Former NYPD homicide investigator Claude O’Shea is now the city’s rent detective, stinging New Yorkers illegally subletting their rent-controlled apartments.
The retired gumshoe finds the pads on Craigslist, gathers information on the units, and visits them posing as an out-of-towner looking for a rental. He hides a spy camera in a coat button.
Once he captures his prey on tape, he sells the information for $2,000 a pop to landlords eager to boot tenants paying below-market rates.
If we can catch murderers, we can catch illegal subletters,” said O’Shea, 49, who works at Cadre Investigative Consultants. “You could be renting to a registered sex offender, and it’s unfair to the people who live there.”
O’Shea starts by zeroing in on apartments posted online for low prices or renting by the night. Using a pseudonym and a made-up back story, he contacts the tenant seeking to secretly sublet the apartment.
O’Shea calls from an 845 area code, claiming he lives in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and works in executive security.
Because of his thick Noo Yawk accent, O’Shea tells them he is originally from The Bronx.
The illegal subletters don’t pose many questions.
They hear, ‘He can pay,’ ” said O’Shea, who dresses in a long black raincoat. “And they hear that I fly in and out, and they like that.”
He tours the unit for about 10 minutes, enough time to record the apartment dweller on the hidden camera confessing to an illegal subletting scheme.
I ask them if I’ll be on a lease, or if I should deal with them directly,” he said.
O’Shea leaves, saying he needs to think about it.
He then alerts the landlord.
O’Shea doesn’t give up the tenant’s name until he has a deal with the landlord.
He said he recently busted a professor who was subletting his university-subsidized housing in Greenwich Village while living with his mom in Washington Heights.
I do feel bad for people who are down and out and need money,” said O’Shea, who took pity and dropped a case against a struggling Broadway actor who was illegally subletting an apartment.
He had less sympathy for a rabbi whom he caught paying less than $750 a month on two apartments while owning a building on Myrtle Avenue in Brooklyn.
“Those tenants are cheating the system and hurting everyone,” said landlord Paul Italia, whose firm manages and owns about 40 buildings in the city. “They don’t have any expenses of running a building, but they’re profiting.”
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