Ep 34 - The Cops Are on The Way

Not a click bait title.  I had to call the cops on my tenant that got evicted for trespassing.  I don't even know what to put in this description, because there's just too much to the story.  SO!  You'll just have to listen because my brain can't type any more

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Boys and girls, welcome back to the Commercial Real Estate Starting from Scratch podcast on episode number 34 with me, your host, John Kleisch. If this is your first time tuning in, really appreciate you doing so. This may be not the best first episode. I'll let you decide. Crazy things just happened. However, if uh this is your first time listening, what is this podcast about? Well, I am documenting my journey of investing in commercial real estate. Called it starting from scratch because I started with no commercial or I started this podcast with no commercial um experience or no commercial assets. I am trying to make this raw, authentic, unfiltered, and just bringing it to you guys straight the good, the bad, the ugly. I always feel like people get on podcasts and talk about all the cool stuff and not the bad stuff. So I am highlighting everything here. And if you like bad things that uh bad things that that happened to me, this is going to be a great episode. This is a great thing for you to listen to moving forward. Uh to get you guys caught up to speed, I own two commercial buildings in the Phoenix Metro area. One is an industrial building that's mostly automotive tenants, and then the other one is a dual tenant office space in Sun City. And that's enough. If you're new here, welcome again. Really appreciate you. But now, boys and girls, holy fucking shit. Holy shit. Um, I thought my Gilbert Gonzalez days were over, which is my former tenant that I had to evict. However, it came roaring through like a freight train, like a bat out of hell. It's Tuesday, and I normally record these on Wednesday, but I literally just got done with this fiasco, so I thought it was very appropriate to do it now while I'm still all fired up, and have it all fresh in my mind. So let me get you the whole scope here if you haven't been following along. Two months ago, almost to the day, I evicted a tenant for non-payment. He was terrible, he was awful, he was barely paying, and he took up a ton of space on the property that wasn't even in his lease. That uh so that way I couldn't even lease it out, gave me all these excuses, and I preface this with he is single-handedly the best scam artist I've ever met in my entire life. I've witnessed him scam hundreds of thousands of dollars of money from people uh through through my building alone in six months. I just did some quick math, and it was crazy, absolutely crazy at how much money he was able to siphon and suck out of people. So in our commercial lease, it's very aggressive, meaning when you get evicted, you are you get kicked out, we can sue you, you're no longer welcome on the property, you're trespassing if you come back. Everything that was left behind is assumed that you are it's it's no longer yours and it's it's ours. And it says that straight up in the lease, it's there. We followed everything to a T in the lease. In fact, we gave him way, way, way more time than any normal human would have or should have. So now, again, that was two months ago, and uh the place was completely just full of junk and cars and tools, and I'm sure there was a lot of valuable stuff there too. But guys, I'm talking, I can't believe how much stuff was here. You couldn't even walk in the shop, put it that way. There was no room to walk in the shop because there was tools, stuff everywhere, car parts, cars, bikes, whatever you name it. The back lot could barely, barely, barely pull through because there was just cars and junkers and frames and good cars and nice cars all locked up in there. So our main concern was like, holy cow, what do we do with all of this stuff? It's it's so much that it would take like uh a human being over a month just to go through and sift through and figure out who's what and what are customer cars, who are not customer cars, what do we do tracking down the owners? So that was a nightmare. So what do we do? We worked out a deal where kind of a two a two-person deal. My tenant in the back was going to lease the space that he got evicted out of. He wanted a deal, no problem. I said, Hey, if you want a deal, then you're gonna go ahead and take all this stuff on and get it gone. And then Gilbert's brother was there, who also knows my tenant as well. And we did a little powwow and said, Okay, uh, you know, Jimmy, you're allowed on the property, you can go out and take this stuff off. In fact, Gilbert can come back you know for the weekend, it was it what it was, and then clear everything out, and Josh can, you know, he can take care of all of like the coordinating of all of that, and then we're like, cool, this is great, this is awesome. I don't want his stuff, I don't want it at all. I want to get rid of him. He then can do all of the legwork that we were gonna do and get rid of the stuff, and then we're done. So uh 30 days goes by, the the shop got cleaned up excellently, awesome, was great. And then the back lot kind of got cleared up. I was moving stuff out to put out for him to grab, and he grabbed some stuff and it was like, okay, cool, making some progress. And then over the time I was noticing less and less vehicles there, meaning they were taking them, which was great. And about a month ago, I noticed that there was still not a ton of stuff, but I mean there were 10, 15 cars in the back, and just a bunch of random, random lifts and parts and car stuff that equipment and car tools that I don't even know what they would what they even call them. And I texted his brother and said, Hey, uh, we're running out of time. I'm leasing this place up, and you're