Victims of serial con-woman lament their losses

“She is a thief! A wicked unconscionable woman who should never be let back out of prison!”

Those are the words of one of Judith Douglas’s most recent 36 victims who fell prey to her rental scam between January and March of this year.

Douglas, 57, a serial con woman, had been released from prison on a probationary license, after serving more than 60% of a five-year sentence, for a $1.9 million immigration scam.

On Friday, 25 Aug., she entered 28 guilty pleas, six partial guilty pleas, and four not guilty pleas to 36 counts of obtaining property by deception.

The charges stem from an unsophisticated scheme in which Douglas collected cash deposits from multiple people for a rental unit on Diaz Lane, George Town.

Although Douglas, through her family, was connected to the property she was not the owner of the residence nor did she have permission to rent the property; and her victims were unable to move into the apartment – with no refunds offered in most cases.

“It looks like as soon as she got out, she got back to scamming people,” said the recent victim, who asked not to be identified. “Imagine, she knew that I had a 6-month-old baby girl at the time, and I needed a bigger place to stay, so I gave her one month’s rent plus one month’s deposit – and she took my money knowing my circumstances, and that this was a scam.”

According to the victim, he had given his then-landlord notice that he would be moving out. So, his landlord rented the place to another person, leaving him without a place to stay.

“My wife, my baby girl and I were all basically homeless. I had to borrow more than $2,000 from my boss just so that I could go get a place to stay,” he said. “Now, you tell me, how can one woman be so wicked?”

Douglas swindled her victims out of a total of $69,790 with people paying anywhere from $700 to $4,600.

Another victim who spoke to the Compass and also asked not to be identified, said Douglas was deliberate about who she targeted and how she approached them.

“I posted an ad on social media, saying ‘I’m urgently seeking a place,’ and, within a couple of hours, she messaged me,” said the second victim. “She said that she had other people asking about the room, but if I had cash then she would be able to give me the place instead.”

The woman said she jumped at the opportunity, although, in the back of her mind, she had doubts.

“I went to the place and I saw it for myself, that’s why I gave her the money,” she said.

But within a couple of hours of both victims handing over their cash, social media posts appeared with dozens of people complaining that Douglas had scammed them.

“When I went to the police station to report the matter I saw dozens of people. Everybody was there complaining about the same ‘tiefing’ woman,” he said.

When Douglas appeared before the Grand Court last week, she accepted a plea deal in which she claimed she had initially rented out the apartment in good faith to a prospective tenant, but the person that was occupying the unit had not moved out as expected.

“I was unable to return the deposit to the prospective tenant, as I had already spent it feeding a pernicious gambling addiction,” stated Douglas as the basis for her guilty pleas.

She continued, “In order to pay back the prospective tenants, I agreed to rent the property to further new tenants, in the hope that I could recover my gambling losses and pay everyone back. Unfortunately, this started a vicious cycle of taking from Peter to pay Paul.”