Two scammers who control 17 tourist apartments in Barcelona delay their evictions by pretending to be poor

Despite the Mossos d’Esquadra They were arrested for fraud both at the end of March, Andrius S. and Yuliya K. they have continued to operate with the 17 flats that they have converted into tourist apartments against the will of their owners. “They know the law well and also have the support of a lawyer who helps them,” explains the lawyer. Marta Martin, which has been immersed in an exhausting litigation for almost three years for a client to recover his home, one of the 17 that are in the hands of the couple. The last strategy this has used illegal subarriendo plot It has been to try to delay the eviction processes from civil law by appearing in court as a vulnerable family.

Through this “procedural scam”, as defined by Martín, they request the extraordinary suspension of the launch “because they are in a situation of economic vulnerability that makes it impossible for them to find a housing alternative for themselves and for the people they live with,” according to collect in one of the appeals that have been presented in court. They complete the fraud attempt by clarifying that their payroll is less than the established limit. What is striking about the case, or what is most exasperating for clients like Martín’s, is that some courts have accepted the resources and activated social services. Accepting these resources, which are only intended to buy time to continue renting rooms on platforms such as Booking, also implies ignoring by these courts that Andrius S. and Yuliya K. do not live in any of the 17 different flats that accumulate in the Eixample. And no one has seen the three children they claim to have either. It is not even clear that they are a real couple.

Alleging vulnerability is an option available to families without resources who, upon being evicted, may end up on the street, a remedy that is not without controversy because it is sometimes denied in situations that outrage activists but which, when granted, makes it possible to delay the expulsion of the residents of the property until the social services look for a new roof, especially if there are minors or vulnerable people affected. But feigning poverty is an option incompatible with the case of Andrius S. and Yuliya K. The Mossos affirm that, with the 17 floors, they have amassed more than half a million euros in recent years.

90 rooms

The plot of Andrius S. and Yuliya K. was cemented on the Airbnb platform. Before the pandemic worsened, under the profile of ‘Julia’, both came to offer 90 rooms to tourists. More than a thousand clients have passed through its beds each year, according to the comments recorded. When this newspaper reported on this case, the multinational that until then had ignored the requests of those affected such as the lawyer Martín, deleted the profile. By then, Andrius S. and Yuliya K. were already two old acquaintances of the Barcelona City Council, which has identified them as “multi-offenders”. The municipal inspection that tries to put order in the jungle of tourist apartments that are advertised without permission through platforms such as Airbnb or Booking had detected that this couple has had 18 different flats that were operating fraudulently. The agents of the Investigation Unit of the Mossos, who started the case when the third complaint for fraud appeared, counted 17 during their investigations, one less. To achieve the rental contract, Andrius S. and Yuliya K. used the same trick with all the owners: pretending that they were a married couple looking for a home for their three children and that they worked for a construction company in Tarragona. They presented false documentation and payrolls to pretend that they had sufficient purchasing power – that is, the opposite that they now pretend to avoid evictions – and the owners handed over the keys believing that they were hosting a large family. It was a scam. As soon as they left, they turned each room – dining room included – into a ‘room’ offered by Airbnb. In recent years, Airbnb has canceled at the request of the City Council a total of 207 room ads offered by ‘Julia’, a figure that must be added to the 90 that were canceled in October 2020 after the information in this newspaper. The consistory of Ada Colau has also opened disciplinary proceedings against both suspects. This is another case of “mafia” practices, in the words that Janet Sanz, Second deputy mayor and head of Urban Planning, he used in this newspaper to refer to the networks that have proliferated in the city and that rent real estate using deception to exploit them illegally through platforms such as Airbnb.

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Andrius S. is not really called that. And it is not Lithuanian either, as I said. He’s Russian, like Yuliya K. They both have different backgrounds. Those of women are the most disturbing: almost ten years ago she was tried by the National High Court for human trafficking for sexual exploitation. That is, for tricking women into traveling to Tarragona with a false promise of work and, once in Spain, coercing them into prostituting themselves.

The Mossos accused the couple of the crimes of document falsification, fraud and usurpation of civil status. After their arrest last March, they were released on charges. There are seven owners who have filed a criminal complaint, such as Carme blancher, which is one of the few that has recovered its apartment – it has just done so and receives EL PERIÓDICO to show in the image that accompanies this news what the dining room is like and what they had converted it into – and is determined to promote the criminal process. “We have to do it,” he says.