not moving. Oh no, we will, blah, blah, blah, this weekend, next weekend, whatever. And then now it has been officially two months since the eviction. Plenty enough time, you would think, to get rid of your stuff. I'm about to sign a lease for that area, so I need to get this stuff gone. ASAP. So per our lease, all of his stuff becomes our stuff. And what do I do? I talked to my partner, I said, Hey, I'm gonna start selling all this stuff. Cool. Start listing it on Facebook, getting a lot of traction here and there. Um, somebody tipped Gilbert off, one way, shape, or form. Uh, I have an idea on who that was. Someone that's subleasing this area would be my guess. A little snake. Or he happened to just run across a the the listings on on Facebook Marketplace. So I am getting a truck tote out of there, and the tow truck driver calls me and said, Hey, there's a guy, Gilbert, here that says this is his truck. And I'm like, what the fuck is going on? Uh, talk about poor timing. And he shows up and is there, and I his brother calls me shortly after that. And I definitely lost it on his brother. Uh, his brother's an awesome guy, great guy. It's a shame that he's wrapped up with Gilbert, the the worst guy I've ever met in my entire life. But uh, get on the phone with him, start chewing his ass out, and he's like, hey, dude, I never talked to you like that. Don't talk to me like that. I'm like, honestly, you know, fair enough. I get it. Cool, cooled down a little bit, but I was very firm. I said, Hey, you got to tell your brother that I'm I'm calling the cops, he's got to leave. I figured that it was gone. I let him take that truck. I said, dude, get the truck on. I want it gone. Just take the truck, that's fine, no problem. And figured he was gone. And then I had someone else coming by to go pick up something, and they're trying to take it, and they're calling me saying, Hey, some guy is here trying to tell me this is his uh his truck, and he's calling the cops. And I said, What? I I I get or that was a text message, and so I call him, I'm talking to him, and I say, Who who said that to you? And sure enough, guess who's on the other end of that line? Gilbert Gonzalez. And I just lose it, completely lose it, on him telling him he needs to leave immediately. I'm calling the cops. You're a motherfucker, you scammed everybody, I'm sick of it. Get the fuck off my property. All of that shit, right? And he was, oh, I'm gonna sue you, this and that, and I left it with please, for the love of God, Gilbert, please do me a favor and go ahead and sue me. That would be the best thing that ever happened to me today. And then he hung up. So then I got these guys on the other lend who actually uh, you know, they paid for the shit already, and they're pissed off, right? They spent the whole day coming and going, bringing tow truck, whatever, and then to get stiffed like that, and then they think they're getting scammed. So I had to go meet these strange dudes at a gas station at night, uh, in the middle of freaking Phoenix here. So I'm getting that as I'm meeting these guys up, or uh better yet, I I after after uh that phone call, I called the cops, called an emergency, gave them the rundown. I thought, cool, very good. I am meeting up these very aggravated gentlemen. Uh I refund their money. And while I'm doing that, the cop calls me, hey, what's going on here? I give them the scoop. And then I forget 20, 30 minutes goes by, maybe 20 minutes or so, and he gives me a call, and he's saying, Oh, Gilbert's saying that he didn't get evicted, and uh all this stuff, and I'm stealing his stuff, and this is all his stuff and everything. And uh, I told the cop, I'll say, Hey, listen very closely, please. This guy is the biggest scam artist I've ever met in my life. He is a very, very smooth talker. He's gonna talk his way out of anything. He had a lease, he broke that lease by not paying. I gave him every single opportunity on earth to get caught up. He never did. This is what my lease says specifically. And I broke it down for him. He's like, hey, I don't know, that doesn't make sense. The courts are supposed to do the eviction and constables and this and that, and what you're telling me, I've never heard this before. And honestly, uh, shame on the police officer. I'm pretty disgusted with Glendale PD right now because he kept on going, This is so messy. Uh, I don't know what to do. Um, so finally, back and forth. I was explaining to him how our lease works, how commercial leases work. I sent him the verbiage, I sent him an a full electronic copy of the lease, and I sent him documentation that he actually was evicted, and then he was finally like, okay, I I understand now. So I'm like, please, for the love of God, trespass this, trespass him, meaning he gets like written up some kind of way. He's not getting arrested, but he gets written up. It's a formal notice saying, Hey, if you're caught on this property again, then you are going to get arrested. They, you know, the the cops took his ID, they got his phone number and everything. Gilbert brought eight people. There was eight total people there in tow trucks, apparently. So my tenants that were there were watching this telling me that they were grabbing a bunch of stuff and uh going with it, tow trucks were freaking coming and going. So I guess, which isn't the the worst case scenario because the ultimate goal was to get this stuff gone. However, the problem is there's so much bullshit there left behind. At least we could have sold some stuff, gotten a few thousand dollars, made it a little bit worth it to maybe get rid of the other stuff and help clean up the other property was the plan. Now there's probably gonna be nothing left to sell. That guy straight stole stuff from the yard. Oh, and on top of it, oh god, on top of it, they didn't even trespass him. The cop calls me and is like, so I have some bad news.

