Housing schemes prey on Campbell soldiers

Lauren Klein thought she had found the perfect home for her young family. She, her husband and their 2½-year-old daughter were preparing to move from Fort Riley, Kan., to Fort Campbell, Ky., when the home at 1021 McClardy Road in nearby Clarksville, Tenn., listed on the Automated Housing Referral Network, a website designed for military use, caught her eye.

“The house looked gorgeous,” she said, talking about the pictures posted with the ad.

Looking to rent the home before someone else scooped it up, Klein said she called Stephanie Hairston, and “within 24 hours she had my deposit,” sent via MoneyGram.

“We were set to be in on July 6, and we also MoneyGrammed the first month’s rent,” Klein added.

However, soon after the Kleins made the drive from Kansas to Clarksville, they discovered they had been deceived.

According to Clarksville police Sgt. Cheryl Anderson, Klein is one of 22 people, mostly military, listed as victims in the 1021 McClardy Road scam.

The scam netted between $400 to $2,200 per victim, Anderson said, and four more victims will be added to the case once they arrive in Clarksville and file reports.

Stephanie Marie Jenkins Hairston, 25, of Fort Campbell has been charged with multiple counts of felony theft. She is currently being held in the Montgomery County, Tenn., Jail on a $130,000 bond. She does not have an attorney listed.

“It’s unconscionable that someone would actively target soldiers and their families who have just returned from Afghanistan or Iraq and are attempting to stabilize their life,” Army spokesman Rick Rzepka said. “They are destabilizing these families, and it’s tragic. …

“These predatory scam artists are about as low as you can get.”

Trust no one

Klein said she’s always used the Automated Housing Referral Network to find housing. “To even sign on, you must be affiliated with the military in some way. It’s not open to the public so I thought the site was pretty trustworthy.”

There is no such thing as a trustworthy Internet listing, Clarksville police Officer Jim Knoll said.

“Check out any sort of purchase or rental as much as you can,” he said. “If you know someone in the area, contact their unit and have someone go by the residence and check it. There is no ‘honesty broker’ on the Internet.”

According to the FBI’s website, scams where crooks promise something and then get money wired to them can be extremely profitable and cost victims millions of dollars annually.

How exactly does a rental housing scam work? According to the FBI, the criminals search websites that sell homes. They then take the information from those ads and repost it with their own email address. To sweeten the pot, the houses are almost always listed at below-market rental rates.

An interested party will see the ad and contact the scam artist via email. The scammer usually explains that he or she had to leave the country quickly for one reason or another to account for the bargain price. The scammer then asks the victim to send money via a wire transfer service because it can’t be traced once it gets picked up.

That was seemingly the case with a home on Justene Court, but because the potential renter was working with a reputable local real estate broker, he avoided becoming a victim.

A real estate agent at Keller Williams was trying to help a young man find a rental home and began searching through ads on the Craigslist website.

The agent emailed a seller about a nice home, and the seller sent back a detailed email about a home that the agent knew wasn’t available — the agent knew this because the home was already on the market and Keller Williams was selling it.

The scammer then sent a rental application and instructions on how to wire him a $700 deposit.

A Google search of the property revealed it is an almost $200,000 home.

The scammer finished his email with this plea: “Looking forward to hearing from you with all this details so that I can have it in my file incase of issuing the receipt for you and contacting you… Await your urgent reply so that we can discuss on how to get the document and the keys to you… Please we are giving you all this based on trust and again I will want you to stick to your words.”

Real victims

Klein, unlike so many others, got to meet her alleged scammer.

On July 5, the day before their lease was to begin, the Kleins loaded up a moving truck, family dog and all, and drove 12 hours from Kansas to Clarksville. That’s when what should have been a simple transaction turned into an obstacle course, Lauren Klein said.

“I got a call from [Hairston] that the air conditioning unit was broken,” Klein said. “She said she had a repair man out there and it would be fixed. It was not a problem.”

Klein said she met Hairston at the property the next morning.

“We pulled up in the driveway, and she was in tears, saying the house had caught on fire and an electrician had walked through and the entire home had to be rewired,” Klein recalled. “She showed me a receipt from the electrician and everything.”

