Debra Acosta

This home is shaped like a pyramid.

Yes.

Atlanta has a situation in which they've had a ton of these brand new luxury buildings hit the market in the past few years.

There's all these rental units available on the market.

There's not really enough people who can afford to live in them.

I spoke with someone who helps these landlords combat the fraud.

And he said that whenever there's a brand new building that's empty and leasing up 100%, that really attracts a lot of fraudsters because they see that there's going to be a ton of new people coming in.

And that's where they can kind of squeeze themselves in, likely without getting noticed.

The other thing that's happening is the advent of AI has made it a lot easier for people to forge these applications.

And three, during the pandemic, a lot of individuals were getting these stimulus checks that allowed them to afford these apartments.

But then as that money ran out, suddenly they found themselves in a situation where they were living beyond their means.

Is this type of fraud also happening in other cities?

What's fascinating is that it's not just Atlanta.

It's really spread across the country in Miami, in Washington, D.C., and in Houston and in other parts of the country.

So if you use a false social security number to hide your credit history, that is fraud.

Yes.

Is anybody going to go after you criminally for doing that?

That's an open question.

I spoke with someone at the Department of Justice who said, you know, this is kind of small potatoes for us.

This is not the kind of thing we're really going after.