You can also email us at tips@nbcboston.com.

Some of those landlords are sharing their stories.

Mark Haskell 

In 2009, Mark Haskell and his family needed to move to a bigger home. Because the housing bubble had burst and the property on Shawnee Road in Worcester had lost value, he decided to rent the home instead of selling it. 

Haskell’s first tenant was a doctor who lived at the property with no problems.

The next time he listed it, the Callahans showed up. They came armed with a packet of pay stubs and credit reports. 

“They said all the right things,” Haskell said. “They were very relatable.”

In retrospect, Haskell said the only red flag was an urgency to get into the property as soon as possible, but he overlooked it at the time.

Upon returning from a business trip, Haskell received a call from the bank. The Callahans’ rental check had been written from a closed account. 

“There was a sinking feeling that something wasn’t right,” Haskell said. “I thought I had been scammed.”

Haskell said the couple made excuses about the money and tried to string him along as much as possible. After several months of paying both mortgages while supporting kids and juggling other bills, Haskell hired an attorney to begin the eviction process. 

The entire ordeal took about six months. On the eve of the eviction, there was still a last-minute plea from Russell Callahan about accessing funds from his work retirement account so he could stay in the property.

“We never meant for it to come to this point, believe me,” Haskell read from an email he received. “We very much enjoy living here. Please contact me at your earliest convenience to discuss. I want to work with you.”

After the eviction, Haskell said he received a call from a real estate agent who was listing a rental property. The Callahans had applied and the agent was checking with previous landlords. 

Haskell was able to help that property owner avoid the legal headache that he experienced. His judgment in housing court is for about $6,000, but he estimates his losses at closer to $10,000 with moving expenses and attorney fees.

Roughly 15 years later, Haskell shakes his head that the pattern continues. 

“I can’t believe they’re still up to this and the system allows it,” he said. “If you look at it as a whole, it’s a major scam.”

Tyler Lynch

In 2016, Tyler Lynch was a recent college graduate preparing for his first deployment with the Navy. 

Lynch decided to list his Jacksonville home for rent on Zillow. Before long, the Callahans contacted him to see the property. 

Lynch said they seemed like an “all-American couple” who asked questions about his collegiate football career and perhaps drinking a beer together at some point.

“They were the kind of people that you would expect a fun neighbor to be,” Lynch recalled. 

Shortly after Lynch deployed overseas, the Callahans moved into his home. Before long, they were late on the monthly rent. 

After Lynch sent a reminder about making a payment, he said Linda Callahan responded that her husband was in a horrible work accident and was on life support.

“I felt so bad about the situation, I sent flowers to the house,” Lynch said. 

More time passed and Lynch had still not received any rental payments. While dealing with limited cell service in a foreign country, Lynch finally managed to reach Russell Callahan on the phone.

During that conversation, Russell Callahan told him that he had not been in an accident. Instead, he blamed his wife for spending the rent money on other items and said the couple was getting a divorce.

Again, Lynch felt sympathy about the situation. But when more weeks passed with nothing but radio silence from the Callahans, reality hit.

“I have this house and I’m in a different country. I’m thinking, “What am I going to do?”” Lynch said. “I realized I made a horrible mistake.”

Lynch had to hire an attorney to assist with the eviction process during his deployment. He said the experience cost him about $10,000. 

Lynch, now a lieutenant commander with the Navy living in the Dallas area, was stunned when we contacted him eight years later about his landlord nightmare.

“The neighborly, welcoming people I first met, they’re just criminals,” he said. “They are cheating the system every way they can.”

Hayk Hovhannisyan

Hayk Hovhannisyan and his wife both lost their jobs at the beginning of 2018. Around the same time, the tenants at their Shrewsbury rental property also notified them that they were moving out. 

That’s why Hovhannisyan told us it was crucial to find new tenants and have the rental income to help support his two children.

During the open house, Linda Callahan seemed like the perfect prospective tenant.

“Suddenly, there’s this middle-aged, white, happy and trustworthy woman with all the paperwork in hand,” Hovhannisyan recalled. 

The Callahans were supposed to move in at the beginning of August, but asked if they could start their tenancy several days early. 

On the day they handed over the keys, Hovhannisyan said there were moving trucks at the property already loaded up with the Callahans’ possessions. In retrospect, he now realizes those trucks had come straight from the Callahans’ eviction at their previous rental property. 

Just like with other landlords, the first rental check bounced. Excuses followed about the IRS and the bank account being frozen.

Hovhannisyan eventually went to investigate at the bank branch. That’s when he learned the account from which the check was written had been closed for a long time. 

“These are professional con artists,” Hovyannisyan said. “I realized this is not some isolated thing. There are actually people who live like this.”

Like several other landlords we spoke with, Hovyannisyan believes he was targeted because he is an immigrant who is unfamiliar with the legal system and eviction process. 

He hired an attorney and discovered how long it can take to execute an eviction, even when the tenants are not paying a dime. 

On moving day, which landlords are required to pay under Massachusetts law, two trucks were not sufficient to load up all the Callahans’ items. Hovyannisyan had to call in a third truck to finish the job. 

When he entered the property for the first time after the eviction, he noticed the walls had been painted a different color. 

Hovyannisyan estimates the lost rent, moving expenses and attorney fees cost him about $13,000.

“Hopefully, they’ll end up in some nice jail,” he said. “Free housing. That’s what they’re looking for, yes? Free housing.”

Rory Mallaghan

The home on Jonathan Circle was the first property that Rory Mallaghan owned. When he and his wife moved to a new home in anticipation of having their first child, Mallaghan listed the property for rent on Zillow, hoping to find a tenant who would care for the home where he’d created so many memories. 

The Callahans showed up to get a tour of the property and Mallaghan remembers how they gave the impression they would really enjoy living in the space.

“Linda was so bubbly,” Mallaghan recalled. “Every nook of the house, she thought she could put certain things in certain places and everything would be fantastic.”

The couple said they were looking at several properties and already had a packet of paperwork available, including pay stubs, references and credit reports. 

The Callahans said they were helping with family in Shrewsbury and staying at a nearby hotel just to get some space. Mallaghan gave them a ride back to the hotel after the showing. 

Like other landlord encounters, a familiar series of events followed.

Upon returning from a work trip, Mallaghan discovered the Callahans’ rent checks had bounced. The couple first blamed a problem with the IRS, then described an issue withdrawing funds from a 401k account. 

“They always had an excuse of why the money wasn’t there and they were working on it,” Mallaghan said. “They just preyed on my forgiveness and compassion and were able to live there rent-free.”

When he finally ran out of patience, Mallaghan hired an attorney to start the eviction process. After eight months of receiving no rent, Mallaghan wrote an email to the Callahans, pleading with them not to delay any longer and leave the property. 

“We’ve come to terms we will never see that money. It was an expensive lesson,” he wrote. “We had plans to buy baby necessities. It’s a tough pill to swallow.”

Mallaghan was there when a constable showed up to execute the eviction and a moving company packed up possession. When he entered the home for the first time, everything was stripped from the walls, including the toilet paper holders.

He said the ordeal cost him about $20,000.

“They know what they’re doing,” Mallaghan said. “They are just taking people for a ride.”

Sitanshu Sinha and Shilpi Gupta

The home on Egret Circle in Shrewsbury was the first property Sitanshu Sinha and Shilpi Gupta purchased when they immigrated to the United States. The couple later decided to move to a larger home in town and rented the old property to several different tenants without incident. Then they listed it again in August 2023. 

Russell and Linda Callahan showed up to look at the home and said they were trying to get a loan to buy some land, so they had already assembled a credit report, background check and pay stubs for their bank. 

The documents they provided to Sinha and Gupta falsely listed the couple’s last name as “O’Callagham” to avoid detection. 

Before moving in, Linda Callahan said she thought the basement would be a perfect space to work on her art and craft projects, and asked if she could pay to have it carpeted. Sinha and Gupta thought it was a strange request from tenants and declined the offer. 

“That still sticks with me because of the way things turned out,” Gupta said. 

A couple of days after moving into the property, the checks bounced. The pattern of excuses followed, but Sinha said it did not seem like there was any urgency to get the payment situation resolved. 

The couple eventually realized they needed to get a lawyer because they started dipping into emergency savings to pay the mortgages on both properties. 

“It was very stressful on us financially,” Gupta said. 

At the eviction proceedings in housing court, Russell Callahan declined to answer questions from the judge. He would not even state his name under oath without legal representation, according to audio we obtained. 

“I don’t credit your testimony, sir,” the judge told Callahan. “I actually don’t credit anything you said. I find you to be evasive and not particularly forthcoming.”

When Sinha called a moving company to get an estimate, the employee asked for the names of the tenants being evicted. A couple minutes later, the employee said he could provide an exact quote because the moving company had already boxed up the Callahans’ possessions on multiple occasions. 

On the eve of the move, Linda Callahan made a final plea to stay in the house until after Christmas.

“I know you are very angry with us, and truthfully, we don’t blame you,” read a text message. “We falsified the documents because we wanted to rent from you. And with our history, we knew you wouldn’t consider us.”

After the Callahans moved out, Sinha and Gupta found nail holes and other damage everywhere throughout the house. There were light fixtures, curtain rods and speakers missing.

The couple estimates the financial nightmare cost them about $30,000 in savings. They had planned to invest that money in their two kids’ college savings plans. 

The home on Egret Circle is the last known address for the Callahans. No new eviction cases have surfaced since movers packed them up last December. 

“I’m still at a loss for words,” Sinha said. “How can something live like this for so long and get away with it?”

Nadia Amrani

Nadia Amrani moved out of her home on Locust Avenue in Worcester and rented a home in Shrewsbury so her three daughters could attend a better high school. The single mom planned to move back to Worcester after her daughters graduated, but needed to find a tenant to help pay the mortgage in the interim. 

When the Callahans came to look at the property, they had a packet of paperwork ready to go. They told Amrani they were thinking about buying a home and applying for a mortgage, so they’d already assembled the financial records for the bank.

“I thought they were just being proactive,” Amrani said. “Making things easier for me.”

The documents like credit reports and pay stubs all seemed legit, so Amrani offered the Callahans a rental agreement. She remembers Linda Callahan seeming relieved and in control once she handed her the keys. 

Amrani read us the text message she received from Linda Callahan once the lease was signed. Years later, the words take on an ominous tone. 

“Thank you so much for your decision on selecting my family,” the message said. “I understand the financial agreement to be met. We will respect your home as if it were our own. Enjoy your day. I know you just made ours great.”

Linda Callahan delayed providing a security deposit until closer to the move-in date, saying her mom was in the hospital having heart surgery. By the time the check bounced, the Callahans were already living in the home.

Amrani said the couple initially blamed problems with the IRS on the lack of funds. When weeks passed with no payment, Amrani went to the bank and discovered the account had been closed. 

“I started panicking,” Amrani said. “I couldn’t afford to pay the mortgage and the rent where I was living.”

Amrani hired an attorney and won an eviction at the end of 2019. She is thankful she got rid of the Callahans just before the COVID pandemic. That’s when the government implemented an eviction moratorium, and Amrani believes she would’ve lost her home. 

Once the rental payment problems surfaced, Amrani remembers looking up the Callahans in the housing court’s online system. She was stunned when she saw their extensive eviction history, a track record that was nowhere to be found in the documents they had provided in that first encounter.

“They need to pay for what they did,” she said. “Those people have been evicted over and over and over again. The system knows them. And nothing has been done.”

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But what if someone just decides not to pay rent?

Once the landlord pursues an eviction, the tenants delay the legal process as long as possible with last-second motions and other tactics.

When they finally get kicked out, the cycle simply repeats for a new unsuspecting property owner.

Meet the people known as “professional tenants.” It is a term used in housing circles for those who have figured out how to game a system in Massachusetts, a state with a national reputation for being pro-tenant.

“The reason they are called professional tenants is because they can earn a living by scamming landlords,” said Doug Quattochi, executive director of Mass Landlords, a nonprofit advocacy organization. “You can delay evictions for a very long time if you intend to abuse the system.”

An NBC10 Investigation uncovered a husband and wife who might be the poster children for how to pull off the rent-free scheme with no serious consequences other than the inconvenience of frequently updating their mailing address.

Across Worcester County, small landlords have regretted renting their properties to a couple named Russell and Linda Callahan.

People told us the Callahans made a positive first impression, seemed like an “all-American” couple, and showed up with a stack of paperwork to bolster their rental application.

The paperwork, which included pay stubs, a background check and a credit report, was intended to give landlords peace of mind.

“They said they were looking at a bunch of houses, so they had the paperwork ready to go,” one landlord recalled. “I thought they were being proactive.”

However, after signing a lease and handing over the keys, there was always a problem: the first rental check bounced.

The timing of the payment was always close to the couple’s move-in date. By the time the bank notified landlords the checks didn’t clear, the Callahans were already in the homes.

Landlords told us a string of excuses followed about why the funds were not available. The Callahans blamed a problem with the IRS, a slow transfer of 401k funds, or a family member in the hospital getting surgery.

Eventually, the landlords all came to the realization they feared: It was all a scam.

“I realized this was not some isolated thing,” a landlord told us. “There are people who actually live like this.”

The property owners were then forced to begin the eviction process, a legal maze in housing court that turned out to be much longer and more expensive than they ever imagined. In some cases, landlords had to also foot the bill for thousands of dollars in moving and storage expenses following evictions, as state law requires.

Over the past two decades in Massachusetts, the NBC10 Investigators found the Callahans have been evicted at least 16 times with judgments for unpaid rent surpassing well over $100,000. The losses soar even higher when you take into account legal fees, moving expenses, and repairs for damage to the properties.

Worcester attorney Henry Raphaelson has more than 40 years of housing court experience and told us he has personally been involved in at least six eviction cases with the Callahans. We asked him what comes to mind when he hears their names.

“People that under no circumstances should you rent to them,” he replied. “Because it ends up badly every single time.”

Landlords and neighbors said it seemed like the couple planned to stay at the properties for a long time. They showed up with enough possessions to fill every room in the homes and immediately adorned yards with elaborate seasonal decorations.

We asked Raphaelson why he thinks the Callahans continue the pattern, especially with a growing list of people chasing them for money.

“Because they are living in very, very nice places,” Raphaelson said. “At least for the time being, until they end up being ordered out by a court of law.”

Over the past two decades, the only gap in housing court cases we found in Massachusetts was a four-year stint the Callahans spent in Florida. That’s where we found eight different evictions in that short time span.

One of the landlords rented his Jacksonville home to the Callahans just before leaving on a deployment with the Navy. He then dealt with the stress of losing $10,000 while navigating the eviction process overseas.

“I’m thinking that I have this house and I’m in another country. ‘What am I going to do?’” the landlord recalled. “I realized I made a huge mistake.”

Despite a long court paper trail, the Callahans have almost no digital footprint. The only images we found of Linda Callahan were some mug shots after arrests for writing bad checks while living in Florida. Russell Callahan’s lone image was a driver’s license photo that was included with one of his rental applications.

Linda Callahan’s criminal record shows more than 50 charges over the years, the majority larceny by check and uttering false records. According to police reports, she bounced checks on purchases for everything from flowers to furniture to jewelry.

A handful of those resulted in convictions, leading to several short jail stints or probation sentences.

However, it appears the Callahans have avoided any serious consequences for the rent-free scheme they’ve pulled off for the past 20 years.

“Those people have been evicted over and over again,” one landlord told us. “The system knows them. And nothing has been done.”

