Woman who lived rent-free in ritzy Silicon Valley homes sentenced

(KRON) — A Menlo Park woman lived rent-free in some of Silicon Valley’s most expensive neighborhoods by posing as a “well-heeled, and affluent investor,” prosecutors said.

Rebecca Violette, aka Rebekah Violette, repeatedly scammed local landlords by using a fake persona, and failed to pay tens of thousands of dollars in rent, according to the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office.

Her new home will be inside a jail cell, prosecutors announced Wednesday.

For years, Violette replicated her same scheme fooling landlords, prosecutors said. The 62-year-old woman lied on rental applications about her income, lied about her extensive prior history of evictions, and wrote bad checks for her first and last month rents, investigators discovered.

Once Violette moved into an upscale home and secured possession of a property, she refused to pay rent, forcing landlords to go through a lengthy and expensive eviction process through court, the DA’s Office said.

“Over the past decade, she has been prosecuted several times for this same scam, amassing numerous convictions and serving several stints in custody,” prosecutors wrote.

District Attorney Jeff Rosen warned, “Renters and landlords should all be cautious. Anyone could fall victim to a well-honed scheme. We encourage careful background checks before renting to anyone.”

For her most recent criminal case, Violette pleaded guilty to three counts of grand theft, three counts of passing bad checks, and one count of attempted theft. In the instance of the attempted theft, the prospective landlord learned of Violette's scheme by doing an internet search of her name before turning over the property.

Last week, Santa Clara County Judge Daniel Nishigaya sentenced Violette to serve one year in jail, followed by one year and four months of mandatory supervision.

Property owners can look up whether a prospective tenant had a previous unlawful detainer or eviction filed against them on the court’s website . Court records show unlawful detainers were filed against Violette in 2008, 2019, and 2020, and her criminal history stretches over a decade.

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