‘Dirt-Baggish’ Squatter Rents Out Home That Isn’t His: Police

TULALIP, WA — A Washington state man is accused to taking squatting to new heights. Police said Matthew Robert Paul, 35, of Marysville, broke into a home overlooking Tulalip Bay earlier this month, decorated the place with pictures of himself and engaged in an elaborate scheme to swindle would-be renters out of thousands of dollars.

The Snohomish County Prosecutor’s Office has charged Paul with several counts, including theft and obtaining a signature by deception. Authorities say he knew the owners of the house were on an extended vacation in Mexico, found a spare key and made himself at home as he concocted the scam.

The scheme appeared legitimate. Authorities said Paul lit the fireplace in the house and even checked the references of people who signed up to rent and renovate the home. The five people paid Paul a total of $5,825, police said.

Two of the duped renters lost all their savings in the scheme and had to stay with friends, The Daily Herald reported.

“To hear something like that really made me mad,” Matt Dunn, whose parents own the house, told KIRO-TV. “Just using somebody's house is dirt-baggish to begin with. Going the extra mile and trying to gain from it? It’s really crazy.”

Paul reportedly told a neighbor that he was house-sitting for the Dunns while they’re away.

“That didn’t seem strange or peculiar to us,” neighbor Evelyn Werner told the television station. “He seemed like a normal kind of guy. He befriended us and told us he was a friend.”

But when one of the victims showed up at the house to move in and get to work, Paul had vanished and they asked Werner where he was, she said.

Investigators showed up at the house the next day and found about $1,900 in electronics and tools missing and the place trashed, KIRO said.

Paul asked the victims make out their checks to a man he said was his uncle and then planned to use the money to buy drugs, police said.

The Herald reported that bank surveillance footage showed a man cashing the checks. When police tracked down the supposed uncle, he said Paul gave him $20 in heroin to parlay into more cash, police said.

Paul is due back in court Thursday, April 19. He failed to show up for his arraignment in Snohomish County Superior Court and a warrant was issued for his arrest. He was released from jail without bond, according to The Herald’s report.

Photo: Shutterstock / Yevhen Prozhyrko