And in the advertisement, he had promised something very specific.
Private hot tub access.
I thought she meant his own hot tub.
Then she showed me the listing.
The photograph was unmistakable.
It was our backyard.
Our patio.
Our hot tub.
Our property.
Jim had taken a photograph of our backyard and used it to advertise his rental.
He wasn’t simply using our hot tub himself.
He was charging strangers for access to it.
We began looking deeper.
The reviews went back fourteen months.
And again and again, guests mentioned the hot tub.
People had apparently been paying Jim to stay at his property while being promised access to an amenity that did not belong to him.
Suddenly, the scale of what had happened became clear.
For more than a year, we had been paying the electricity bill.
We had paid for maintenance.
We had paid for repairs.
We had paid for insurance.