The Callahans have not responded to phone calls or emails from the NBC10 Investigators. Many of the phone numbers landlords used to communicate with them have been disconnected and are no longer in service.

Meantime, no new address has surfaced since their most recent eviction last December. It might be only a matter of time before a different landlord realizes there are professional tenants living at the property.

“The Callahans certainly owe the most money of anyone I’ve seen in Worcester County,” Raphaelson said. “I guess we’re all just waiting. History has told us there’s another case around the corner.”

IN OUR NEXT REPORT: We take a closer look at the legal system and some of the surprising reasons why the professional tenants have skirted criminal accountability

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During that statewide tour, a common theme has emerged. Upon losing thousands of dollars, consumers often attempted to report their situations to local law enforcement.

“It’s a civil matter,” was the response homeowners told us they received the majority of the time.

Those exchanges were recounted again and again during our interviews with customers of a pool contractor who left a wake of unfinished projects; a paver eventually convicted of taking deposits and never doing the job; a contractor who became the focus of a private social media group; and a nurse practitioner moonlighting on home improvement projects.

To people who lose thousands of dollars in hard-earned savings, the experience can certainly feel like a crime.

So why is it that authorities often don’t view the scenarios as criminal matters?

In Massachusetts, the way the statute is written, prosecutors have to prove a contractor never intended to finish a project.

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Accepting a deposit and disappearing can be an open-and-shut larceny case. However, the legal hurdle is trickier once a shovel digs into the ground or a hammer hits a nail.

“How do you get into somebody’s head? How do you prove that was actually their intent at the time of the receipt of the money?” said Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy Cruz. “That’s a challenge.”

It’s a challenge Cruz’s office will be taking on with pool contractor Steven Docchio.

After our investigation detailed a path of destruction across Massachusetts, a grand jury indicted Docchio last year with a long list of criminal indictments.

The contractor is currently out on bail and awaiting trial. At his arraignment last July — which featured a number of animated moments in the courtroom — Docchio told the judge the case did not belong in criminal court.

“These are contractual, civil things,” he said.

Have a tip for the NBC10 Investigators? Email us at tips@nbcboston.com.

We took the issue to NBC10 legal analyst, Michael Coyne, who is dean at the Massachusetts School of Law.

“Your series has revealed how widespread this problem is,” Coyne said. “To me, it’s fixable with a different statute. If you have to prove the person’s intent to defraud at the time they took the deposit, that is almost a nonstarter in all these cases.”

Indeed, numbers we obtained from the Massachusetts Trial Court paint a bleak picture. The charge most often associated with home improvement projects gone wrong is “larceny by false pretense.”

Since 2020, figures show there have been 939 cases filed with a larceny by false pretense charge.

Over that same time period, only 166 cases have been disposed with a larceny by false pretense charge. That’s a rate of less than 20% (note: more recent cases are likely still pending in court).

Coyne said instead of trying to change the existing larceny by false pretense language, there should be a new “home repair fraud” statute implemented.

“Change the statute. Don’t make it a question of intent,” Coyne said. “Do the facts indicate that the consumer’s money was in essence stolen from them? And if it was, then the criminal courts should be of much more assistance in trying to bring recovery in these cases.”

Some of our reporting for this series has already prompted results on Beacon Hill, including proposals for stronger background checks, and raising the cap on a state fund that helps homeowners recoup money if they get ripped off by registered contractors.

Homeowners we spoke with repeatedly said they hope lawmakers take a closer look at whether the current statute adequately protects consumers.

“It’s unfortunate we don’t have stronger laws in Massachusetts that can stop some of this from happening,” said Kate Merritt-O’Toole, a Framingham homeowner who organized a group of victims that lost money to the owner of a paving business.

“Someone has robbed me,” said Rose Khnaizir, a Stoughton homeowner who lost $25,000 on a failed pool project. “And the law is not there to protect me.”

We were there when Winthrop police returned $34,400 to Peggy Herbert, 83. 

“I’ve been saying my prayers, trust me,” she said. 

Herbert had received an alert saying her crew card account had been hacked, ands he called what she thought was the company’s fraud department. 

“He said, ‘Okay, go immediately to your bank,” she recalled. ‘”Don’t take any incoming calls, and go to the bank and withdraw the money.'”

“He said, ‘If you want your children to be safe, then do as I tell you,'” Herbert continued, sayings felt scared. 

The man’s instructions? To go to a Bitcoin ATM — she went to one at a gas station in nearby Revere — and deposit lots of cash, which she did: “I was shaking and I had an envelope with a lot of money in it.”

Herbert is far from alone, and many others aren’t as lucky. People in Massachusetts reported losing $2.7 million in over 100 complaints filed with the FBI last year. 

Another man we spoke to, whom we’re calling Derek to protect his identity, fed more than $20,000 into Bitcoin machines after after getting a call from people posing as federal agents who told him his identity had been stolen and there was a warrant for his arrest. This despite being on guard against scams.

“They just had an answer for everything,” he said. 

These scams are on the rise in Essex County — victims are pouring thousands into Bitcoin ATMS and more machines are popping up, said Detectives Jim Carney, who works out of the Essex County District Attorney’s Office, and Shawn Desmond, of Beverly police.

“The machines are flourishing. They’re popping up everywhere and we have really no idea exactly how many machines are out there in the wild,” Carney said. 

“It’s not just the elderly who are getting scammed,” Desmond said. “We’re getting teenagers, professional people that are highly educated. It’s all across the map. These guys are just experts at scamming.”

Once the money is pumped into the machine, it’s tough to get back. If police are notified quickly, they can try to seize the machine to get the cash before it’s emptied.

If that works, then it’s up to a judge to decide if the money goes back to the victim or to the Bitcoin company that already paid for the transaction. 

Police were able to get the cash out of the machines in Herbert and Derek’s cases.

“It makes you feel pretty angry to know that these people are just out there, scamming innocent people,” Derek said. 

Asked what she wants the public to know, Herbert said, “Hang up. Call someone in your family or call someone, a friend. Be careful of these sophisticated schemes.”

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The victim was unknown for years, buried in the back corner of St. Peter’s Cemetery in Provincetown and known only as the “Lady of the Dunes.”

The Lady of the Dunes was the longest unidentified murder victim in the state of Massachusetts. The case was unresolved for 48 years. Physical evidence from the scene like the victim’s clothing and a blanket were thrown away by state police. But as time passed and hope faded, science and DNA analysis evolved- finally giving investigators the break they needed.

A piece of the victim’s skull finally helped put a name – Ruth Marie Terry – on that gravestone and gave a family the answers they had been searching for for decades.

The crime collided with a son’s lifelong search for his biological mom. Richard Hanchett, who learned his mother’s identity at the same time he learned she was a noted murder victim.

But what of the murderer? The hunt for Terry’s killer led investigators to her now-deceased husband, Guy Muldavin, whose family owned property and vacationed in Provincetown. He made headlines in Seattle, where he was also a suspect in the mutilation deaths of his previous wife and stepdaughter in 1960, but he was never charged with murder.

Muldavin died in 2002, but it wasn’t until last year that prosecutors determined that he was responsible for Terry’s death and the case was officially closed.

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The 16-year-old girl disappeared from her lifeguard shift at Comins Pond in Warren, Massachusetts, on June 27, 2000 — 24 years later, her murder remains unsolved.

But technology has progressed. Investigators say new DNA evidence will be done on clothing in the case.

There are bags of evidence tucked away on shelves at the Massachusetts State Police Crime Lab in Sudbury. Some of the evidence possibly contains the key to finding Bish’s killer.

Sherri Mittelholzer, the forensic support section manager for the Massachusetts State Police, gave our team a look inside the storage room and some of the evidence.

“This is our cold storage location where we store evidence for a multitude of cases, including Molly Bish. Anything that may be tested for DNA is kept in a cold storage location,” said Mittelholzer.

The room is kept cold and humidity is controlled to preserve the evidence.

Inside one brown bag is the bathing suit Bish was wearing the day she disappeared. There are evidence samples cut for DNA testing, her knapsack that was left by her chair that day, soil samples and much more.

The Bish family has been praying for justice for 24 years. Bish’s sister, Heather, is frustrated and heartbroken.

“Molly’s presence is missed every single day,” she said. “I miss my sister, it never ends. I don’t look at the world the same way. My sister was taken by somebody, and I’ve learned there are many dangerous people out there.”

The crime scene was never secured and was trampled on because at first, police thought Bish may have drowned. Her flip flops were left behind, and the lifeguard medical kit was open.

She vanished 13 minutes after she arrived at the pond. Her remains were found a few miles down the road from Comins Pond, in the woods of Palmer three years after her disappearance.

The hunt for the killer led investigators to convicted rapist Frank Sumner, who died in 2016. He operated auto body shops in the area and looks like the man Bish’s mom spotted sitting in a white car the day before her daughter disappeared.

Worcester County District Attorney Joe Early Jr. said Sumner had access to a white car. He was officially named a suspect in 2021, but DNA from evidence tested so far hasn’t linked him to the crime.

“There’s a lot of evidence that leads to Frank Sumner, yes. That’s why we first named him a person of interest and then a suspect,” Early said when asked whether he believes if Sumner killed Bish. “We’re not stopping, we’re going to do everything we can to, you know, make sure that this case gets closed out.”

There are 267 pieces of physical evidence in the case. Investigators have received more than 6,700 leads and tips throughout the decades.

Surveillance video from a local convenience store captured the last images of Bish before she went to the pond on that fateful day. Her family and investigators are hoping advances in science and the evidence stored at the crime lab will finally lead them to the killer.

“We don’t typically name people of interest, and we don’t name suspects, but we did in this case because we got some solid information that came in,” Early said. “We want to see a little bit more.”

The Bish family is frustrated there hasn’t been more progress on Sumner. Loved ones would like outside DNA experts to be involved in the case.

“My hope is to use my voice and stand up for Molly as much as possible and continue to look for resources available to support the investigation into solving her crime,” Heather Bish said.

If you have any information about Bish’s murder, you are asked to call the Massachusetts State Police tipline at 508-453-7575.

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Some of those landlords are sharing their stories.

Mark Haskell 

In 2009, Mark Haskell and his family needed to move to a bigger home. Because the housing bubble had burst and the property on Shawnee Road in Worcester had lost value, he decided to rent the home instead of selling it. 

Haskell’s first tenant was a doctor who lived at the property with no problems.

The next time he listed it, the Callahans showed up. They came armed with a packet of pay stubs and credit reports. 

“They said all the right things,” Haskell said. “They were very relatable.”

In retrospect, Haskell said the only red flag was an urgency to get into the property as soon as possible, but he overlooked it at the time.

Upon returning from a business trip, Haskell received a call from the bank. The Callahans’ rental check had been written from a closed account. 

“There was a sinking feeling that something wasn’t right,” Haskell said. “I thought I had been scammed.”

Haskell said the couple made excuses about the money and tried to string him along as much as possible. After several months of paying both mortgages while supporting kids and juggling other bills, Haskell hired an attorney to begin the eviction process. 

The entire ordeal took about six months. On the eve of the eviction, there was still a last-minute plea from Russell Callahan about accessing funds from his work retirement account so he could stay in the property.

“We never meant for it to come to this point, believe me,” Haskell read from an email he received. “We very much enjoy living here. Please contact me at your earliest convenience to discuss. I want to work with you.”

After the eviction, Haskell said he received a call from a real estate agent who was listing a rental property. The Callahans had applied and the agent was checking with previous landlords. 

Haskell was able to help that property owner avoid the legal headache that he experienced. His judgment in housing court is for about $6,000, but he estimates his losses at closer to $10,000 with moving expenses and attorney fees.

Roughly 15 years later, Haskell shakes his head that the pattern continues. 

“I can’t believe they’re still up to this and the system allows it,” he said. “If you look at it as a whole, it’s a major scam.”

Tyler Lynch

In 2016, Tyler Lynch was a recent college graduate preparing for his first deployment with the Navy. 

Lynch decided to list his Jacksonville home for rent on Zillow. Before long, the Callahans contacted him to see the property. 

Lynch said they seemed like an “all-American couple” who asked questions about his collegiate football career and perhaps drinking a beer together at some point.

“They were the kind of people that you would expect a fun neighbor to be,” Lynch recalled. 

Shortly after Lynch deployed overseas, the Callahans moved into his home. Before long, they were late on the monthly rent. 

After Lynch sent a reminder about making a payment, he said Linda Callahan responded that her husband was in a horrible work accident and was on life support.

“I felt so bad about the situation, I sent flowers to the house,” Lynch said. 

More time passed and Lynch had still not received any rental payments. While dealing with limited cell service in a foreign country, Lynch finally managed to reach Russell Callahan on the phone.

During that conversation, Russell Callahan told him that he had not been in an accident. Instead, he blamed his wife for spending the rent money on other items and said the couple was getting a divorce.

Again, Lynch felt sympathy about the situation. But when more weeks passed with nothing but radio silence from the Callahans, reality hit.

“I have this house and I’m in a different country. I’m thinking, “What am I going to do?”” Lynch said. “I realized I made a horrible mistake.”

Lynch had to hire an attorney to assist with the eviction process during his deployment. He said the experience cost him about $10,000. 

Lynch, now a lieutenant commander with the Navy living in the Dallas area, was stunned when we contacted him eight years later about his landlord nightmare.

“The neighborly, welcoming people I first met, they’re just criminals,” he said. “They are cheating the system every way they can.”

Hayk Hovhannisyan

Hayk Hovhannisyan and his wife both lost their jobs at the beginning of 2018. Around the same time, the tenants at their Shrewsbury rental property also notified them that they were moving out. 

That’s why Hovhannisyan told us it was crucial to find new tenants and have the rental income to help support his two children.

During the open house, Linda Callahan seemed like the perfect prospective tenant.

“Suddenly, there’s this middle-aged, white, happy and trustworthy woman with all the paperwork in hand,” Hovhannisyan recalled. 

The Callahans were supposed to move in at the beginning of August, but asked if they could start their tenancy several days early. 

On the day they handed over the keys, Hovhannisyan said there were moving trucks at the property already loaded up with the Callahans’ possessions. In retrospect, he now realizes those trucks had come straight from the Callahans’ eviction at their previous rental property. 

Just like with other landlords, the first rental check bounced. Excuses followed about the IRS and the bank account being frozen.

Hovhannisyan eventually went to investigate at the bank branch. That’s when he learned the account from which the check was written had been closed for a long time. 

“These are professional con artists,” Hovyannisyan said. “I realized this is not some isolated thing. There are actually people who live like this.”

Like several other landlords we spoke with, Hovyannisyan believes he was targeted because he is an immigrant who is unfamiliar with the legal system and eviction process. 

He hired an attorney and discovered how long it can take to execute an eviction, even when the tenants are not paying a dime. 

On moving day, which landlords are required to pay under Massachusetts law, two trucks were not sufficient to load up all the Callahans’ items. Hovyannisyan had to call in a third truck to finish the job. 

When he entered the property for the first time after the eviction, he noticed the walls had been painted a different color. 

Hovyannisyan estimates the lost rent, moving expenses and attorney fees cost him about $13,000.

“Hopefully, they’ll end up in some nice jail,” he said. “Free housing. That’s what they’re looking for, yes? Free housing.”

Rory Mallaghan

The home on Jonathan Circle was the first property that Rory Mallaghan owned. When he and his wife moved to a new home in anticipation of having their first child, Mallaghan listed the property for rent on Zillow, hoping to find a tenant who would care for the home where he’d created so many memories. 