SPEAKER_01 12:58

I wasn't able to trespass Gilbert. What?

SPEAKER_00 13:05

Excuse me? Uh can you say that again? I was not able to trespass Gilbert. He he snuck away in the midst uh the midst of all of the commotion. So the cops got called out to my property for trespassing, which this guy was trespassing, then he was stealing, and he didn't even get.

SPEAKER_01 13:34

Isn't that absolutely insane?

SPEAKER_00 13:37

I literally just got off the phone with the police a few minutes ago, like less than 10 minutes ago before I hit record. And I was just completely and utterly shocked. And here's my favorite part. I said, Well, hey, you had his ID, right? Yeah, I got his ID and his phone number. I was like, oh perfect.

SPEAKER_01 14:00

Why don't you just go to his house? Seems reasonable, right? You would think. This is what the cop said verbatim. He was well, he lives all the way out in surprise. No cop is gonna drive out there just for a trespass. Are you kidding me? Are you absolutely kidding me? So the police went out to the property for trespassing.

SPEAKER_00 14:38

Gilbert was able to steal a bunch of stuff and then sneak away without doing any trespassing. Now, for me to trespass him again, he needs to be on the property, and then cops need to show up.

SPEAKER_01 14:54

Wow. Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow.

SPEAKER_00 14:59

So this couldn't have worked out in a single worse way. A the silver lining was that, hey, we can sell some of this stuff, recoup a little bit of money, and then this lot's gonna be cleaned up in the matter of days. That would have been cool. And now we're gonna be left with a bunch of junk that's worthless and none of the good stuff. And I got this fucking psycho animal running around out here who's obviously very clever, extremely clever criminal. So that was my evening, ladies and gentlemen. I'm sure there's a lot of stuff that I missed, but that's the gist of it. That's the absolute gist of it.

SPEAKER_01 15:51

I can't even describe what I feel right now. Um I don't feel terrible.

SPEAKER_00 16:00

A little shocked, a little bit upset that you know Gilbert's probably sitting at home drinking beer laughing right now will be my guess, because he won this little this little deal here. Now, I have no idea what he took. I really hope I spoke to one of my tenants and they were worried that they were going in their area and taking their tools and stuff, which automotive tools are very, very expensive. So I really hope that's not the case. And realistically, if maybe it's better that there's a bunch of shit that got taken. That would be that would be ideal, I guess, overall. But I mean, holy shit. Holy shit, what an evening it's been for sure. Uh, and then at least all of this, I was like, at the very least, message received to Gilbert. He got trespassed. Is he gonna risk getting arrested, stepping foot on that property ever again? You know, probably not, but now it doesn't matter. I am almost convinced that he's gonna go back there tonight and uh just raid the place, would be my guess in a bad way, in a bad, bad way, would be my guess. I don't know how crazy he is. Uh that would be pretty wild and crazy, but at the end of the day, like the cops got called and nothing happened, right? So it's like, why wouldn't he just do that again? Because there's no record of it. I asked the guy, I'm like, there's a police report, right? Because no, there's no police report.

SPEAKER_01 17:34

No, there's no record of it. Cool. Cool.

