Konrad Bicher, “the Wolf of Airbnb,” ran a sublet scheme that made him rich — and, now, indicted. MrJDWalsh reports
ByPhoto-Illustration: Curbed; Photos: @konrad_bicher/Twitter, Google Maps/BusC PhotographyPhoto-Illustration: Curbed; Photos: @konrad_bicher/Twitter, Google Maps/BusC PhotographyPhoto-Illustration: Curbed; Photos: @konrad_bicher/Twitter, Google Maps/BusC Photography
At first, Bicher brushed off the lawsuits as mere potholes on his road to success. To him, legal battles were a rite of passage in the real-estate industry. But the experience also seemed to have taught him a lesson about its perils, and, when I asked him for details about his defense, he described himself not as a wolf but as a whistleblower. “When tenants don’t stand up for their rights, they get run over, taken over, and completely destroyed,” he said.
What Bicher failed to mention during multiple interviews was that he wasn’t alone in his exodus: He’d moved to New York with Bethany Beiler, who was then his wife. Beiler had also been raised in the Mennonite community. She met Bicher when she was a teenager, but he was engaged to someone else. After Bicher broke up with his fiancée, he started dating Beiler and the two soon married.
A similar scheme played out at other apartments in Manhattan that fall. People looking for short-term housing would find a listing on Craigslist or HomeAway. They’d get in touch, and someone purportedly named Kyle Hoover, Luis King, or Matthew Weaver would give them a tour. Satisfied, they would meet up again with Hoover or King or Weaver and hand over a cashier’s check. Then, when they showed up to move in, they’d find someone else living there or the key didn’t work.
Meanwhile, he continued to build his rental portfolio. He solicited friends to rent apartments in their names. In some cases, the people he enlisted didn’t even live in New York. At least one friend said Bicher used his name to rent an apartment without his permission. While the leases had other people’s names on them, the property managers dealt with Bicher. Similarly, the short-term rental listings were sometimes managed under pseudonyms, but the phone number was Bicher’s.
In March 2020, the landlord for Bicher and Beiler’s first apartment in Inwood filed a complaint against Bicher for subletting the apartment. In an email to his landlord’s attorney, he denied doing so, and he stopped paying rent. “This is my home and i live here, due to the pandemic i can not legally be evicted. If these accusations do not stop i will need to retain my attorneys and sue,” he wrote.
Sometimes, Bicher seemed to double-book guests on Peerspace and Airbnb. “We expected to have the space for ourselves from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. After all, this is what we paid for, right?” wrote one reviewer on Peerspace. “Well, there was someone sleeping in a room until 2 p.m. and a dog locked inside a crate. In order for us to do the photoshoot, we had to sweep up dog hair and do minor cleaning beforehand.
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