The Callahans showed up to get a tour of the property and Mallaghan remembers how they gave the impression they would really enjoy living in the space.

“Linda was so bubbly,” Mallaghan recalled. “Every nook of the house, she thought she could put certain things in certain places and everything would be fantastic.”

The couple said they were looking at several properties and already had a packet of paperwork available, including pay stubs, references and credit reports. 

The Callahans said they were helping with family in Shrewsbury and staying at a nearby hotel just to get some space. Mallaghan gave them a ride back to the hotel after the showing. 

Like other landlord encounters, a familiar series of events followed.

Upon returning from a work trip, Mallaghan discovered the Callahans’ rent checks had bounced. The couple first blamed a problem with the IRS, then described an issue withdrawing funds from a 401k account. 

“They always had an excuse of why the money wasn’t there and they were working on it,” Mallaghan said. “They just preyed on my forgiveness and compassion and were able to live there rent-free.”

When he finally ran out of patience, Mallaghan hired an attorney to start the eviction process. After eight months of receiving no rent, Mallaghan wrote an email to the Callahans, pleading with them not to delay any longer and leave the property. 

“We’ve come to terms we will never see that money. It was an expensive lesson,” he wrote. “We had plans to buy baby necessities. It’s a tough pill to swallow.”

Mallaghan was there when a constable showed up to execute the eviction and a moving company packed up possession. When he entered the home for the first time, everything was stripped from the walls, including the toilet paper holders.

He said the ordeal cost him about $20,000.

“They know what they’re doing,” Mallaghan said. “They are just taking people for a ride.”

Sitanshu Sinha and Shilpi Gupta

The home on Egret Circle in Shrewsbury was the first property Sitanshu Sinha and Shilpi Gupta purchased when they immigrated to the United States. The couple later decided to move to a larger home in town and rented the old property to several different tenants without incident. Then they listed it again in August 2023. 

Russell and Linda Callahan showed up to look at the home and said they were trying to get a loan to buy some land, so they had already assembled a credit report, background check and pay stubs for their bank. 

The documents they provided to Sinha and Gupta falsely listed the couple’s last name as “O’Callagham” to avoid detection. 

Before moving in, Linda Callahan said she thought the basement would be a perfect space to work on her art and craft projects, and asked if she could pay to have it carpeted. Sinha and Gupta thought it was a strange request from tenants and declined the offer. 

“That still sticks with me because of the way things turned out,” Gupta said. 

A couple of days after moving into the property, the checks bounced. The pattern of excuses followed, but Sinha said it did not seem like there was any urgency to get the payment situation resolved. 

The couple eventually realized they needed to get a lawyer because they started dipping into emergency savings to pay the mortgages on both properties. 

“It was very stressful on us financially,” Gupta said. 

At the eviction proceedings in housing court, Russell Callahan declined to answer questions from the judge. He would not even state his name under oath without legal representation, according to audio we obtained. 

“I don’t credit your testimony, sir,” the judge told Callahan. “I actually don’t credit anything you said. I find you to be evasive and not particularly forthcoming.”

When Sinha called a moving company to get an estimate, the employee asked for the names of the tenants being evicted. A couple minutes later, the employee said he could provide an exact quote because the moving company had already boxed up the Callahans’ possessions on multiple occasions. 

On the eve of the move, Linda Callahan made a final plea to stay in the house until after Christmas.

“I know you are very angry with us, and truthfully, we don’t blame you,” read a text message. “We falsified the documents because we wanted to rent from you. And with our history, we knew you wouldn’t consider us.”

After the Callahans moved out, Sinha and Gupta found nail holes and other damage everywhere throughout the house. There were light fixtures, curtain rods and speakers missing.

The couple estimates the financial nightmare cost them about $30,000 in savings. They had planned to invest that money in their two kids’ college savings plans. 

The home on Egret Circle is the last known address for the Callahans. No new eviction cases have surfaced since movers packed them up last December. 

“I’m still at a loss for words,” Sinha said. “How can something live like this for so long and get away with it?”

Nadia Amrani

Nadia Amrani moved out of her home on Locust Avenue in Worcester and rented a home in Shrewsbury so her three daughters could attend a better high school. The single mom planned to move back to Worcester after her daughters graduated, but needed to find a tenant to help pay the mortgage in the interim. 

When the Callahans came to look at the property, they had a packet of paperwork ready to go. They told Amrani they were thinking about buying a home and applying for a mortgage, so they’d already assembled the financial records for the bank.

“I thought they were just being proactive,” Amrani said. “Making things easier for me.”

The documents like credit reports and pay stubs all seemed legit, so Amrani offered the Callahans a rental agreement. She remembers Linda Callahan seeming relieved and in control once she handed her the keys. 

Amrani read us the text message she received from Linda Callahan once the lease was signed. Years later, the words take on an ominous tone. 

“Thank you so much for your decision on selecting my family,” the message said. “I understand the financial agreement to be met. We will respect your home as if it were our own. Enjoy your day. I know you just made ours great.”

Linda Callahan delayed providing a security deposit until closer to the move-in date, saying her mom was in the hospital having heart surgery. By the time the check bounced, the Callahans were already living in the home.

Amrani said the couple initially blamed problems with the IRS on the lack of funds. When weeks passed with no payment, Amrani went to the bank and discovered the account had been closed. 

“I started panicking,” Amrani said. “I couldn’t afford to pay the mortgage and the rent where I was living.”

Amrani hired an attorney and won an eviction at the end of 2019. She is thankful she got rid of the Callahans just before the COVID pandemic. That’s when the government implemented an eviction moratorium, and Amrani believes she would’ve lost her home. 

Once the rental payment problems surfaced, Amrani remembers looking up the Callahans in the housing court’s online system. She was stunned when she saw their extensive eviction history, a track record that was nowhere to be found in the documents they had provided in that first encounter.

“They need to pay for what they did,” she said. “Those people have been evicted over and over and over again. The system knows them. And nothing has been done.”

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Lorna McMurrey, 27, worked at Trulieve’s Holyoke facility. The NBC10 Investigators first told you about this tragic case in 2022. McMurrey was having trouble breathing and collapsed on the job while working with ground cannabis at Trulieve’s flower production facility.

In a meeting Thursday, the state’s Cannabis Control Commission found the company violated several safety regulations. Trulieve has agreed to pay a $350,000 fine.

Federal investigators say McMurrey died from occupational asthma due to exposure to ground cannabis.

Trulieve has defended its operations in the past. Commissioners said Trulieve cooperated with the investigation.

The business has since closed down its operations in Massachusetts.

NBC10 Boston reached out to Trulieve for comment but hasn’t heard back.

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Recent data for shelter exit rates show slight movement but it’s a very slow process.

The Joseph family is one of the lucky ones. They’ve moved out after living in a hotel since November 2022.

  “I’m very happy and feel good,” said Fenelus Joseph. The day marked a new chance at life.

For the past 19 months, Fenelus, his wife Gilene and their two children have called the cramped quarters of room 111 at the Baymont Inn in Kingston home.  The hotel is one of the dozens of emergency shelters in Massachusetts overburdened by the influx of migrant families.

Sue Giovanetti, who heads up the Plymouth Area Coalition for the Homeless, is contracted by the state to manage day-to-day living at the Baymont and to help families with resources to become independent.

“I think everyone’s doing their best to make this work and to be fair and equitable. We’re trying to do the very best we can, I believe, and it’s a huge challenge,” said Giovanetti.

The Joseph family is the first new arrival family to move out of the Baymont since the shelter opened its doors in October 2022. Giovanetti told us the greatest challenge is the length of time it takes families or individuals to get their socials and work authorizations. 

Getting those work authorizations is crucial to independence. Fenelus and Gilene both have jobs and qualified for up to $30,000 in assistance to help with rent during the next two years.

But there are thousands of families still struggling, with 7,500 in emergency shelters. State data shows hundreds more are in the pipeline with 798 on the waitlist as of May 30, 2022. Most are stuck in the system, with only 23% of the families that entered since September 2023 exiting emergency shelters. The projected costs have skyrocketed to $915 million in the upcoming fiscal year.

Previous coverage of the housing crisis

Massachusetts Aug 8, 2023

State regulation gone awry as housing crisis declared an emergency

Housing Mar 27, 2023

‘Where's My Home?' Families Housed in Hotels Struggle With No End to Housing Crisis in Sight

Democratic Se. John Velis serves on the Joint Committee on Housing. He told us the federal government needs step up on funding and work authorizations. Velis also believes the state should take a hard look at its right-to-shelter law which guarantees all homeless families shelter.

“I just don’t think it’s sustainable. That is my biggest concern right now, that the status quo without an exit strategy, without an offramp, is not sustainable. When does it end? When does the bleeding stop in terms of the amount of money that we’re spending on this program?”

Back in August 2023, Gov. Maura Healey declared a state of emergency over the state of the system, paired with the number of migrant families seeking assistance from the system.

“We’re doing what the state legislated in 1982,” Giovanetti said. There’s no question I think no one ever foresaw that it could go to this scale, so there has to be changes, there has to be adaptations, everything else has changed.”

Years after escaping the violence of their homeland, the Josephs’ belongings were loaded into a pickup truck, hauled a few miles down the road to a beautiful, state of the art apartment.  The living room was as big as the hotel room they lived in at the Baymont.  The apartment is a safe haven and key to a new beginning.

“I tell our staff all the time that we’re in the business of providing hope and when I looked at this young family today, it’s like oh my gosh, that’s really what it’s all about. It’s a whole new world for them,” said Giovanetti.

A case management stabilization team will follow the Joseph family to make sure their jobs are stable and bills are being paid during the next few years.

A spokesperson for the Healey-Driscoll administration told us the exit numbers have improved in recent months and their goal is to ensure that emergency shelter is temporary, supportive and non-recurring.  Stays in emergency shelter are now limited to nine months with some exceptions and extensions. The state is expected to begin sending out exit notices to families beginning in July.

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Some of those landlords are sharing their stories.

Mark Haskell 

In 2009, Mark Haskell and his family needed to move to a bigger home. Because the housing bubble had burst and the property on Shawnee Road in Worcester had lost value, he decided to rent the home instead of selling it. 

Haskell’s first tenant was a doctor who lived at the property with no problems.

The next time he listed it, the Callahans showed up. They came armed with a packet of pay stubs and credit reports. 

“They said all the right things,” Haskell said. “They were very relatable.”

In retrospect, Haskell said the only red flag was an urgency to get into the property as soon as possible, but he overlooked it at the time.

Upon returning from a business trip, Haskell received a call from the bank. The Callahans’ rental check had been written from a closed account. 

“There was a sinking feeling that something wasn’t right,” Haskell said. “I thought I had been scammed.”

Haskell said the couple made excuses about the money and tried to string him along as much as possible. After several months of paying both mortgages while supporting kids and juggling other bills, Haskell hired an attorney to begin the eviction process. 

The entire ordeal took about six months. On the eve of the eviction, there was still a last-minute plea from Russell Callahan about accessing funds from his work retirement account so he could stay in the property.

“We never meant for it to come to this point, believe me,” Haskell read from an email he received. “We very much enjoy living here. Please contact me at your earliest convenience to discuss. I want to work with you.”

After the eviction, Haskell said he received a call from a real estate agent who was listing a rental property. The Callahans had applied and the agent was checking with previous landlords. 

Haskell was able to help that property owner avoid the legal headache that he experienced. His judgment in housing court is for about $6,000, but he estimates his losses at closer to $10,000 with moving expenses and attorney fees.

Roughly 15 years later, Haskell shakes his head that the pattern continues. 

“I can’t believe they’re still up to this and the system allows it,” he said. “If you look at it as a whole, it’s a major scam.”

Tyler Lynch

In 2016, Tyler Lynch was a recent college graduate preparing for his first deployment with the Navy. 

Lynch decided to list his Jacksonville home for rent on Zillow. Before long, the Callahans contacted him to see the property. 

Lynch said they seemed like an “all-American couple” who asked questions about his collegiate football career and perhaps drinking a beer together at some point.

“They were the kind of people that you would expect a fun neighbor to be,” Lynch recalled. 

Shortly after Lynch deployed overseas, the Callahans moved into his home. Before long, they were late on the monthly rent. 

After Lynch sent a reminder about making a payment, he said Linda Callahan responded that her husband was in a horrible work accident and was on life support.

“I felt so bad about the situation, I sent flowers to the house,” Lynch said. 

More time passed and Lynch had still not received any rental payments. While dealing with limited cell service in a foreign country, Lynch finally managed to reach Russell Callahan on the phone.

During that conversation, Russell Callahan told him that he had not been in an accident. Instead, he blamed his wife for spending the rent money on other items and said the couple was getting a divorce.

Again, Lynch felt sympathy about the situation. But when more weeks passed with nothing but radio silence from the Callahans, reality hit.

“I have this house and I’m in a different country. I’m thinking, “What am I going to do?”” Lynch said. “I realized I made a horrible mistake.”

Lynch had to hire an attorney to assist with the eviction process during his deployment. He said the experience cost him about $10,000. 

Lynch, now a lieutenant commander with the Navy living in the Dallas area, was stunned when we contacted him eight years later about his landlord nightmare.

“The neighborly, welcoming people I first met, they’re just criminals,” he said. “They are cheating the system every way they can.”

Hayk Hovhannisyan

Hayk Hovhannisyan and his wife both lost their jobs at the beginning of 2018. Around the same time, the tenants at their Shrewsbury rental property also notified them that they were moving out. 

That’s why Hovhannisyan told us it was crucial to find new tenants and have the rental income to help support his two children.

During the open house, Linda Callahan seemed like the perfect prospective tenant.

“Suddenly, there’s this middle-aged, white, happy and trustworthy woman with all the paperwork in hand,” Hovhannisyan recalled. 

The Callahans were supposed to move in at the beginning of August, but asked if they could start their tenancy several days early. 

On the day they handed over the keys, Hovhannisyan said there were moving trucks at the property already loaded up with the Callahans’ possessions. In retrospect, he now realizes those trucks had come straight from the Callahans’ eviction at their previous rental property. 

Just like with other landlords, the first rental check bounced. Excuses followed about the IRS and the bank account being frozen.

Hovhannisyan eventually went to investigate at the bank branch. That’s when he learned the account from which the check was written had been closed for a long time. 

“These are professional con artists,” Hovyannisyan said. “I realized this is not some isolated thing. There are actually people who live like this.”

Like several other landlords we spoke with, Hovyannisyan believes he was targeted because he is an immigrant who is unfamiliar with the legal system and eviction process. 

He hired an attorney and discovered how long it can take to execute an eviction, even when the tenants are not paying a dime. 

On moving day, which landlords are required to pay under Massachusetts law, two trucks were not sufficient to load up all the Callahans’ items. Hovyannisyan had to call in a third truck to finish the job. 

When he entered the property for the first time after the eviction, he noticed the walls had been painted a different color. 

Hovyannisyan estimates the lost rent, moving expenses and attorney fees cost him about $13,000.

“Hopefully, they’ll end up in some nice jail,” he said. “Free housing. That’s what they’re looking for, yes? Free housing.”

Rory Mallaghan

The home on Jonathan Circle was the first property that Rory Mallaghan owned. When he and his wife moved to a new home in anticipation of having their first child, Mallaghan listed the property for rent on Zillow, hoping to find a tenant who would care for the home where he’d created so many memories. 

The Callahans showed up to get a tour of the property and Mallaghan remembers how they gave the impression they would really enjoy living in the space.

“Linda was so bubbly,” Mallaghan recalled. “Every nook of the house, she thought she could put certain things in certain places and everything would be fantastic.”