The Kleins decided to go visit family in Georgia for a few weeks to allow time for the repairs. Klein said Hairston paid for all their belongings to be stored and for one night in a hotel room.

“She was wonderful. Sweet. I liked her,” Klein said. “We fully believed her. We even talked about her being pregnant and her family.”

When it was time to return to Clarksville, Klein tried to contact Hairston to make sure the home was ready, but there was no answer. Klein then got her mother-in-law to help track down alternative phone numbers for Hairston.

“The day I was set to leave, I’m calling every number every hour,” Klein said. “I needed to hear from someone. I’m getting scared.”

Klein said one of the numbers she had been calling eventually called her back. She said it wasn’t Hairston on the other end, but it was a woman from Clarksville and she told Klein that Hairston had been arrested for running a massive housing scam.

“I broke down in tears,” Klein said.

The Kleins lost all of the money they sunk into their security deposit and the first month’s rent. They also had to spend two weeks in a hotel before they were able to find another home, only a few blocks away from 1021 McClardy Road.

“I should have been more curious,” Klein said in hindsight. “Even though the house was ‘damaged,’ I should have insisted on seeing the inside of the home. My advice is to walk away if you can’t see the inside of the home. Be careful, just because they are military doesn’t mean they can be trusted. I learned it the hard way.”

Left homeless

For a military family, finding housing is not always simple.

“We are left on our own to find another home in another state,” Klein said. “I’ve rented homes where I never saw it. This isn’t uncommon for the military. We see a couple of pictures and that’s all we have to go on. Out here, the homes move so quickly, you have to put a deposit down or it’s gone.”

Tyler Patterson, a soldier, said he too tried to rent the home at 1021 McClardy Road. Like Klein, he also said he found the listing on the Automated Housing Referral Network website.

“It’s a military-sponsored website,” he said. “You have to have credentials when you’re on that website, automatically.”

Patterson said he met with Hairston, paid his deposit for the house and soon put in a 30-day notice at his apartment.

“We saw the house, saw her at the house, saw her driver’s license, got a receipt, all that stuff,” Patterson said.

But, Patterson said, he soon realized the home was already occupied and he had been scammed. “My wife and kids had to go back to Missouri, and I was homeless for two weeks.”

Protecting soldiers

According to her arrest warrant, Tona Rochelle Virtue, 30, posted an ad while posing as an apartment manager named “Deanna Dupree” in another Campbell-area scam.

Four people were listed as victims after they each gave Virtue $300 or more for rent and deposit, Anderson said. Virtue is charged with two counts of property theft and being held on a $20,000 bond.

The Army received several complaints about the alleged scam and helped a few of its victims through the Financial Readiness program at Army Community Service.

Betty Geren, financial readiness program manager at the ACS, said she could not comment specifically on any Clarksville cases, but ACS has helped soldiers caught up in housing scams before.

“If a soldier comes in, we can issue emergency Army financial relief,” Geren said, noting that the Army can’t replace stolen money but can help with the bills that it would have covered. “We can help him or her with whatever their needs may be.”

According to Rzepka, ACS also refers soldiers to legal resources to get compensation for money lost.

In addition, ACS handles consumer complaints and keeps a data base of resolved and unresolved issues to help better direct soldiers doing business in the community.

When it comes to finding housing, the Army gives this advice to its soldiers: “What we tell them is ‘Always check. Don’t go on Craigslist. Check with the housing office,’ ” Geren said. “They are the most reputable place to go. They have it broken down into what the soldier can afford and give them guidance, and tell them what’s available on post and off post.”

Geren said common scams soldiers face include purchasing used cars online and never receiving the car, phishing scams, false collections, door-to-door scams and mortgage modification scams.

“We try to educate every soldier,” Geren said. “First-time soldiers, before they go to their assigned unit, we educate them to be aware of what’s out there, how we can help and what services are available.”

If a business is seeking them out, Geren said, soldiers should run from the deal and come to ACS so people there can look over the contract.

“If they are seeking you out, if you have any doubt, do not sign it,” Geren said. “And if you question it or don’t have a warm fuzzy feeling about it, come see us.”