SPEAKER_00 17:39

What's what's really funny is I would say 10-15 years ago, I was in a much different, uh, much different occupation. Um, I was growing weed. And obviously, that does not mesh well with police. So I always had a kind of uh not an ill feeling, but uh like, ooh, cops not good, right? Type of deal. And I had a couple instances at other businesses where I got robbed. Uh I would have instances with people like fighting and like threatening customers and stuff like that, and they would never do anything. They would literally never do anything. I had video footage of a guy breaking inside, running back to my safe, grabbing the safe, running out of the building, uh, license plate. I knew who the guy was, he was a customer, and they said, Oh, I'll never forget this neither. Called the cops and showed them the tapes. Oh, all I see is a guy in a hoodie. Awesome. Awesome. So, but then over time, I'm not in that game anymore. I always respected cops, uh, at least always respected them for doing the job, right? Very honorable job. It's a real ass job, no doubt about it. They get, you know, publicly publicly just gutted by the news, and people every time they do something bad, and then no one really congratulates them when they do something good. So uh lately I've been really adopting that, and I r you know no ill feelings towards cops. And then this instance happens and it's just like golly, uh how fucking useless can you guys be? You literally did nothing. You made the situation worse, if anything. Well, I guess maybe not. I guess maybe they stopped them taking more stuff, I guess. But I mean to deal with all this, and then the guy called me at the end of the night. Was just absolutely wild to me. So I don't even know where to where to go from here. Probably a good spot to end it. Will I do a podcast tomorrow? Maybe. I had really good stuff to share too. I was really excited. Had a really big week last week, and then this popped up, but I felt like this was probably a little bit more entertaining and uh a good little snipit into into what it's like. These are stories that, again, like I mentioned in the beginning, that you're not hearing on other people's podcasts. You'll hear all the big numbers and and stuff like that. But stories like this and dealing with stuff like this is really, I feel, uh it's obviously not very common, right? Like this is a situation that I ran into the craziest guy ever. So um will it be the last time? No, hell no, for sure. Uh do I look forward to that? No, not one bit. Am I gonna be a little bit more prepared for it? Oh, yeah, absolutely. This definitely taught me a lot. For sure, I realized my number one regret in this whole situation right now was even letting him come back in and get his stuff. That was lit, that's my number one regret. At this point, I wish we locked him out and just fucking burned everything of his. That would have been great. I wish I could go back in time and do that, which is funny because I thought that was the best plan was to come in and let him get his stuff, and then here we are, just getting fucked by him again. So interesting, interesting times, boys and girls for sure. Maybe I'll do another one tomorrow with an update. I plan on going down to the facility and checking out and see what happened. So uh that'll give me a better idea of what it was. Oh, and also too, let's uh I'm gonna end it here. But even the cop, because like there were eight people there, apparently they were all quote unquote customers that had their cars there, and then I was the one that was not letting them take their cars back. Or some bullshit like that. And they were like waving titles in the air, screaming and yelling, apparently, which is a complete pile of horseshit. There's there's no fucking way that's true. So uh I thought that was that was uh a riot right there. But even the cop was like, hey, I've been doing this a while, and something ain't right here, something's not adding up. Whatever they were saying, it's just not adding up for me. And that was great to hear because the whole time, you know, I was the one trying to convince him that Gilbert was the bad guy, and I'm not the bad guy. So either way, boys and girls, holy cow, I feel like ass. I am so worked up, I probably can't even go to bed, but haven't eaten in three hours and definitely probably can't eat until tomorrow. But that's a wrap. We're finished up here. Hopefully, this was entertaining to you guys, and definitely not a normal podcast. I I'm slowly feeling my uh my adrenal dump uh release and my energy getting getting out of my body here. I literally am starting to nod off as I'm talking. So good spot to end it. If you guys got some value out of this or entertainment and liked it, please do me a favor, leave me a review, five-star review. If you have somebody that may like this podcast or you think that someone will enjoy it or get a kick out of it or learn something from it, please share it with them. Guys, that would mean the world to me. I love hearing all of the people that are listening to the podcast. And also, I want to notate again that we are officially worldwide. There has been a download on every single continent except for Antarctica, mom, if you're listening. No one in Antarctica, I don't even have that data, so somebody may have downloaded it from Antarctica. However, I will never ever know, but I'm calling it worldwide. Help me spread this to more people by sharing it, liking it, and putting it in front of people that you may uh you think may like it. Alright, boys and girls, that's it. Follow me on Instagram, follow me, john.cleich. I post pictures on there too. Like and subscribe, and boys and girls, on that note, take her easy.