The couple said they were looking at several properties and already had a packet of paperwork available, including pay stubs, references and credit reports. 

The Callahans said they were helping with family in Shrewsbury and staying at a nearby hotel just to get some space. Mallaghan gave them a ride back to the hotel after the showing. 

Like other landlord encounters, a familiar series of events followed.

Upon returning from a work trip, Mallaghan discovered the Callahans’ rent checks had bounced. The couple first blamed a problem with the IRS, then described an issue withdrawing funds from a 401k account. 

“They always had an excuse of why the money wasn’t there and they were working on it,” Mallaghan said. “They just preyed on my forgiveness and compassion and were able to live there rent-free.”

When he finally ran out of patience, Mallaghan hired an attorney to start the eviction process. After eight months of receiving no rent, Mallaghan wrote an email to the Callahans, pleading with them not to delay any longer and leave the property. 

“We’ve come to terms we will never see that money. It was an expensive lesson,” he wrote. “We had plans to buy baby necessities. It’s a tough pill to swallow.”

Mallaghan was there when a constable showed up to execute the eviction and a moving company packed up possession. When he entered the home for the first time, everything was stripped from the walls, including the toilet paper holders.

He said the ordeal cost him about $20,000.

“They know what they’re doing,” Mallaghan said. “They are just taking people for a ride.”

Sitanshu Sinha and Shilpi Gupta

The home on Egret Circle in Shrewsbury was the first property Sitanshu Sinha and Shilpi Gupta purchased when they immigrated to the United States. The couple later decided to move to a larger home in town and rented the old property to several different tenants without incident. Then they listed it again in August 2023. 

Russell and Linda Callahan showed up to look at the home and said they were trying to get a loan to buy some land, so they had already assembled a credit report, background check and pay stubs for their bank. 

The documents they provided to Sinha and Gupta falsely listed the couple’s last name as “O’Callagham” to avoid detection. 

Before moving in, Linda Callahan said she thought the basement would be a perfect space to work on her art and craft projects, and asked if she could pay to have it carpeted. Sinha and Gupta thought it was a strange request from tenants and declined the offer. 

“That still sticks with me because of the way things turned out,” Gupta said. 

A couple of days after moving into the property, the checks bounced. The pattern of excuses followed, but Sinha said it did not seem like there was any urgency to get the payment situation resolved. 

The couple eventually realized they needed to get a lawyer because they started dipping into emergency savings to pay the mortgages on both properties. 

“It was very stressful on us financially,” Gupta said. 

At the eviction proceedings in housing court, Russell Callahan declined to answer questions from the judge. He would not even state his name under oath without legal representation, according to audio we obtained. 

“I don’t credit your testimony, sir,” the judge told Callahan. “I actually don’t credit anything you said. I find you to be evasive and not particularly forthcoming.”

When Sinha called a moving company to get an estimate, the employee asked for the names of the tenants being evicted. A couple minutes later, the employee said he could provide an exact quote because the moving company had already boxed up the Callahans’ possessions on multiple occasions. 

On the eve of the move, Linda Callahan made a final plea to stay in the house until after Christmas.

“I know you are very angry with us, and truthfully, we don’t blame you,” read a text message. “We falsified the documents because we wanted to rent from you. And with our history, we knew you wouldn’t consider us.”

After the Callahans moved out, Sinha and Gupta found nail holes and other damage everywhere throughout the house. There were light fixtures, curtain rods and speakers missing.

The couple estimates the financial nightmare cost them about $30,000 in savings. They had planned to invest that money in their two kids’ college savings plans. 

The home on Egret Circle is the last known address for the Callahans. No new eviction cases have surfaced since movers packed them up last December. 

“I’m still at a loss for words,” Sinha said. “How can something live like this for so long and get away with it?”

Nadia Amrani

Nadia Amrani moved out of her home on Locust Avenue in Worcester and rented a home in Shrewsbury so her three daughters could attend a better high school. The single mom planned to move back to Worcester after her daughters graduated, but needed to find a tenant to help pay the mortgage in the interim. 

When the Callahans came to look at the property, they had a packet of paperwork ready to go. They told Amrani they were thinking about buying a home and applying for a mortgage, so they’d already assembled the financial records for the bank.

“I thought they were just being proactive,” Amrani said. “Making things easier for me.”

The documents like credit reports and pay stubs all seemed legit, so Amrani offered the Callahans a rental agreement. She remembers Linda Callahan seeming relieved and in control once she handed her the keys. 

Amrani read us the text message she received from Linda Callahan once the lease was signed. Years later, the words take on an ominous tone. 

“Thank you so much for your decision on selecting my family,” the message said. “I understand the financial agreement to be met. We will respect your home as if it were our own. Enjoy your day. I know you just made ours great.”

Linda Callahan delayed providing a security deposit until closer to the move-in date, saying her mom was in the hospital having heart surgery. By the time the check bounced, the Callahans were already living in the home.

Amrani said the couple initially blamed problems with the IRS on the lack of funds. When weeks passed with no payment, Amrani went to the bank and discovered the account had been closed. 

“I started panicking,” Amrani said. “I couldn’t afford to pay the mortgage and the rent where I was living.”

Amrani hired an attorney and won an eviction at the end of 2019. She is thankful she got rid of the Callahans just before the COVID pandemic. That’s when the government implemented an eviction moratorium, and Amrani believes she would’ve lost her home. 

Once the rental payment problems surfaced, Amrani remembers looking up the Callahans in the housing court’s online system. She was stunned when she saw their extensive eviction history, a track record that was nowhere to be found in the documents they had provided in that first encounter.

“They need to pay for what they did,” she said. “Those people have been evicted over and over and over again. The system knows them. And nothing has been done.”

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The case involves Liam McNeil, a licensed nurse practitioner who had been moonlighting as a contractor running LHS Construction.

As we reported in April, customers accuse McNeil of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments, then trying to get the debts on the unfinished projects wiped away by bankruptcy.

Some of the alleged victims even include doctors and nurses who worked with McNeil.

“He pulled a fast one on me,” said Jen Rowan, a nurse who hired McNeil for a six-figure addition at her Weymouth home. “Where’s the money?”

Following our reporting, it turns out the U.S. Trustee is now asking a similar question.

According to a recent court filing, the U.S. Trustee is ordering McNeil to provide a list of financial records, including bank account statements and tax returns.

Have a tip for the NBC10 Investigators? Email us at tips@nbcboston.com.

The filing also indicates the federal government plans to depose McNeil and his wife. According to the DOJ, the initial review of documents provided by McNeil show “an intermingling of business, personal, and household funds.”

“They want to follow the money,” said bankruptcy attorney Joshua Burnett, who reviewed the court documents. “The question becomes, ‘What did you spend it on?’ Was it on personal things? Is it hiding somewhere? Is it under the proverbial mattress?”

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Burnett said the U.S. Trustee will pay particular attention to the weeks leading up to the bankruptcy filing, when several customers told us the contractor was still asking for and accepting payments on their projects.

“Most people don’t decide to wake up one day and decide to file bankruptcy,” Burnett said.

As we previously reported, McNeil struggled to provide specifics to customers about how he spent their funds during a recorded bankruptcy call with his creditors.

McNeil also said he did not decide to file bankruptcy until the night before he sent out letters to homeowners.

“Even two days before that, or a day before that, I really was pretty much oblivious to the fact that my company was egregiously failing financially,” McNeil said on the call.

Bankruptcy filings show McNeil owes somewhere between 50 to 100 people, including homeowners, subcontractors, vendors and former employees. The debts also include a slew of credit cards and lines of credit.

State records show McNeil incorporated the construction business in September 2021.

When we caught up to McNeil last month to get an explanation, he remained vague about what went wrong.

“I feel horrible about the whole thing. It’s not why I started a business,” McNeil said. “Just way in over my head, really. Just wasn’t good at it.”

Earlier this month, we discovered how McNeil’s father had an extremely similar scenario play out when he operated a contracting business while working as a Randolph firefighter.

We reached out to McNeil’s bankruptcy attorney, Marques Lipton, to ask about the added scrutiny from the U.S. Trustee.

“Mr. McNeil is fully cooperating with the US Trustee’s requests for additional information,” Lipton said. “I do not anticipate any subpoenas will be issued as Mr. McNeil has voluntarily provided the information requested.”

According to the filing, McNeil has to provide all documents by the end of next week. Both he and his wife are ordered to schedule their depositions in June.

A handful of people are filing legal challenges that their debts should not be discharged, including homeowners and former employees of LHS Construction.

If McNeil’s bankruptcy is denied, it means creditors could still try to collect on their debts. The U.S. Trustee’s investigation could also identify additional assets that could help pay people back.

“If you follow the money and it goes right where it should go, you don’t have anything to be worried about,” Burnett said. “But if you follow the money and it points toward you personally, then I think you do have something to worry about.”

Tyler Wenrich of Virginia was one of five Americans recently charged with possession of ammunition. All of them say they mistakenly brought the ammo along on vacation in their luggage.

It was a story first reported by NBC10 Boston’s consumer investigative reporter Leslie Gaydos, and she has followed every update.

Wenrich, 31, had his wife Jeriann, his father Michael and a coworker by his side as he headed to court Tuesday on Grand Turk for a sentencing hearing.

The Virginia dad and EMT was arrested on April 20  and charged with possession of ammunition after two 9mm rounds were found in his bag as he tried to reboard a Royal Caribbean Cruise after a beach excursion.

The judge sentenced him to time served and a $9,000 fine.

“I feel very just relieved away to have been lifted off my shoulders and my wife. And I’m glad that I get to go home and be with my son again,” Wenrich said.

Turks and Caicos Islands strict gun and ammunition law has a mandatory minimum sentence of 12 years. A judge was allowed to account for exceptional circumstances in Wenrich’s case, like character references and his work, to allow for a lesser sentence.

“It’s very emotional,” Wenrich said. “This is up and down as you go through everything. You don’t know if it’s going one way or the other as he’s reading through everything…I’m just relieved at the outcome.”

Wenrich spent almost two weeks in prison after his arrest before he was able to post bail.

“Prison was. It was terrible. I mean, I don’t have anything to compare it to, but, you know, I’ve said it before. In other interviews, the conditions were rough. Again, I don’t know how other prisons are, but it was it was emotional.   Not knowing where this was going to go, you know, just trying to get through each day and adapt.”

Wenrich has a flight booked to Richmond, Virginia on Thursday.

Wenrich’s case is one of several involving Americans arrested for having ammunition in baggage that have received national attention — they prompted new travel warnings from federal officials and a bipartisan congressional delegation met with officials in Turks and Caicos Islands last week to discuss the situation.

Ryan Watson of Oklahoma learned Tuesday that he will have to wait another three weeks before his case is heard on June 17. His sentencing is scheduled for June 21. Last week he spoke with NBC News about being detained on the island.

“It’s the weirdest thing to be in this beautiful backdrop where you see beaches and sand and palm trees and it’s now become my prison you know, hearing other families laughing and having fun.  It’s heartbreaking,” Watson said.

Florida resident Sharitta Grier, who was arrested after Mother’s Day weekend, will be back in court in July.

A fifth American, Michael Evans of Texas, is in the U.S. on bail. He has a sentencing hearing scheduled for June 18.

Last Friday, Bryan Hagerich of Pennsylvania received a suspended sentence in his case and paid a $6,700 fine before leaving Turks and Caicos. Hagerich was met by his kids at Pittsburgh Airport on Friday night.

The premier of Turks and Caicos Islands, C. Washington Misick, said the Hagerich’s sentencing represents justice being served.

“As we have said, The Firearms Act includes consideration for exceptional circumstances and today’s decision reflects our commitment to judicial independence along with upholding the law. Residents and visitors can be confident that the Turks and Caicos Islands are dedicated to safety and compassion as we protect the safety and rights of all,” he said in a statement.

He also said that islanders appreciate visitors: “I assure all travelers that the Turks and Caicos Islands prioritize hospitality, cultural exchange, and mutual respect. You will find our doors open and our hearts eager to share the warmth and beauty of our homeland. We highly value the trust and confidence travelers worldwide place in us when they choose the Turks and Caicos Islands as their destination.”

Misick has previously stated that exceptional circumstances in previous cases not involving Americans resulted in sentences under the 12-year minimum. The governor, Dileeni Daniel-Selvaratnam, said Americans are not targeted by the Turks and Caicos justice system.

Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin said on X that Wenrich’s release was another step in the right direction. The Republican said he encourages officials in TCI to address the unintended consequences of their law to prevent this from happening again.

More on the Turks and Caicos ammunition cases

May 21

US delegation efforts negotiation with Turks & Caicos officials over ammo law arrests

Travel May 20

‘Turned my whole life upside down': Fla. woman speaks after arrest in Turks and Caicos

Bryan Hagerich received a 52-week sentence that was suspended for 12 months, which essentially erases the sentence. He was also ordered to pay a $6,700 fine and will be free to leave for the U.S. upon paying it.

Hagerich’s case is one of several involving Americans arrested for having ammunition in baggage that have received national attention — they prompted new travel warnings from federal officials and a bipartisan congressional delegation met with officials in Turks and Caicos Islands (TCI) Monday to discuss the situation.

Hagerich hugged his wife and parents in court, and his lawyer said he could pay the fine. The hearing was dismissed with a warning from the judge that Hagerich should be more careful. It was followed by tears hugs and goodbyes outside.

“Overwhelming, just joy,” Hagerich said outside of court.  “This is what we’ve been waiting for for the last 101 days and to experience this here and eight short hours to be home and hug my kids, it’s the best day.”

“God is so good,” said his wife, Ashley Hagerich.  

“All of our prayers have been answered,” Hagerich added.

But there’s still more work to be done. Severa other Americans remain detained as they await the outcome of their cases.

“Well, obviously, you know we’ve set some precedent today.  My work, our work is not done until all of them get home,” said Hagerich.

 “ They’re our family, we love them and we can’t wait till they’re reunited with their families,” added Ashley.

Ryan Watson, who was arrested in April, and Sharitta Grier, who was charged earlier this month were in court and happy to see Hagerich’s outcome.

“Thankful, thankful, so happy,” said Grier.

“It gives me hope, you know. All Glory to God, you know, that’s for sure,” Watson said. “He was looking after Bryan today,” said Watson. 

“I think that you know, it’s gonna be hard seeing my brother go home, but I also have so much comfort knowing that he’s getting to hug his kids tonight. And that’s, man, I want that for him almost as bad as I want it for me. So I’m just so grateful that he gets to.”

The premier of Turks and Caicos Islands, C. Washington Misick, said the sentencing represents justice being served.

“As we have said, The Firearms Act includes consideration for exceptional circumstances and today’s decision reflects our commitment to judicial independence along with upholding the law. Residents and visitors can be confident that the Turks and Caicos Islands are dedicated to safety and compassion as we protect the safety and rights of all,” he said in a statement.

He also said that islanders appreciate visitors: “I assure all travelers that the Turks and Caicos Islands prioritize hospitality, cultural exchange, and mutual respect. You will find our doors open and our hearts eager to share the warmth and beauty of our homeland. We highly value the trust and confidence travelers worldwide place in us when they choose the Turks and Caicos Islands as their destination.”

Misick has previously stated that exceptional circumstances in previous cases not involving Americans resulted in sentences under the 12-year minimum. The governor, Dileeni Daniel-Selvaratnam, said Americans are not targeted by the Turks and Caicos justice system.

Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., said Friday in a statement that Hagerich’s suspended sentence “is great news.”

