Millionaire Nicholas Jarzabek, recognized in the music industry as singer Nick Diver, made more than $215,000 for illegally listing the home he was renting in Los Angeles as an Airbnb.
Jarzabek is a singer touring London with around 6,000 followers on Instagram. In August 2022, he began renting the Los Angeles property from Nikeeta Sriram, a Netflix executive handling commerce strategy and growth products, according to the Los Angeles Times.
For the first 16 months of the lease, everything went well, Sriram said. Jarzabek gave Sriram nothing substantive to complain about. The musician had $1 million in the bank, paid his rent on time, and didn’t damage the property.
In hindsight, the Netflix executive and Harvard Business graduate remembers details that were early warning signs.
Jarzabek was denied the first time he applied to rent the property when Sriram leased to a couple running a startup. When the couple moved out months later, he applied again, a move Sriram said she finds “obviously suspicious in hindsight.”
“Most renters are trying to move on a specific timeline,” she said. “You don’t see people applying for the same house three months apart.”
Sriram remembers another detail that makes sense in the saga’s aftermath.
After she approved Jarzabek as the new tenant, he asked to move in on Aug. 26, a few days before the lease started on Sept. 1.
At the time, she didn’t think it was a big deal. Now, Sriram realizes Jarzabek already had the house listed on Airbnb, with guests on the way.
From August 2022 through December 2023, Jarzabek raked in approximately $13,500 per month by renting out a home he didn’t own. His moneymaking schemes began to fall apart only through an arbitrary police check-in.
Just after Christmas 2023, the property’s ADT alarm went off so many times that the company automatically triggered a police visit.
Sriram called ADT, which told her the police claimed Airbnb guests had set off the alarm.
In a quick Google search, Sriram found her home listed on Airbnb for $688 per night.
Her investigation uncovered an elaborate cover-up scheme.
According to Sriram’s lawsuit against the London artist, Jarzabek used an alias for the Airbnb account, never showed photos of the home’s exterior, and used an initial false address for bookers to conceal Sriram’s actual address.
Jarzabek denied Sriram’s findings, referring her to his lawyer.
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Sriram has fought a long and hard battle to remove Jarzabek from her home. In California, eviction is the only legal pathway to remove a tenant, and Airbnb provides little recourse against illegal listings.
The Netflix executive has spent months in court, losing approximately $100,000 due to Jarzabek’s fraud. She received approval for her unlawful detainer lawsuit recently, allowing Sriram to move forward with evicting the London artist.