A vacant multimillion-dollar mansion in the Hollywood Hills played host to a group of squatters earlier this year, including a person who created a fake lease agreement, a woman who claimed to be making content for her OnlyFans page, and a French bulldog.
Real estate agents Emily Randall-Smith and her husband, Tyler Smith, had planned to prepare the home for an open house Jan. 6 when they were met with obvious signs that someone had made themselves at home. The security box where the agents had kept a key was broken open, and a new mailbox had been placed out front.
Just before Christmas, the couple had shown the property to potential buyers. Then it sat vacant for a few weeks. The home is listed on Airbnb and is fully furnished, including kitchenware, said Randall-Smith, who recently shared her story of the ordeal on Instagram.
On the day she and her husband returned to the home for the open house, they couldn’t get inside. Smith peered through a window and spotted a man lying down on a bed in one of the bedrooms. That’s when the couple called Los Angeles police. When officers knocked on the door, however, nobody answered.
Officers walked around the property and used the speaker on their police cruiser to order anyone in the home to come out, Randall-Smith said. The homeowner told Randall-Smith that they did not want police to break down the front door to check for squatters.
The police then left, and the couple were unsure what to do next.
“My husband and I waited at the bottom of the hill, and then we saw the lights come on,” Randall-Smith said. “We said to ourselves, ‘OK, someone is definitely in there.’”
The couple summoned the police again.
This time, Randall-Smith said, a woman answered the door. She said she was renting a room from a man and produced what she said was a lease agreement. To the real estate agents, the document clearly looked fake, and the woman’s name was not even on the document.
The apparent squatters had stocked up the refrigerator. There was a meal cooking when police arrived, Randall-Smith said.
Police helped escort the woman — who was the only person there at the time — out of the home along with her dog, Randall-Smith said.
She subsequently recorded a nightmare home tour on her phone, including where the dog pooped and peed around the home.
There were bicycle locks on multiple doors, and several garage door openers lay on a counter as though the interlopers were planning to stay for a long stretch, Randall-Smith said. The squatters also had cut the wiring to the security cameras on the property and set up their own home Wi-Fi. She conjectured that the added mailbox was an attempt to receive mail at the address.
Randall-Smith said that the man who created the lease agreement had multiple people staying at the home whose names were listed on the document, but none were in the house at the time police came except for the OnlyFans model.
Neighbors told the real estate agents that they thought the home was occupied by renters — who had thrown multiple parties over the holidays, Randall-Smith said.
“It just feels like a total violation,” she said. “I always tell people to be close to their neighbors to have them watch out for your home.”
The house is still listed for sale, Randall-Smith said, and police have not provided any updates about arrests or the people who stayed in the home.
This story originally appeared on LA Times