“When we met with TCI officials a few days ago, they made clear that they wanted this situation resolved. They recognized that Bryan and the other detained Americans are not gunrunners – they are just people who made a mistake. I’m grateful that the judge recognized that the right thing to do was to send Bryan home. I’m also grateful to the U.S. State Department which has been a critical partner in bringing Bryan home,” he said in a statement, adding that he hoped the other Americans’ cases would be expedited soon.

Congressman Guy Reschenthaler (R-PA) also released a statement:

“While I am overjoyed to see Bryan Hagerich will be returning to Pennsylvania and reuniting with his wife and two children, this terrifying situation should have never happened to him, or the four other Americans still awaiting sentencing. As the Turks and Caicos government works to handle future cases, the British territory must ensure the safety and wellbeing of U.S. tourists. I won’t rest until Americans can once again set foot on their islands without putting their livelihoods at risk.“

Hagerich, who played baseball professionally and was once drafted by the Florida Marlins, lives in Somerset, Pennsylvania, with his wife and two young kids. He spent eight days in prison before posting bail and later pleaded guilty, as have three other Americans: Tyler Wenrich, Ryan Watson, Michael Lee Evans.

Grier hadn’t entered a plea as of Thursday.

More on the Turks and Caicos ammunition cases

May 21

US delegation efforts negotiation with Turks & Caicos officials over ammo law arrests

Travel May 20

‘Turned my whole life upside down': Fla. woman speaks after arrest in Turks and Caicos

Tabatha Toy’s heart is forever broken. She says she’ll never get over the loss of her daughter, Tina, who died in March 2016 after being rushed to the emergency room at Good Samaritan Medical Center in Brockton.  Tina and her identical twin Jasmine were born with Down Syndrome but the little girls were thriving.

Toy brought Tina to the doctor because she wasn’t feeling well – she suffered a seizure and was in need of help.

“They took away my child. I can’t ever get her back. This is something I’ll feel for the rest of my life,” Toy said.

Tina’s medical records show she arrived at the Good Samaritan emergency room at 4:09 p.m. on March 25, 2016. She had a high fever, elevated heart rate, strep and had suffered a seizure. Her oxygen levels were dropping and she had swelling in her brain. 

Toy told us her daughter was having trouble breathing and after she was initially examined and given medication, the hospital staff ignored them.  She said her daughter would have an episode where her chest would lift off the bed that would trigger a monitor alarm but staff would just shut off the alarm and walk away.  

“I feel like we were just put to the side and forgot about. They didn’t either have time or whether they were too busy. I felt they didn’t care about my daughter,” Toy said.

The hospital’s policy at the time was to transfer any child under the age of 8 in need of inpatient care expeditiously to another hospital and to monitor the child closely while in the emergency room.

Tina’s family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Good Samaritan back in 2019 but the case has been delayed multiple times. 

Good Samaritan is a Steward Health Care facility.  The NBC10 Boston Investigators have discovered it’s one of a few hundred open civil cases against Steward and its affiliates filed in the past 10 years.  They include 12 wrongful death cases, medical malpractice cases, fraud and business-related lawsuits for non-payment of services, goods and rent.  All of the cases are on hold in the wake of Steward’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

More on the Steward Health Care crisis

May 17

Steward crisis could raise employer insurance costs, execs say

Massachusetts May 16

Steward outlines process to sell, auction hospitals

Steward Health Care May 15

Steward hospitals' ‘level of intensity of care' declining, doctor says

Attorney Kathryn Wickenheiser, who represents the Toy family said she is frustrated.

“This is a case that should have been resolved and this family should have answers and closure and I don’t know if that’s possible for them now.”

Wickenheiser said the staff in the emergency room at Good Samaritan that day back in 2016 was stretched thin and did little to help.

“These communities rely on Steward medical group and the disservice and what they’re doing to this community is just heartbreaking and it’s been building. And they’ve known it for a long time and they let it happen,” she said.

According to the lawsuit, the 4-year-old stopped breathing multiple times at Good Samaritan. The doctor said that could be because Tina’s tongue was larger than normal due to Down Syndrome and it may be falling back into her airway. That same doctor wrote that Tina was stable and finally ordered a transfer but it was too late. She was rushed to a Boston hospital three hours after being admitted to Good Samaritan. Tina had suffered major brain damage and was taken off life support the next day.  Her official cause of death was a viral upper respiratory infection complicated by MRSA pneumonia.

Toy is left with a hole in her heart. The grief is also deep for Tina’s twin Jasmine-who lost her playmate and best friend. Tabatha said she tells Jasmine that Tina loves her and is always watching over her.

“I want closure, I just want them to be held accountable for what they’ve done so they can’t hurt anybody anymore,” she told NBC10 Boston.

Tina’s case was set for mediation in September.  Her lawyer fears her family will never get justice. Steward denies the allegations in Tina’s case. A spokesperson had no comment on any of the civil cases impacted by the bankruptcy.

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“Chairman, I appreciate Mr. Secretary. Thanks for being here. Mr. Secretary. It’s my estimation that your department is just weak, it’s feckless. And at best, your department is incompetent,” said Reschenthaler, R-Pa.

Blinken was testifying before the committee Wednesday when Reschenthaler confronted him.  Reschenthaler was part of the bipartisan congressional delegation that met with officials in Turks and Caicos Monday in an effort to free the four Americans who are detained there on ammunition charges. All of them say they mistakenly brought ammunition in their luggage while on vacation.

The charge comes with a potential 12-year minimum prison sentence.

“They’ve been treated atrociously by a government that represents 60,000 people in a geography that has a landmass that’s roughly 2.5 size, the size of DC. This is not even a sovereign nation. It’s a protector to the British Empire or the UK and you can’t tell me that you can’t put a do not travel today on Turks and Caicos and bring the four Americans that still remain in Turks and Caicos home. It would take one order to bring four Americans home,” said Reschenthaler.

Reschenthaler said State Department officials did not contact his constituted Bryan Hagerich until two months into his detention. Hagerich is from Somerset, Pennsylvania, and was arrested in February.

Reschenthaler said State Department officials also didn’t visit Sharitta Grier, the latest American who was arrested after a Mother’s Day trip with her daughter. He told Blinken Grier was chained to a desk for three days and it was the other American detainees who brought her food, water and blankets.

“I’m just really baffled by again, the weakness and incompetence of your department. You can prove me wrong. Issue that do not travel to Turks and Caicos today. Bring the Americans home. I yield back,” said Reschenthaler.

“I welcome working with you on this and please bring the information forward to me,” Blinken responded. “We have a State Department and extraordinary men and women who every single day are working to get arbitrarily detained Americans back home with their families and loved ones.”

“We’ve had more success in this administration and doing that than in any previous administration….. we brought Americans home from all over the world. And it’s our number one priority,” said Blinken “I will apologize to no one for the efforts that our people make every day to help Americans who are in jeopardy anywhere around the world.”

The State Department has previously apologized to the family of Michael Grim, an American man who was sentenced to eight months in prison on Turks and Caicos Islands last year for possession of ammunition, for the handling of his case.

In an interview Tuesday, Reschenthaler said the Turks and Caicos government is targeting Americans. He added that a 12-year mandatory minimum is unheard of for a case where there was no intent to break the law.

American Tyler Wenrich, who was charged last month pleaded guilty Tuesday and the judge indicated a decision will be delivered within seven days.

Hagerich will be sentenced on Friday. The judge could hand down a sentence of anything from time served to 12 years minimum in prison.

Turks and Caicos Islands Premier C. Washington Misick has stated that exceptional circumstances in previous cases not involving Americans resulted in sentences under the 12-year minimum. The governor, Dileeni Daniel-Selvaratnam, said Americans are not targeted by the Turks and Caicos justice system.

The Turks and Caicos attorney general and the director of public prosecutions issued a statement last month saying the islands’ firearm ordinance “requires the Supreme Court to impose a mandatory minimum sentence and fine for certain firearm offenses, except in circumstances where the court finds that there are exceptional circumstances….”

The statement went on to add that there have been five separate cases within a two-year period where the Supreme Court on the islands has found exceptional circumstances. Four of the offenders were fined and one was given a custodial sentence below the mandatory minimum.

May 21

US delegation efforts negotiation with Turks & Caicos officials over ammo law arrests

Travel May 20

‘Turned my whole life upside down': Fla. woman speaks after arrest in Turks and Caicos

The American tourists have been arrested and charged with possession of ammunition after vacationing on the islands of Turks and Caicos. Four are currently detained on the islands waiting to learn their fate. They all face a potential minimum of 12 years in prison for possession of bullets that were found during routine security checks as they tried to depart from the islands.

One of the American tourists in Turks and Caicos charged with possession of ammunition will be sentenced this week.

The island government confirmed meeting with the U.S. Congressional delegation, issuing a release saying in part:

“The Governor and the Premier confirmed – as per the constitutional separation of the executive and judicial branches – they cannot intervene nor comment on ongoing legal cases before the courts. They explained that the Turks and Caicos Islands have clear laws prohibiting the possession of firearms and/or ammunition and strict penalties are in place to serve and protect all who reside and visit the Turks and Caicos Islands.

The Hon. Attorney General confirmed possession of firearm and/or ammunition offences carry a mandatory minimum custodial sentence of twelve years plus a fine.

Where the court finds there are exceptional circumstances, the sentencing judge does have discretion, under the law, to impose a custodial sentence and a fine that are fair and just in the circumstances of each case rather than impose the mandatory minimum. Noting that it is for defence counsel to ensure all relevant information is put before the court.
The UK Governments Foreign Commonwealth and Development

Office representative who was in attendance at the meeting affirmed that the UK Government cannot comment or intervene in an ongoing legal case and that as  British Overseas Territory, the UK have full confidence in the operation of the courts of the Turks and Caicos Islands.“

You can read the entire release here: https://gov.tc/pressoffice/latest/us-congressional-delegation

Michael Evans of Texas, Bryan Hagerich of Pennsylvania, Ryan Watson of Oklahoma,  Tyler Wenrich of Virginia and Sharitta Shinese Grier of Florida have all been charged under the island’s ammunition law. They all say the ammunition found was accidentally left in their luggage.   

Among the group of lawmakers who made the trip was Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, who posted:

“I’ve just returned from leading a bipartisan CODEL to Turks & Caicos where we met with TCI government officials to discuss the five Americans being detained on the islands, including Oklahoman Ryan Watson.  We went in respectful of their sovereignty, and with an open mind looking to find common ground.  Unfortunately, despite our willingness to work with Turks & Caicos officials to get our constituents home, we were not able to find a path forward today. At this point, well-intentioned American citizens are facing a dozen years in prison all for unknowingly having one or two bullets in their luggage.  The unintended consequences of TCI’s law have been at the expense of well-intentioned American tourists, including a grandmother, who had no intention of breaking the law.  We will stay at the table through this process until the issue is resolved.  With two hearings on the docket this week, I remain hopeful.  Should they receive a prison sentence, we will need to consider additional actions to safeguard American Citizens.“

Republican Rep.Josh Brecheen of Oklahoma also posted on X:

“Our comments to Turks and Caicos officials were diplomatic, but also to the point. I reiterated that with Turks and Caicos’ economy being 65 percent based on tourism, and with 80 percent of that coming from the United States, it is in their interest to ensure justice prevails. We were emphatic that it would be unfathomable for five Americans, including Oklahoma’s own Ryan Watson, to face 12 years in prison for accidentally leaving a handful of shells in their luggage. I shared my position with the Attorney General and the Premier that a modification of their law seems to be the only way to reverse the message of fear their actions have instilled in US tourists and that there must be just outcomes with the pending cases. With sentences for the five Americans to be announced in the days ahead, we shall see whether justice prevails.  If not, America must respond appropriately, using every economic tool in our toolbox.“

Republican Rep. Bob Good of Virginia said on X: 

“This past weekend, I met with my constituent Tyler Wenrich and other Americans who are currently being detained in Turks and Caicos after ammunition was allegedly found in their luggage.  My colleagues and I are very concerned about consequences of recent legal changes that have already resulted in multiple American tourists being arrested, charged, and threatened with lengthy prison sentences for accidental and non-threatening offenses.

We had a productive visit with Turks and Caicos government officials and business leaders who understand the economic impact of U.S. visitors to their islands, and we hope it will result in positive outcomes as Tyler’s next hearing is tomorrow.  As his congressman, I will continue to do everything in my power to see him reunited with his family in Virginia.“

And Democrat Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania posted:

“We made the trip to Turks and Caicos to meet with officials and facilitate the return of five American citizens being held because they inadvertently had ammunition in their luggage – including one Pennsylvanian,  Bryan Hagerich.

We had the opportunity to meet each of the detained Americans, who were in good spirits but want to go home. These people did not set out to break the law. They are people who made a mistake and now face substantial time in prison because of it.  As we articulated to TCI officials, I urge the court to be lenient when addressing this case.

I would like to thank the TCI officials who met with us. I left these meetings optimistic that we can get this resolved and look forward to working with my colleagues in Congress and TCI officials to bring these American citizens home to their families.“

Tyler Wenrich, who was charged last month as he was trying to reboard a cruise ship after a day excursion, was in court Tuesday for a sentencing hearing. The judge indicated a decision will be delivered within seven days.

Bryan Hagerich, who was arrested in February after a family vacation on the island will be sentenced on Friday. 

Whichever decision is delivered first will likely set precedent for the others. The judge could hand down a sentence of anything from time served to 12 years in prison.

The Turks and Caicos Attorney General and the Director of Public Prosecutions issued a statement on last month saying the islands’ firearm ordinance “requires the Supreme Court to impose a mandatory minimum sentence and fine for certain firearm offenses, except in circumstances where the court finds that there are exceptional circumstances….”

The statement went on to add that there have been five separate cases within a two-year period where the Supreme Court on the islands have found exceptional circumstances. Four of the offenders were fined and one was given custodial sentence below the mandatory minimum.

More on the Americans arrested in Turks and Caicos

Travel May 20

‘Turned my whole life upside down': Fla. woman speaks after arrest in Turks and Caicos

May 8

US tourist describes ‘nightmare' after arrest in Turks and Caicos

Travel Apr 24

Mother's warning after son's 8-month Turks and Caicos prison sentence: ‘It's not behind us'

“This is a nightmare I never would imagine in a million. Trillion years. Me? Not me,” Sharitta Shinese Grier told NBC10 Boston.

“I would have never imagined this to happen to me, you know. I’m missing my grandkids, my children. I got a whole life, a loving family back home,” she added.

Grier said she was enjoying her first trip to Turks and Caicos for Mother’s Day weekend with her daughters but it ended badly.

“The day turned my whole life upside down. Just that quick.”

Grier was arrested at the airport on May 13 after security at the Howard Hamilton Airport in Providenciales found two bullets in her luggage.

“It was an honest mistake it fell up under the bottom of the flap in my carry on,” said Grier. “There was no way possible that I could see it because it’s a flap in the bottom. They took the bottom of the flap out the bag. That’s where the two rounds was in the bottom of that flap. So, it’s no way that I would of knew or seen them in there.”

Grier said she works as a store manager and has a gun for protection that she has kept in that bag in the past. She said TSA in Orlando searched her carry-on before she left and confiscated her lotion and body spray but did not catch the ammunition.

“They dropped the ball they failed me because if they would have been it would have never went this far.  It would have never went this far,” said Grier.

