About three weeks ago, my landlord and I had quite an argument. I won’t go into the details - we weren’t getting ready to swing but it was approaching the point of him evicting me and/or me telling him I was moving. The last part of it was him saying he’d be back in a few days so we could discuss it further. But he never came back.
Until this morning when he showed up at my door. He made no mention whatsoever of the past incident or the argument. What he did say was that he hadn’t gotten my rent check back on the first. But he wasn’t upset or anything - just asking what happened because he knew I always paid my rent on time. I told him the truth - that I had dropped it off at his business on the last day of last month and because it was after hours I had left it in his mailbox as I have done before. He said there was no problem but that maybe one of the neighbours had picked it up. So I wrote him another check and he left.
Now I’m confused and somewhat worried. After the big argument we had, it seems surprising he just let the whole thing drop without mention. Especially if he thought I hadn’t paid my rent. So I’m worried that something more might be going on.
Maybe he’s still really mad and I’ll come home some day next week and find I’ve been locked out of my apartment. And maybe he’s even mad enough that he decided to con me out of an extra month’s rent by telling me he hadn’t gotten a check and then cashing both the original and the replacement checks.
But I can’t see how that’s going to work, even if that were his motive. If he were to cash both checks, I’ll know in a few weeks when I get the cancelled checks back. And at that point, I’d be in a position to start all kinds of legal trouble for him.
So either there’s nothing going on and everything is what it seems. Or he’s going to try to make trouble for me, including ripping me off, and his plan will end up backfiring on him. Or he’s got some real clever plan that I haven’t figured out - can anyone figure out some way he could get away with keeping the extra money without getting caught?
In New York, your landlord cannot simply lock you out of your apartment. To do so is both a crime and can subject the landlord to substantial civil penalties. To evict you, he would have to serve you with a notice of termination of your tenancy at least three days before the termination (and maybe 5 or 30 days, depending on the legal basis for the termination), and then file a court action, which you would be served notice of.
You know, you’re being a bit too paranoid about the matter because (1) you cannot be locked out of your apartment – that would lead to huge legal problems for your landlord; and (2) even if he does cash both checks (which I doubt since that can also land him in legal hot waters), just don’t pay him next month’s rent and that’s the end of that. You will have the cancelled checks to prove that you’ve already overpaid one month’s worth of rent. So what are you so worried about? You should probably learn a bit about tenant’s rights. Maybe that’s what your landlord did and realized that it’s best to make nice with you.
As I said, it’s not what I can see that I’m worried about - from all that I see on the surface there’s no cause for concern. I was worried about some hidden con going on that I was overlooking.
There could be a con going on that doesn’t involve the landlord. It’s possible that your check was stolen from the mailbox, laundered, and is being forged by someone else. Contact your bank immediately to find out if the first check has been presented for payment and if not, to file a stop payment on it. Don’t wait, or you could find your checking account wiped clean and have a few very bad weeks or months getting things back to normal.
Yeah, you really need to look after that first cheque. If it isn’t in the hands of the person it was written to, it is where it shouldn’t be. You might want to inform your bank that they should be extra careful with your account for a while - somebody who has a signed cheque of yours has all he needs to impersonate you and clear out your account. This actually has happened to me.
Can you not look up your bank online and see if the cheque has cleared through your account yet?
He might have torn up the first check in a fit of pique while thinking that he was going to evict you, and his behavior at this last meeting was due to embarrassment and unwillingness to admit to such silliness.