Max Bossarei ordered to pay former tenants $4,200
The Becks won the case against their former landlord in circuit court more than a year after Bossarei absconded with their deposit and furniture. Bossarei was a no-show at the virtual hearing.
Maximus Bossarei has been ordered to pay $4,200 to his former tenants, following a Albany County Circuit Court ruling last week. Bossarei is perhaps the city’s most notorious landlord and was once considered unservable.
The tenants, Brad and Kimberly Beck, were handed a default win when Bossarei never showed up to the virtual hearing.
“In all honesty, it felt kind of anti-climatic — simply because he didn’t offer any defense of his actions at all,” Brad said. “He was so argumentative on the phone and in emails, I expected him to have some sort of statement or a position. And for him to just not show up at all just seemed cowardly to me.”
The circuit court judgement represents a significant departure from the usual outcome tenants face trying to recover a deposit or other money from Bossarei.
Since 2019, the landlord has earned a reputation among the local tenant community and the local legal community as someone who could not be held accountable and could not even be served a summons.
A special report in the Laramie Boomerang earlier this year shed light on this pattern, identifying more than $16,000 in contested amounts Bossarei was able to keep — not by defending a counterclaim in court, but by failing to be served. When Bossarei did not answer his phone or his door, attempts to serve him were dropped and the civil suits against him were dismissed.
Bossarei has now been successfully served at least twice since the publication of that story. This time he was served by George Gliem of Day & Night Process Serving.
Gliem provided an account of his latest successful service attempt in court filings for the Becks’ civil suit.
“After a few minutes of knocking, Mr. Bossarei opened the door,” Gliem writes in the court document. “At first he said he was not Max. Then I told him that he looked like the same guy I served a couple months earlier. I gave him the option of showing me an identification with his name on it. At that point, he refused to take the papers and closed the door.”
Gliem put the papers on the door, and photographed the license plates of two cars parked in front of the unit that were titled in Bossarei’s name.
Between Bossarei’s encounter with the process server and his non-appearance in court, Brad Beck is left with a vastly different impression of the landlord than he had last year.
“It just blows me away that he talks so tough and then hides,” Brad said. “When the rubber hits the road, he’s the first one to close his door and hide inside.”
The $4,200 Bossarei must pay to the Becks is a reimbursement for more than $3,000-worth of missing furniture and nearly $1,100 in unreturned deposits, rent payments and fees. It also includes an additional $120 in court filing costs and repeated process serving fees that was added to the total in the Becks’ most recent suit.
Brad and Kimberly Beck were just two of the dozens of former tenants who have alleged mistreatment by Bossarei during their time living in his units and in the months after moving out.
Those allegations included charges of double-renting, a habit of not returning deposits, making threatening and intimidating statements, and failing to maintain suitable living conditions in his units.
More than a dozen civil cases have been brought against the landlord, but few ever made it to court. Once in 2017 and often between 2019-2020, the Albany County Sheriff’s Office and private process servers repeatedly failed to serve Bossarei. Without service, the cases were dismissed again and again.
The result was that Bossarei was allowed to keep the contested amounts, and tenants eventually had to move on in their lives, many claiming that the stress of fighting Bossarei had taken a serious toll on their mental health.
How did this begin?
The Becks came to Laramie when Brad, a structural concrete foreman for G.E. Johnson, was assigned to projects on the University of Wyoming campus.
They took up residence in Bossarei’s prominent Third Street property — the motel formerly known as the Xenion — originally for a six-month lease. Brad was reassigned to the Denver area not long after and the couple left Laramie.
However, they continued paying rent, on time, for three additional months. At around that time, Bossarei found a new tenant and the squabble with the Becks began.
Bossarei told the Becks that he had moved their remaining possessions from the room to a storage unit. When Kimberly drove up to Laramie to collect them, she found only clothing, some sheets and a bit of old food.
“And my expensive furniture — the rugs, the paintings, and a $3,500 leather chair — were missing,” Beck told the Laramie Boomerang in January. “He couldn’t account for them.”
Trying to retrieve those belongings proved to be a nightmare.
Bossarei first excused the missing items by saying the movers were “in quarantine in the hills,” but he soon became uncommunicative.
The Becks went to the police, who then visited with Bossarei and assured the Becks that the landlord would return their possessions soon.
That didn’t happen.
Instead, as he has done before with other tenants, Bossarei responded with fury to the suggestion of involving law enforcement.
“I hope you realize how your conduct has been anything but honorable and are willing to make this right before we are forced to escalate the matter further,” Bossarei writes in an email from May 2020. “To be frank, given now the insult to injury caused here, we would spare no resources to do so if this is not handled properly by you.”
Bossarei said the Becks were opening themselves up to civil and criminal charges by talking to the police and demanded they pay him May rent.
May was four months after the couple moved out, and also a time in which another resident was moved into the unit. But Bossarei refused to set up a day and time for the Becks to collect their possessions until they cut him that check.
So the Becks filed a suit against Bossarei with the Albany County Circuit Court, seeking more than $4,000 for the lost furniture and for unreturned deposits. But Bossarei — dubbed the “Artful Dodger” by some local attorneys — was never served and the case was dismissed.
Neither the Becks’ experience with Bossarei nor the failure of the Albany County Sheriff’s Office to serve him were unique to this case. The investigative feature published earlier this year in the Laramie Boomerang found that Bossarei had kept at least $16,000 in unreturned deposits and other contested sums of money by failing to be served.
An even wider web of former tenants shared their experiences with the landlord, recounting Bossarei’s avoidance of maintenance requests, threatening messages they had received and the terror they felt living under his roofs.
Additionally, several former tenants pointed to the pivotal role that Bossarei’s business partner Jessica Stalder played in their renting experience. Stalder — a current Laramie City Councilor — downplayed her connection to Bossarei in a subsequent letter to the editor, claiming she did not work for the man or his company. Subsequent reporting, however, uncovered documents showing Stalder does work for Bossarei’s company, MBRE Management, and revealed that the pair co-own a house.
To date, Stalder has never responded to reporter requests for comment.
As a city councilor, Stalder has voted against consideration of rental regulations.
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