North Las Vegas school comes to rescue of victims of rental fraud

In an instant, a family’s dream home turned into a nightmare.

Jewel Rodriguez had a pregnant belly, two kids and six day care children at her new home in Henderson when the constable knocked on her door. The family had 15 minutes to leave before they were evicted.

It didn’t make sense to her and her partner Angelo Crews. The couple said they had just moved into the home two weeks prior and had paid more than $3,000 in money orders, only to find out that the person they gave the money to was not the landlord, but a renter facing eviction herself, according to court records.

Rodriguez and her family were evicted from the home on Dec. 4, and their stuff was thrown into the garage.

“It was like the floor was ripped out from under us,” Rodriguez said.

The moments following the eviction are a rapid blur: Deven Crews, 14, grabbed his laptop. Carmelo, 3, grabbed some action figures he had gotten for his recent birthday. Rodriguez called the parents of the kids in her day care and told them to come get their kids immediately.

“You really have no explanation because you didn’t do anything wrong,” she said.

But Delta Academy, a charter school in North Las Vegas where Deven Crews attends, was not going to let the family suffer — especially just before Christmas. After the school checked in on Crews and learned of the situation, Principal Lashon Fredricks sent an email to staff and families to see if anyone could help. Within minutes, her phone was flooded with people wanting to donate.

“I just went into hyper holiday elf. We have got to take care of our delta family, because that’s what we do,” Fredricks said.

In mid-December, the Rodriguez Crews family arrived at the school with a U-Haul truck to pick up the donations. In addition to $1,000 in cash, families at the school had donated mattresses, dishes and clothing. Rodriguez cried as she thanked the teachers. Carmelo Drews wasted no time before playing with the toy sets.

“I feel like most schools don’t do this,” Rodriguez said afterward. “Most schools don’t really look into what’s going on with their students.”

It is not the first time Delta Academy has stepped up for a student in need, Fredricks said. Every Christmas, the Title I school adopts four families and takes care of their Christmas needs. There is also a holiday drive, in which a social worker purchases goods for students.

“If their basic needs are not met, then our kids don’t thrive,” Fredricks said.

Dangers of fraud

Through a loan from Angelo Crews’ mother, the family was eventually able to move into a new apartment in Henderson. The school’s donations helped them also to fill the cabinets with plates from the school’s donations, and the bedrooms with mattresses and toys for the children.

But the scar of the rental fraud experience remains — along with being short a few thousand dollars, they are currently without income after losing day care clients from the incident. When they returned for their stuff on Dec. 15, they found it strewn across the garage and damaged, a video seen by the Review-Journal shows.

The family submitted a report detailing what they claim was fraud to the Henderson Police Department, although the city said it was still an open case.

“If they were victims of fraud, the court has the discretion to give them time,” Gregory Paul, an attorney for the legal aid center of Southern Nevada, told the Review-Journal.

It is not clear how common such cases occur. Real estate fraud is on the rise in Las Vegas. As platforms such as Facebook, with little verification, play host to rental properties, renters need to be extra careful of “private landlords.”

“We just don’t want anyone else to fall victim like this,” Rodriguez said.

Zillow, a popular real estate website, has pages dedicated to educating people on scams. Some of the common things to look out for are requests to wire funds, long-distance landlords, phone verification codes, requests for personal or financial information, and typos and sob stories.

Fredricks said that it is important to realize that this issue could affect many people.

“It’s a trying time for everyone,” she said. “More families than not are a paycheck away from being in this family’s situation.”

Contact Katie Futterman at kfutterman@reviewjournal.com. Follow @ktfutts on X and @katiefutterman.bsky.social.