A mysterious conman is wanted by the NYPD after scamming nearly a dozen NYC tenants out of thousands of dollars with a bogus Hell’s Kitchen apartment rental.
Nicholas Fuelling, 43, allegedly showed at least nine different tenants a two-bed apartment at 334 W. 47th St., which he listed on Facebook for just $3,200 per month.
Lured by the price in a prime NYC neighborhood, renters like 24-year-old Miguel Márchese forked over the cash and signed a lease on Aug. 12 after touring the apartment and meeting Fuelling face-to-face, according to reports.
Márchese reportedly said he vetted Fuelling — he had an active social media presence, legitimate ID, a DocuSign lease and a story that seemed to add up — so he signed the paperwork and forked over $6,400 for first month’s rent and security deposit.
“He said he was moving with his boyfriend in Chelsea, and there was boxes being packed up and everything, so his story was adding up,” Márchese, an aspiring model who recently moved to NYC, told CBS News.
But when Márchese made a Facebook post excitedly looking for a roommate, he got some bad news — somebody else had rented apartment days earlier.
“Some girl, she reached out to my post, and she let me know that, oh, this must be a misunderstanding,” he told the outlet, explaining she also paid Fuelling $6,400.
And as they tried to make sense of what happened, more and more people reached out to say they’d also signed a lease and paid for the apartment.
“Every few days, there was another person who signed the lease and paid all the money,” Márchese told ABC7.
When they confronted Fuelling about it he initially tried to say it was all a misunderstanding, claiming that he’d forgotten to cancel showings and making other vague excuses.
Not buying it, the group began recruiting their friends to reach out to Fuelling about the apartment.
“We kind of like played detective. Let’s just see if he forgot about it or something,” would-be tenant Maria Cordeiro told ABC7. “Three of our friends asked, ‘Hey is it still available?’ And he was like, ‘Yes do you wanna go see like today, tomorrow?’”
Once they felt that had enough evidence the group reported the scam to police, and a grand larceny investigation was launched with wanted posters for Fuelling’s arrest being issued this week.
But Fuelling has vanished, and the NYPD told The Post no arrests or leads have been made in the case.
Council Member Erik Bottcher — whose district includes Hell’s Kitchen — has also been spreading Fuelling’s wanted poster around, because a friend of his even fell victim to the scam.
“People just have to be really, really vigilant when subletting an apartment. The problem here is he was a master of deception,” Bottcher told PIX 11.
Márchese and the other would-be tenants, meanwhile, have been left to pick up the pieces.
“He manipulated us,” Márchese said, explaining that he came to NYC on his own limited-dime and is trying to figure out his next move.
“This man needs to be caught,” he said.
“He’s destroying our lives, our housing stability. Some of us don’t have means. I’m fully independent, I don’t have parents around.”
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