Dirty cop ripping off tenants and charging above market rate for basement apartment

 

 

NY Daily News

A duplicitous NYPD veteran is accused of scamming eight apartment hunters by posing as the owner of his rented Queens home, collecting a security deposit and first month’s rent from his victims before disappearing, the Daily News has learned.

Officer Burban Pierre advertised his rented basement apartment in Ozone Park via Craigslist over a four-month stretch in which prospective tenants paid up to $2,800 in move-in costs for the leased space that he called home, according to a victim and one of his neighbors.

Vivian Griffith answered the officer’s ad in April, recalling how she texted Pierre, signed a lease and paid $2,200 upfront for security and rent. But the frustrated woman was never able to move inside, and neighbors eventually alerted her to the officer’s ongoing swindle.

“I knocked on the people’s door upstairs,” she recalled. “They answered and said, ‘Pierre is the tenant living downstairs.’ I showed them the lease. They said, ‘Oh, he’s good. You’re the eighth one. We’ve had eight people come here on this.’ He never told me he was a cop.”

But Pierre, who earned nearly $130,000 on the job last year, definitely told her the building belonged to him, Griffith added.

“I feel very upset with the fact that this comes from an officer who is supposed to protect and serve,” added the mother of two daughters. “It’s shocking that a police officer would go to such lengths to take from people who don’t have. It’s disheartening and upsetting.”

The NYPD confirmed an investigation targeting Pierre, who joined the department in 2010 and was recently moved to the Bronx Court section after working in a pair of Manhattan precincts.