We reached out to TSA about the missed ammunition.  A TSA Spokesperson tells us:

“TSA takes its security mission very seriously. Ammunition is prohibited in carry-on bags and passengers are responsible for the contents of their luggage. TSA acknowledged that four rounds of ammunition were missed at Will Rogers World Airport in Oklahoma City. TSA is aware of the situation and is gathering information to look into the matter further; however, there is not enough information available to us about the screening date, time and location at Orlando International Airport to make a determination.

TSA is here to protect our transportation security systems, and we encourage passengers to start packing with an empty bag to ensure against unintentionally traveling to a checkpoint with prohibited items. Additionally, when traveling internationally, travelers need to be aware of local laws. 

We also strongly recommend that individuals do not bring their firing range bags to the airport when they travel.

For additional information, please contact the State Department and law enforcement officials in Turks.”

Grier is charged with one count of possession of ammunition.  She said the most trouble she’s ever been in with the law is a speeding ticket, and said the other Americans facing charges in TCI and their families have been a godsend. They have even visited her in jail.

“I started praying, you know, I said, God, I know you real. I said, what you got to show me, you got to show me a sign that I’m gonna be all right,” said Grier.

“And before I could wipe my eyes, I hear her. Miss Susan, at the front. I heard her say, oh, I’m here to check on Sharitta. And I’m saying to myself. Who is that? Because I don’t know nobody here and don’t nobody know me. Who is it? You know, she came back there when she came back and she had tears in her eyes. And I started crying and she hugged me,” Grier told Gaydos. “I’m going to be OK. We’re going to get through this together.”

Grier is now staying with Bryan Hagerich of Pennsylvania, Ryan Watson of Oklahoma and Watson’s mother Susan and stepfather. Hagerich, Watson and Tyler Wenrich of Virginia are all detained on the island facing ammunition charges and a possible minimum 12-year prison sentence under TCI’s strict gun and ammunition laws.

“I would have never imagined this to happen to me, you know. I’m missing my grandkids, my children. I got a whole life, a loving family back home,” said Grier. “I just want all of us, everybody that’s all being involved in this situation,  I just want all of us to make it home, back home safely. Let us go home to our families.”

Grier is out on bail, her next court hearing is July 5. She has not entered a plea in her case. Wenrich will be in court tomorrow for a plea hearing and oral arguments in his case and will be sentenced by May 28. Hagerich and Watson have pleaded guilty. Hagerich is scheduled to be sentenced May 24. Watson will be back in court next month.

The Turks and Caicos government has not responded to NBC 10 Boston’s request for comment on the most recent cases.

The governors of Pennsylvania, Oklahoma and Virginia sent a letter to the governor of Turks and Caicos last week asking her to reconsider the charges against Hagerich, Wenrich and Watson.

The letter reads, in part,  “We understand and appreciate the critical importance of upholding the laws and regulations of your territory for the protection of your citizens.  We humbly ask that your government – in its wisdom – temper justice with mercy and recognize that these men made mistakes but had no apparent malicious intent.”

The Turks and Caicos Sun paper reported last week, “The Governor’s office said Governor Daniel-Selvaratnam confirmed to Governor Stitt that she cannot comment on or get involved in an ongoing legal case and it is for legal counsel to ensure all relevant information regarding Watson’s case is presented to the court for appropriate consideration.” 

The Turks and Caicos attorney general and the director of public prosecutions issued a statement last month saying the islands’ firearm ordinance “requires the Supreme Court to impose a mandatory minimum sentence and fine for certain firearm offenses, except in circumstances where the court finds that there are exceptional circumstances….”

The statement went on to add that there have been five separate cases within a two-year period where the Supreme Court on the islands found exceptional circumstances. Four of the offenders were fined and one was given a custodial sentence below the mandatory minimum.

More coverage of Americans charged under the Turks and Caicos ammunition law

Florida May 17

Florida woman becomes 5th US tourist arrested in Turks and Caicos over ammo in luggage

May 8

US tourist describes ‘nightmare' after arrest in Turks and Caicos

May 2

US State Department apologizes to mother of American imprisoned in Turks and Caicos

Some of those landlords are sharing their stories.

Mark Haskell 

In 2009, Mark Haskell and his family needed to move to a bigger home. Because the housing bubble had burst and the property on Shawnee Road in Worcester had lost value, he decided to rent the home instead of selling it. 

Haskell’s first tenant was a doctor who lived at the property with no problems.

The next time he listed it, the Callahans showed up. They came armed with a packet of pay stubs and credit reports. 

“They said all the right things,” Haskell said. “They were very relatable.”

In retrospect, Haskell said the only red flag was an urgency to get into the property as soon as possible, but he overlooked it at the time.

Upon returning from a business trip, Haskell received a call from the bank. The Callahans’ rental check had been written from a closed account. 

“There was a sinking feeling that something wasn’t right,” Haskell said. “I thought I had been scammed.”

Haskell said the couple made excuses about the money and tried to string him along as much as possible. After several months of paying both mortgages while supporting kids and juggling other bills, Haskell hired an attorney to begin the eviction process. 

The entire ordeal took about six months. On the eve of the eviction, there was still a last-minute plea from Russell Callahan about accessing funds from his work retirement account so he could stay in the property.

“We never meant for it to come to this point, believe me,” Haskell read from an email he received. “We very much enjoy living here. Please contact me at your earliest convenience to discuss. I want to work with you.”

After the eviction, Haskell said he received a call from a real estate agent who was listing a rental property. The Callahans had applied and the agent was checking with previous landlords. 

Haskell was able to help that property owner avoid the legal headache that he experienced. His judgment in housing court is for about $6,000, but he estimates his losses at closer to $10,000 with moving expenses and attorney fees.

Roughly 15 years later, Haskell shakes his head that the pattern continues. 

“I can’t believe they’re still up to this and the system allows it,” he said. “If you look at it as a whole, it’s a major scam.”

Tyler Lynch

In 2016, Tyler Lynch was a recent college graduate preparing for his first deployment with the Navy. 

Lynch decided to list his Jacksonville home for rent on Zillow. Before long, the Callahans contacted him to see the property. 

Lynch said they seemed like an “all-American couple” who asked questions about his collegiate football career and perhaps drinking a beer together at some point.

“They were the kind of people that you would expect a fun neighbor to be,” Lynch recalled. 

Shortly after Lynch deployed overseas, the Callahans moved into his home. Before long, they were late on the monthly rent. 

After Lynch sent a reminder about making a payment, he said Linda Callahan responded that her husband was in a horrible work accident and was on life support.

“I felt so bad about the situation, I sent flowers to the house,” Lynch said. 

More time passed and Lynch had still not received any rental payments. While dealing with limited cell service in a foreign country, Lynch finally managed to reach Russell Callahan on the phone.

During that conversation, Russell Callahan told him that he had not been in an accident. Instead, he blamed his wife for spending the rent money on other items and said the couple was getting a divorce.

Again, Lynch felt sympathy about the situation. But when more weeks passed with nothing but radio silence from the Callahans, reality hit.

“I have this house and I’m in a different country. I’m thinking, “What am I going to do?”” Lynch said. “I realized I made a horrible mistake.”

Lynch had to hire an attorney to assist with the eviction process during his deployment. He said the experience cost him about $10,000. 

Lynch, now a lieutenant commander with the Navy living in the Dallas area, was stunned when we contacted him eight years later about his landlord nightmare.

“The neighborly, welcoming people I first met, they’re just criminals,” he said. “They are cheating the system every way they can.”

Hayk Hovhannisyan

Hayk Hovhannisyan and his wife both lost their jobs at the beginning of 2018. Around the same time, the tenants at their Shrewsbury rental property also notified them that they were moving out. 

That’s why Hovhannisyan told us it was crucial to find new tenants and have the rental income to help support his two children.

During the open house, Linda Callahan seemed like the perfect prospective tenant.

“Suddenly, there’s this middle-aged, white, happy and trustworthy woman with all the paperwork in hand,” Hovhannisyan recalled. 

The Callahans were supposed to move in at the beginning of August, but asked if they could start their tenancy several days early. 

On the day they handed over the keys, Hovhannisyan said there were moving trucks at the property already loaded up with the Callahans’ possessions. In retrospect, he now realizes those trucks had come straight from the Callahans’ eviction at their previous rental property. 

Just like with other landlords, the first rental check bounced. Excuses followed about the IRS and the bank account being frozen.

Hovhannisyan eventually went to investigate at the bank branch. That’s when he learned the account from which the check was written had been closed for a long time. 

“These are professional con artists,” Hovyannisyan said. “I realized this is not some isolated thing. There are actually people who live like this.”

Like several other landlords we spoke with, Hovyannisyan believes he was targeted because he is an immigrant who is unfamiliar with the legal system and eviction process. 

He hired an attorney and discovered how long it can take to execute an eviction, even when the tenants are not paying a dime. 

On moving day, which landlords are required to pay under Massachusetts law, two trucks were not sufficient to load up all the Callahans’ items. Hovyannisyan had to call in a third truck to finish the job. 

When he entered the property for the first time after the eviction, he noticed the walls had been painted a different color. 

Hovyannisyan estimates the lost rent, moving expenses and attorney fees cost him about $13,000.

“Hopefully, they’ll end up in some nice jail,” he said. “Free housing. That’s what they’re looking for, yes? Free housing.”

Rory Mallaghan

The home on Jonathan Circle was the first property that Rory Mallaghan owned. When he and his wife moved to a new home in anticipation of having their first child, Mallaghan listed the property for rent on Zillow, hoping to find a tenant who would care for the home where he’d created so many memories. 

The Callahans showed up to get a tour of the property and Mallaghan remembers how they gave the impression they would really enjoy living in the space.

“Linda was so bubbly,” Mallaghan recalled. “Every nook of the house, she thought she could put certain things in certain places and everything would be fantastic.”

The couple said they were looking at several properties and already had a packet of paperwork available, including pay stubs, references and credit reports. 

The Callahans said they were helping with family in Shrewsbury and staying at a nearby hotel just to get some space. Mallaghan gave them a ride back to the hotel after the showing. 

Like other landlord encounters, a familiar series of events followed.

Upon returning from a work trip, Mallaghan discovered the Callahans’ rent checks had bounced. The couple first blamed a problem with the IRS, then described an issue withdrawing funds from a 401k account. 

“They always had an excuse of why the money wasn’t there and they were working on it,” Mallaghan said. “They just preyed on my forgiveness and compassion and were able to live there rent-free.”

When he finally ran out of patience, Mallaghan hired an attorney to start the eviction process. After eight months of receiving no rent, Mallaghan wrote an email to the Callahans, pleading with them not to delay any longer and leave the property. 

“We’ve come to terms we will never see that money. It was an expensive lesson,” he wrote. “We had plans to buy baby necessities. It’s a tough pill to swallow.”

Mallaghan was there when a constable showed up to execute the eviction and a moving company packed up possession. When he entered the home for the first time, everything was stripped from the walls, including the toilet paper holders.

He said the ordeal cost him about $20,000.

“They know what they’re doing,” Mallaghan said. “They are just taking people for a ride.”

Sitanshu Sinha and Shilpi Gupta

The home on Egret Circle in Shrewsbury was the first property Sitanshu Sinha and Shilpi Gupta purchased when they immigrated to the United States. The couple later decided to move to a larger home in town and rented the old property to several different tenants without incident. Then they listed it again in August 2023. 

Russell and Linda Callahan showed up to look at the home and said they were trying to get a loan to buy some land, so they had already assembled a credit report, background check and pay stubs for their bank. 

The documents they provided to Sinha and Gupta falsely listed the couple’s last name as “O’Callagham” to avoid detection. 

Before moving in, Linda Callahan said she thought the basement would be a perfect space to work on her art and craft projects, and asked if she could pay to have it carpeted. Sinha and Gupta thought it was a strange request from tenants and declined the offer. 

“That still sticks with me because of the way things turned out,” Gupta said. 

A couple of days after moving into the property, the checks bounced. The pattern of excuses followed, but Sinha said it did not seem like there was any urgency to get the payment situation resolved. 

The couple eventually realized they needed to get a lawyer because they started dipping into emergency savings to pay the mortgages on both properties. 

“It was very stressful on us financially,” Gupta said. 

At the eviction proceedings in housing court, Russell Callahan declined to answer questions from the judge. He would not even state his name under oath without legal representation, according to audio we obtained. 

“I don’t credit your testimony, sir,” the judge told Callahan. “I actually don’t credit anything you said. I find you to be evasive and not particularly forthcoming.”

When Sinha called a moving company to get an estimate, the employee asked for the names of the tenants being evicted. A couple minutes later, the employee said he could provide an exact quote because the moving company had already boxed up the Callahans’ possessions on multiple occasions. 

On the eve of the move, Linda Callahan made a final plea to stay in the house until after Christmas.

“I know you are very angry with us, and truthfully, we don’t blame you,” read a text message. “We falsified the documents because we wanted to rent from you. And with our history, we knew you wouldn’t consider us.”

After the Callahans moved out, Sinha and Gupta found nail holes and other damage everywhere throughout the house. There were light fixtures, curtain rods and speakers missing.

The couple estimates the financial nightmare cost them about $30,000 in savings. They had planned to invest that money in their two kids’ college savings plans. 

The home on Egret Circle is the last known address for the Callahans. No new eviction cases have surfaced since movers packed them up last December. 

“I’m still at a loss for words,” Sinha said. “How can something live like this for so long and get away with it?”

Nadia Amrani

Nadia Amrani moved out of her home on Locust Avenue in Worcester and rented a home in Shrewsbury so her three daughters could attend a better high school. The single mom planned to move back to Worcester after her daughters graduated, but needed to find a tenant to help pay the mortgage in the interim. 

When the Callahans came to look at the property, they had a packet of paperwork ready to go. They told Amrani they were thinking about buying a home and applying for a mortgage, so they’d already assembled the financial records for the bank.

“I thought they were just being proactive,” Amrani said. “Making things easier for me.”

The documents like credit reports and pay stubs all seemed legit, so Amrani offered the Callahans a rental agreement. She remembers Linda Callahan seeming relieved and in control once she handed her the keys. 

Amrani read us the text message she received from Linda Callahan once the lease was signed. Years later, the words take on an ominous tone. 

“Thank you so much for your decision on selecting my family,” the message said. “I understand the financial agreement to be met. We will respect your home as if it were our own. Enjoy your day. I know you just made ours great.”

Linda Callahan delayed providing a security deposit until closer to the move-in date, saying her mom was in the hospital having heart surgery. By the time the check bounced, the Callahans were already living in the home.

Amrani said the couple initially blamed problems with the IRS on the lack of funds. When weeks passed with no payment, Amrani went to the bank and discovered the account had been closed. 

“I started panicking,” Amrani said. “I couldn’t afford to pay the mortgage and the rent where I was living.”

Amrani hired an attorney and won an eviction at the end of 2019. She is thankful she got rid of the Callahans just before the COVID pandemic. That’s when the government implemented an eviction moratorium, and Amrani believes she would’ve lost her home. 

Once the rental payment problems surfaced, Amrani remembers looking up the Callahans in the housing court’s online system. She was stunned when she saw their extensive eviction history, a track record that was nowhere to be found in the documents they had provided in that first encounter.

“They need to pay for what they did,” she said. “Those people have been evicted over and over and over again. The system knows them. And nothing has been done.”

More from the NBC10 Investigators

To Catch a Contractor Jul 31

‘A civil matter': Does Mass. law need to change to hold bad contractors criminally accountable?

Scams Jul 29

How police got a Bitcoin ATM scam victim's money back

Some of those landlords are sharing their stories.

