartment. We showed up there and Ron was nowhere to be seen. When we called him, he told me they had the wrong keys and he had to go back with the owner. We were getting anxious now - he had quite a bit of our money and I had no other way to contact him. Then he called and said he wouldn't make it as he had to drive his workers home, and after his social engagement that evening he could give us the keys and access to the apartment.

End of the evening we call - again bullshit. My wife takes the phone and puts him on the spot. He reacts angrily and says we can forget the apartment and we'll get our money back the next day. The next few days still no Ron nor money, as he needs to get this back from the owner, he then goes on vacation and when he returns no more contact with Ron.

Later we went to the police. We were one of 4 couples that had been swindled by Ron in this way. This went to court and he was found guilty. Not only that, he'd been sentenced five times earlier for swindling. The judge pronounced him guilty and between a jail sentence or a sentence to pay back the swindled monies, chose for the sentence to pay back the monies. When this was made known, his lawyer chose to appeal the decision. It's now almost two years since this has happened, and the appeal has still not gone to court.

Moral of the story - trust your perceptions, do not let pressure cloud your judgement and make sure to get everything in writing. Had we ensured that the contract was set up legibly, that I had received a receipt for the monies received and actually researched the laws regarding sub-letting than none of this would have happened.

(Author is initiator of Khusan Real Estate & Property Classifieds)