Mark Haskell 

In 2009, Mark Haskell and his family needed to move to a bigger home. Because the housing bubble had burst and the property on Shawnee Road in Worcester had lost value, he decided to rent the home instead of selling it. 

Haskell’s first tenant was a doctor who lived at the property with no problems.

The next time he listed it, the Callahans showed up. They came armed with a packet of pay stubs and credit reports. 

“They said all the right things,” Haskell said. “They were very relatable.”

In retrospect, Haskell said the only red flag was an urgency to get into the property as soon as possible, but he overlooked it at the time.

Upon returning from a business trip, Haskell received a call from the bank. The Callahans’ rental check had been written from a closed account. 

“There was a sinking feeling that something wasn’t right,” Haskell said. “I thought I had been scammed.”

Haskell said the couple made excuses about the money and tried to string him along as much as possible. After several months of paying both mortgages while supporting kids and juggling other bills, Haskell hired an attorney to begin the eviction process. 

The entire ordeal took about six months. On the eve of the eviction, there was still a last-minute plea from Russell Callahan about accessing funds from his work retirement account so he could stay in the property.

“We never meant for it to come to this point, believe me,” Haskell read from an email he received. “We very much enjoy living here. Please contact me at your earliest convenience to discuss. I want to work with you.”

After the eviction, Haskell said he received a call from a real estate agent who was listing a rental property. The Callahans had applied and the agent was checking with previous landlords. 

Haskell was able to help that property owner avoid the legal headache that he experienced. His judgment in housing court is for about $6,000, but he estimates his losses at closer to $10,000 with moving expenses and attorney fees.

Roughly 15 years later, Haskell shakes his head that the pattern continues. 

“I can’t believe they’re still up to this and the system allows it,” he said. “If you look at it as a whole, it’s a major scam.”

Tyler Lynch

In 2016, Tyler Lynch was a recent college graduate preparing for his first deployment with the Navy. 

Lynch decided to list his Jacksonville home for rent on Zillow. Before long, the Callahans contacted him to see the property. 

Lynch said they seemed like an “all-American couple” who asked questions about his collegiate football career and perhaps drinking a beer together at some point.

“They were the kind of people that you would expect a fun neighbor to be,” Lynch recalled. 

Shortly after Lynch deployed overseas, the Callahans moved into his home. Before long, they were late on the monthly rent. 

After Lynch sent a reminder about making a payment, he said Linda Callahan responded that her husband was in a horrible work accident and was on life support.

“I felt so bad about the situation, I sent flowers to the house,” Lynch said. 

More time passed and Lynch had still not received any rental payments. While dealing with limited cell service in a foreign country, Lynch finally managed to reach Russell Callahan on the phone.

During that conversation, Russell Callahan told him that he had not been in an accident. Instead, he blamed his wife for spending the rent money on other items and said the couple was getting a divorce.

Again, Lynch felt sympathy about the situation. But when more weeks passed with nothing but radio silence from the Callahans, reality hit.

“I have this house and I’m in a different country. I’m thinking, “What am I going to do?”” Lynch said. “I realized I made a horrible mistake.”

Lynch had to hire an attorney to assist with the eviction process during his deployment. He said the experience cost him about $10,000. 

Lynch, now a lieutenant commander with the Navy living in the Dallas area, was stunned when we contacted him eight years later about his landlord nightmare.

“The neighborly, welcoming people I first met, they’re just criminals,” he said. “They are cheating the system every way they can.”

Hayk Hovhannisyan

Hayk Hovhannisyan and his wife both lost their jobs at the beginning of 2018. Around the same time, the tenants at their Shrewsbury rental property also notified them that they were moving out. 

That’s why Hovhannisyan told us it was crucial to find new tenants and have the rental income to help support his two children.

During the open house, Linda Callahan seemed like the perfect prospective tenant.

“Suddenly, there’s this middle-aged, white, happy and trustworthy woman with all the paperwork in hand,” Hovhannisyan recalled. 

The Callahans were supposed to move in at the beginning of August, but asked if they could start their tenancy several days early. 

On the day they handed over the keys, Hovhannisyan said there were moving trucks at the property already loaded up with the Callahans’ possessions. In retrospect, he now realizes those trucks had come straight from the Callahans’ eviction at their previous rental property. 

Just like with other landlords, the first rental check bounced. Excuses followed about the IRS and the bank account being frozen.

Hovhannisyan eventually went to investigate at the bank branch. That’s when he learned the account from which the check was written had been closed for a long time. 

“These are professional con artists,” Hovyannisyan said. “I realized this is not some isolated thing. There are actually people who live like this.”

Like several other landlords we spoke with, Hovyannisyan believes he was targeted because he is an immigrant who is unfamiliar with the legal system and eviction process. 

He hired an attorney and discovered how long it can take to execute an eviction, even when the tenants are not paying a dime. 

On moving day, which landlords are required to pay under Massachusetts law, two trucks were not sufficient to load up all the Callahans’ items. Hovyannisyan had to call in a third truck to finish the job. 

When he entered the property for the first time after the eviction, he noticed the walls had been painted a different color. 

Hovyannisyan estimates the lost rent, moving expenses and attorney fees cost him about $13,000.

“Hopefully, they’ll end up in some nice jail,” he said. “Free housing. That’s what they’re looking for, yes? Free housing.”

Rory Mallaghan

The home on Jonathan Circle was the first property that Rory Mallaghan owned. When he and his wife moved to a new home in anticipation of having their first child, Mallaghan listed the property for rent on Zillow, hoping to find a tenant who would care for the home where he’d created so many memories. 

The Callahans showed up to get a tour of the property and Mallaghan remembers how they gave the impression they would really enjoy living in the space.

“Linda was so bubbly,” Mallaghan recalled. “Every nook of the house, she thought she could put certain things in certain places and everything would be fantastic.”

The couple said they were looking at several properties and already had a packet of paperwork available, including pay stubs, references and credit reports. 

The Callahans said they were helping with family in Shrewsbury and staying at a nearby hotel just to get some space. Mallaghan gave them a ride back to the hotel after the showing. 

Like other landlord encounters, a familiar series of events followed.

Upon returning from a work trip, Mallaghan discovered the Callahans’ rent checks had bounced. The couple first blamed a problem with the IRS, then described an issue withdrawing funds from a 401k account. 

“They always had an excuse of why the money wasn’t there and they were working on it,” Mallaghan said. “They just preyed on my forgiveness and compassion and were able to live there rent-free.”

When he finally ran out of patience, Mallaghan hired an attorney to start the eviction process. After eight months of receiving no rent, Mallaghan wrote an email to the Callahans, pleading with them not to delay any longer and leave the property. 

“We’ve come to terms we will never see that money. It was an expensive lesson,” he wrote. “We had plans to buy baby necessities. It’s a tough pill to swallow.”

Mallaghan was there when a constable showed up to execute the eviction and a moving company packed up possession. When he entered the home for the first time, everything was stripped from the walls, including the toilet paper holders.

He said the ordeal cost him about $20,000.

“They know what they’re doing,” Mallaghan said. “They are just taking people for a ride.”

Sitanshu Sinha and Shilpi Gupta

The home on Egret Circle in Shrewsbury was the first property Sitanshu Sinha and Shilpi Gupta purchased when they immigrated to the United States. The couple later decided to move to a larger home in town and rented the old property to several different tenants without incident. Then they listed it again in August 2023. 

Russell and Linda Callahan showed up to look at the home and said they were trying to get a loan to buy some land, so they had already assembled a credit report, background check and pay stubs for their bank. 

The documents they provided to Sinha and Gupta falsely listed the couple’s last name as “O’Callagham” to avoid detection. 

Before moving in, Linda Callahan said she thought the basement would be a perfect space to work on her art and craft projects, and asked if she could pay to have it carpeted. Sinha and Gupta thought it was a strange request from tenants and declined the offer. 

“That still sticks with me because of the way things turned out,” Gupta said. 

A couple of days after moving into the property, the checks bounced. The pattern of excuses followed, but Sinha said it did not seem like there was any urgency to get the payment situation resolved. 

The couple eventually realized they needed to get a lawyer because they started dipping into emergency savings to pay the mortgages on both properties. 

“It was very stressful on us financially,” Gupta said. 

At the eviction proceedings in housing court, Russell Callahan declined to answer questions from the judge. He would not even state his name under oath without legal representation, according to audio we obtained. 

“I don’t credit your testimony, sir,” the judge told Callahan. “I actually don’t credit anything you said. I find you to be evasive and not particularly forthcoming.”

When Sinha called a moving company to get an estimate, the employee asked for the names of the tenants being evicted. A couple minutes later, the employee said he could provide an exact quote because the moving company had already boxed up the Callahans’ possessions on multiple occasions. 

On the eve of the move, Linda Callahan made a final plea to stay in the house until after Christmas.

“I know you are very angry with us, and truthfully, we don’t blame you,” read a text message. “We falsified the documents because we wanted to rent from you. And with our history, we knew you wouldn’t consider us.”

After the Callahans moved out, Sinha and Gupta found nail holes and other damage everywhere throughout the house. There were light fixtures, curtain rods and speakers missing.

The couple estimates the financial nightmare cost them about $30,000 in savings. They had planned to invest that money in their two kids’ college savings plans. 

The home on Egret Circle is the last known address for the Callahans. No new eviction cases have surfaced since movers packed them up last December. 

“I’m still at a loss for words,” Sinha said. “How can something live like this for so long and get away with it?”

Nadia Amrani

Nadia Amrani moved out of her home on Locust Avenue in Worcester and rented a home in Shrewsbury so her three daughters could attend a better high school. The single mom planned to move back to Worcester after her daughters graduated, but needed to find a tenant to help pay the mortgage in the interim. 

When the Callahans came to look at the property, they had a packet of paperwork ready to go. They told Amrani they were thinking about buying a home and applying for a mortgage, so they’d already assembled the financial records for the bank.

“I thought they were just being proactive,” Amrani said. “Making things easier for me.”

The documents like credit reports and pay stubs all seemed legit, so Amrani offered the Callahans a rental agreement. She remembers Linda Callahan seeming relieved and in control once she handed her the keys. 

Amrani read us the text message she received from Linda Callahan once the lease was signed. Years later, the words take on an ominous tone. 

“Thank you so much for your decision on selecting my family,” the message said. “I understand the financial agreement to be met. We will respect your home as if it were our own. Enjoy your day. I know you just made ours great.”

Linda Callahan delayed providing a security deposit until closer to the move-in date, saying her mom was in the hospital having heart surgery. By the time the check bounced, the Callahans were already living in the home.

Amrani said the couple initially blamed problems with the IRS on the lack of funds. When weeks passed with no payment, Amrani went to the bank and discovered the account had been closed. 

“I started panicking,” Amrani said. “I couldn’t afford to pay the mortgage and the rent where I was living.”

Amrani hired an attorney and won an eviction at the end of 2019. She is thankful she got rid of the Callahans just before the COVID pandemic. That’s when the government implemented an eviction moratorium, and Amrani believes she would’ve lost her home. 

Once the rental payment problems surfaced, Amrani remembers looking up the Callahans in the housing court’s online system. She was stunned when she saw their extensive eviction history, a track record that was nowhere to be found in the documents they had provided in that first encounter.

“They need to pay for what they did,” she said. “Those people have been evicted over and over and over again. The system knows them. And nothing has been done.”

More from the NBC10 Investigators

To Catch a Contractor Jul 31

‘A civil matter': Does Mass. law need to change to hold bad contractors criminally accountable?

Scams Jul 29

How police got a Bitcoin ATM scam victim's money back

Sharitta Shinise Grier, 45, was in court today for the first time since her arrest on Monday. She is facing a possible 12-year prison sentence under TCI’s guns and ammunition law, but judges can consider exceptional circumstances.

Grier was arrested as she tried to board her flight home after a routine search at the Howard Hamilton Airport in Providenciales.

Michael Lee Evans of Texas, Bryan Hagerich of Pennsylvania, Ryan Watson of Oklahoma and Tyler Wenrich of Virginia have all been charged with possession of ammunition offenses under TCI’s strict firearms ordinances.

“The fact that this continues to happen is. It’s nothing short of heartbreaking,” Watson told NBC10 Boston on Thursday.

Watson and Hagerich said they are doing what they can to help Grier navigate the charges and secure bond. Hagerich attended her court hearing on Thursday.

“Just to be a support system. You know, obviously there’s nothing I can say or do that will make sure her family feel any better right now,” Hagerich said.

“But just having gone through this, you know, the more support, from the outside and the inside. And just to know that we’re all in this together. You know, our goal is, you know, to join hands and walk off here together,” he added.

They said Grier was not aware of the other arrests of Americans on the islands before she vacationed there.

“My mother has been the one that’s gone back to see her in jail. My mother has been the one that has delivered, all the food and the clothing and blankets and pillows and, been there to pray with her. So we feel like, you know, given that she’s a female, just having another female there, would be comforting to her,” said Watson.

U.S. Senator Rick Scott of Florida posted on X asking why any American would travel to Turks and Caicos. Scott also called on the U.S. State Department to update its travel advisory and demand the release of Americans. The Turks and Caicos government has not responded to NBC10 Boston’s request for comment on the most recent cases.

The Turks and Caicos Sun paper reported on Monday, “The Governor’s office said Governor Daniel-Selvaratnam confirmed to Governor Stitt that she cannot comment on or get involved in an ongoing legal case and it is for legal counsel to ensure all relevant information regarding Watson’s case is presented to the court for appropriate consideration.” 

Wenrich and Grier have not entered please in their cases yet. Wenrich will be in court next Tuesday for a plea hearing and oral arguments in his case. Sentencing for Wenrich is expected by May 28. Hagerich is scheduled to be sentenced on May 29. Watson and Evans have court dates in June.

The Turks and Caicos attorney general and the director of public prosecutions issued a statement last month saying the islands’ firearm ordinance “requires the Supreme Court to impose a mandatory minimum sentence and fine for certain firearm offenses, except in circumstances where the court finds that there are exceptional circumstances….”

The statement went on to add that there have been five separate cases within a two-year period where the Supreme Court on the islands found exceptional circumstances; four of the offenders were fined and one was given a custodial sentence below the mandatory minimum.

More coverage of firearms laws in Turks and Caicos

Travel May 14

Another visitor has been arrested in Turks and Caicos for ammunition possession

May 8

US tourist describes ‘nightmare' after arrest in Turks and Caicos

May 3

American dad awaits sentencing in Turks and Caicos ammo case

Some of those landlords are sharing their stories.

Mark Haskell 

In 2009, Mark Haskell and his family needed to move to a bigger home. Because the housing bubble had burst and the property on Shawnee Road in Worcester had lost value, he decided to rent the home instead of selling it. 

Haskell’s first tenant was a doctor who lived at the property with no problems.

The next time he listed it, the Callahans showed up. They came armed with a packet of pay stubs and credit reports. 

“They said all the right things,” Haskell said. “They were very relatable.”

In retrospect, Haskell said the only red flag was an urgency to get into the property as soon as possible, but he overlooked it at the time.

Upon returning from a business trip, Haskell received a call from the bank. The Callahans’ rental check had been written from a closed account. 

“There was a sinking feeling that something wasn’t right,” Haskell said. “I thought I had been scammed.”

Haskell said the couple made excuses about the money and tried to string him along as much as possible. After several months of paying both mortgages while supporting kids and juggling other bills, Haskell hired an attorney to begin the eviction process. 

The entire ordeal took about six months. On the eve of the eviction, there was still a last-minute plea from Russell Callahan about accessing funds from his work retirement account so he could stay in the property.

“We never meant for it to come to this point, believe me,” Haskell read from an email he received. “We very much enjoy living here. Please contact me at your earliest convenience to discuss. I want to work with you.”

After the eviction, Haskell said he received a call from a real estate agent who was listing a rental property. The Callahans had applied and the agent was checking with previous landlords. 

Haskell was able to help that property owner avoid the legal headache that he experienced. His judgment in housing court is for about $6,000, but he estimates his losses at closer to $10,000 with moving expenses and attorney fees.

Roughly 15 years later, Haskell shakes his head that the pattern continues. 

“I can’t believe they’re still up to this and the system allows it,” he said. “If you look at it as a whole, it’s a major scam.”

Tyler Lynch

In 2016, Tyler Lynch was a recent college graduate preparing for his first deployment with the Navy. 

Lynch decided to list his Jacksonville home for rent on Zillow. Before long, the Callahans contacted him to see the property. 

Lynch said they seemed like an “all-American couple” who asked questions about his collegiate football career and perhaps drinking a beer together at some point.

“They were the kind of people that you would expect a fun neighbor to be,” Lynch recalled. 

Shortly after Lynch deployed overseas, the Callahans moved into his home. Before long, they were late on the monthly rent. 

After Lynch sent a reminder about making a payment, he said Linda Callahan responded that her husband was in a horrible work accident and was on life support.

“I felt so bad about the situation, I sent flowers to the house,” Lynch said. 

More time passed and Lynch had still not received any rental payments. While dealing with limited cell service in a foreign country, Lynch finally managed to reach Russell Callahan on the phone.

During that conversation, Russell Callahan told him that he had not been in an accident. Instead, he blamed his wife for spending the rent money on other items and said the couple was getting a divorce.

Again, Lynch felt sympathy about the situation. But when more weeks passed with nothing but radio silence from the Callahans, reality hit.

“I have this house and I’m in a different country. I’m thinking, “What am I going to do?”” Lynch said. “I realized I made a horrible mistake.”

Lynch had to hire an attorney to assist with the eviction process during his deployment. He said the experience cost him about $10,000. 

Lynch, now a lieutenant commander with the Navy living in the Dallas area, was stunned when we contacted him eight years later about his landlord nightmare.

“The neighborly, welcoming people I first met, they’re just criminals,” he said. “They are cheating the system every way they can.”

Hayk Hovhannisyan

Hayk Hovhannisyan and his wife both lost their jobs at the beginning of 2018. Around the same time, the tenants at their Shrewsbury rental property also notified them that they were moving out. 

That’s why Hovhannisyan told us it was crucial to find new tenants and have the rental income to help support his two children.

During the open house, Linda Callahan seemed like the perfect prospective tenant.

“Suddenly, there’s this middle-aged, white, happy and trustworthy woman with all the paperwork in hand,” Hovhannisyan recalled. 

The Callahans were supposed to move in at the beginning of August, but asked if they could start their tenancy several days early. 

On the day they handed over the keys, Hovhannisyan said there were moving trucks at the property already loaded up with the Callahans’ possessions. In retrospect, he now realizes those trucks had come straight from the Callahans’ eviction at their previous rental property. 

Just like with other landlords, the first rental check bounced. Excuses followed about the IRS and the bank account being frozen.

Hovhannisyan eventually went to investigate at the bank branch. That’s when he learned the account from which the check was written had been closed for a long time. 

“These are professional con artists,” Hovyannisyan said. “I realized this is not some isolated thing. There are actually people who live like this.”

Like several other landlords we spoke with, Hovyannisyan believes he was targeted because he is an immigrant who is unfamiliar with the legal system and eviction process. 

He hired an attorney and discovered how long it can take to execute an eviction, even when the tenants are not paying a dime. 

On moving day, which landlords are required to pay under Massachusetts law, two trucks were not sufficient to load up all the Callahans’ items. Hovyannisyan had to call in a third truck to finish the job. 

When he entered the property for the first time after the eviction, he noticed the walls had been painted a different color. 

Hovyannisyan estimates the lost rent, moving expenses and attorney fees cost him about $13,000.

“Hopefully, they’ll end up in some nice jail,” he said. “Free housing. That’s what they’re looking for, yes? Free housing.”

Rory Mallaghan

The home on Jonathan Circle was the first property that Rory Mallaghan owned. When he and his wife moved to a new home in anticipation of having their first child, Mallaghan listed the property for rent on Zillow, hoping to find a tenant who would care for the home where he’d created so many memories. 

The Callahans showed up to get a tour of the property and Mallaghan remembers how they gave the impression they would really enjoy living in the space.

“Linda was so bubbly,” Mallaghan recalled. “Every nook of the house, she thought she could put certain things in certain places and everything would be fantastic.”

The couple said they were looking at several properties and already had a packet of paperwork available, including pay stubs, references and credit reports. 

The Callahans said they were helping with family in Shrewsbury and staying at a nearby hotel just to get some space. Mallaghan gave them a ride back to the hotel after the showing. 

Like other landlord encounters, a familiar series of events followed.

Upon returning from a work trip, Mallaghan discovered the Callahans’ rent checks had bounced. The couple first blamed a problem with the IRS, then described an issue withdrawing funds from a 401k account. 

“They always had an excuse of why the money wasn’t there and they were working on it,” Mallaghan said. “They just preyed on my forgiveness and compassion and were able to live there rent-free.”

When he finally ran out of patience, Mallaghan hired an attorney to start the eviction process. After eight months of receiving no rent, Mallaghan wrote an email to the Callahans, pleading with them not to delay any longer and leave the property. 

“We’ve come to terms we will never see that money. It was an expensive lesson,” he wrote. “We had plans to buy baby necessities. It’s a tough pill to swallow.”

Mallaghan was there when a constable showed up to execute the eviction and a moving company packed up possession. When he entered the home for the first time, everything was stripped from the walls, including the toilet paper holders.

He said the ordeal cost him about $20,000.

“They know what they’re doing,” Mallaghan said. “They are just taking people for a ride.”

Sitanshu Sinha and Shilpi Gupta

The home on Egret Circle in Shrewsbury was the first property Sitanshu Sinha and Shilpi Gupta purchased when they immigrated to the United States. The couple later decided to move to a larger home in town and rented the old property to several different tenants without incident. Then they listed it again in August 2023. 

Russell and Linda Callahan showed up to look at the home and said they were trying to get a loan to buy some land, so they had already assembled a credit report, background check and pay stubs for their bank. 

The documents they provided to Sinha and Gupta falsely listed the couple’s last name as “O’Callagham” to avoid detection. 

Before moving in, Linda Callahan said she thought the basement would be a perfect space to work on her art and craft projects, and asked if she could pay to have it carpeted. Sinha and Gupta thought it was a strange request from tenants and declined the offer. 

“That still sticks with me because of the way things turned out,” Gupta said. 

A couple of days after moving into the property, the checks bounced. The pattern of excuses followed, but Sinha said it did not seem like there was any urgency to get the payment situation resolved. 

The couple eventually realized they needed to get a lawyer because they started dipping into emergency savings to pay the mortgages on both properties. 

“It was very stressful on us financially,” Gupta said. 

At the eviction proceedings in housing court, Russell Callahan declined to answer questions from the judge. He would not even state his name under oath without legal representation, according to audio we obtained. 

“I don’t credit your testimony, sir,” the judge told Callahan. “I actually don’t credit anything you said. I find you to be evasive and not particularly forthcoming.”

When Sinha called a moving company to get an estimate, the employee asked for the names of the tenants being evicted. A couple minutes later, the employee said he could provide an exact quote because the moving company had already boxed up the Callahans’ possessions on multiple occasions. 

On the eve of the move, Linda Callahan made a final plea to stay in the house until after Christmas.

“I know you are very angry with us, and truthfully, we don’t blame you,” read a text message. “We falsified the documents because we wanted to rent from you. And with our history, we knew you wouldn’t consider us.”

After the Callahans moved out, Sinha and Gupta found nail holes and other damage everywhere throughout the house. There were light fixtures, curtain rods and speakers missing.

The couple estimates the financial nightmare cost them about $30,000 in savings. They had planned to invest that money in their two kids’ college savings plans. 

The home on Egret Circle is the last known address for the Callahans. No new eviction cases have surfaced since movers packed them up last December. 

“I’m still at a loss for words,” Sinha said. “How can something live like this for so long and get away with it?”

Nadia Amrani

Nadia Amrani moved out of her home on Locust Avenue in Worcester and rented a home in Shrewsbury so her three daughters could attend a better high school. The single mom planned to move back to Worcester after her daughters graduated, but needed to find a tenant to help pay the mortgage in the interim. 

When the Callahans came to look at the property, they had a packet of paperwork ready to go. They told Amrani they were thinking about buying a home and applying for a mortgage, so they’d already assembled the financial records for the bank.

“I thought they were just being proactive,” Amrani said. “Making things easier for me.”

The documents like credit reports and pay stubs all seemed legit, so Amrani offered the Callahans a rental agreement. She remembers Linda Callahan seeming relieved and in control once she handed her the keys. 

Amrani read us the text message she received from Linda Callahan once the lease was signed. Years later, the words take on an ominous tone. 

“Thank you so much for your decision on selecting my family,” the message said. “I understand the financial agreement to be met. We will respect your home as if it were our own. Enjoy your day. I know you just made ours great.”

Linda Callahan delayed providing a security deposit until closer to the move-in date, saying her mom was in the hospital having heart surgery. By the time the check bounced, the Callahans were already living in the home.

Amrani said the couple initially blamed problems with the IRS on the lack of funds. When weeks passed with no payment, Amrani went to the bank and discovered the account had been closed. 

“I started panicking,” Amrani said. “I couldn’t afford to pay the mortgage and the rent where I was living.”

Amrani hired an attorney and won an eviction at the end of 2019. She is thankful she got rid of the Callahans just before the COVID pandemic. That’s when the government implemented an eviction moratorium, and Amrani believes she would’ve lost her home. 

Once the rental payment problems surfaced, Amrani remembers looking up the Callahans in the housing court’s online system. She was stunned when she saw their extensive eviction history, a track record that was nowhere to be found in the documents they had provided in that first encounter.

“They need to pay for what they did,” she said. “Those people have been evicted over and over and over again. The system knows them. And nothing has been done.”

More from the NBC10 Investigators

To Catch a Contractor Jul 31

‘A civil matter': Does Mass. law need to change to hold bad contractors criminally accountable?

Scams Jul 29

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Some of those landlords are sharing their stories.

Mark Haskell 

In 2009, Mark Haskell and his family needed to move to a bigger home. Because the housing bubble had burst and the property on Shawnee Road in Worcester had lost value, he decided to rent the home instead of selling it. 

Haskell’s first tenant was a doctor who lived at the property with no problems.

The next time he listed it, the Callahans showed up. They came armed with a packet of pay stubs and credit reports. 

“They said all the right things,” Haskell said. “They were very relatable.”

In retrospect, Haskell said the only red flag was an urgency to get into the property as soon as possible, but he overlooked it at the time.

Upon returning from a business trip, Haskell received a call from the bank. The Callahans’ rental check had been written from a closed account. 

“There was a sinking feeling that something wasn’t right,” Haskell said. “I thought I had been scammed.”

Haskell said the couple made excuses about the money and tried to string him along as much as possible. After several months of paying both mortgages while supporting kids and juggling other bills, Haskell hired an attorney to begin the eviction process. 

The entire ordeal took about six months. On the eve of the eviction, there was still a last-minute plea from Russell Callahan about accessing funds from his work retirement account so he could stay in the property.

“We never meant for it to come to this point, believe me,” Haskell read from an email he received. “We very much enjoy living here. Please contact me at your earliest convenience to discuss. I want to work with you.”

After the eviction, Haskell said he received a call from a real estate agent who was listing a rental property. The Callahans had applied and the agent was checking with previous landlords. 

Haskell was able to help that property owner avoid the legal headache that he experienced. His judgment in housing court is for about $6,000, but he estimates his losses at closer to $10,000 with moving expenses and attorney fees.

Roughly 15 years later, Haskell shakes his head that the pattern continues. 

“I can’t believe they’re still up to this and the system allows it,” he said. “If you look at it as a whole, it’s a major scam.”

Tyler Lynch

In 2016, Tyler Lynch was a recent college graduate preparing for his first deployment with the Navy. 

Lynch decided to list his Jacksonville home for rent on Zillow. Before long, the Callahans contacted him to see the property. 

Lynch said they seemed like an “all-American couple” who asked questions about his collegiate football career and perhaps drinking a beer together at some point.

“They were the kind of people that you would expect a fun neighbor to be,” Lynch recalled. 

Shortly after Lynch deployed overseas, the Callahans moved into his home. Before long, they were late on the monthly rent. 

After Lynch sent a reminder about making a payment, he said Linda Callahan responded that her husband was in a horrible work accident and was on life support.

“I felt so bad about the situation, I sent flowers to the house,” Lynch said. 

More time passed and Lynch had still not received any rental payments. While dealing with limited cell service in a foreign country, Lynch finally managed to reach Russell Callahan on the phone.

During that conversation, Russell Callahan told him that he had not been in an accident. Instead, he blamed his wife for spending the rent money on other items and said the couple was getting a divorce.

Again, Lynch felt sympathy about the situation. But when more weeks passed with nothing but radio silence from the Callahans, reality hit.

“I have this house and I’m in a different country. I’m thinking, “What am I going to do?”” Lynch said. “I realized I made a horrible mistake.”

Lynch had to hire an attorney to assist with the eviction process during his deployment. He said the experience cost him about $10,000. 

Lynch, now a lieutenant commander with the Navy living in the Dallas area, was stunned when we contacted him eight years later about his landlord nightmare.

“The neighborly, welcoming people I first met, they’re just criminals,” he said. “They are cheating the system every way they can.”

Hayk Hovhannisyan

Hayk Hovhannisyan and his wife both lost their jobs at the beginning of 2018. Around the same time, the tenants at their Shrewsbury rental property also notified them that they were moving out. 

That’s why Hovhannisyan told us it was crucial to find new tenants and have the rental income to help support his two children.

During the open house, Linda Callahan seemed like the perfect prospective tenant.

“Suddenly, there’s this middle-aged, white, happy and trustworthy woman with all the paperwork in hand,” Hovhannisyan recalled. 

The Callahans were supposed to move in at the beginning of August, but asked if they could start their tenancy several days early. 

On the day they handed over the keys, Hovhannisyan said there were moving trucks at the property already loaded up with the Callahans’ possessions. In retrospect, he now realizes those trucks had come straight from the Callahans’ eviction at their previous rental property. 

Just like with other landlords, the first rental check bounced. Excuses followed about the IRS and the bank account being frozen.

Hovhannisyan eventually went to investigate at the bank branch. That’s when he learned the account from which the check was written had been closed for a long time. 

“These are professional con artists,” Hovyannisyan said. “I realized this is not some isolated thing. There are actually people who live like this.”

Like several other landlords we spoke with, Hovyannisyan believes he was targeted because he is an immigrant who is unfamiliar with the legal system and eviction process. 

He hired an attorney and discovered how long it can take to execute an eviction, even when the tenants are not paying a dime. 

On moving day, which landlords are required to pay under Massachusetts law, two trucks were not sufficient to load up all the Callahans’ items. Hovyannisyan had to call in a third truck to finish the job. 

When he entered the property for the first time after the eviction, he noticed the walls had been painted a different color. 

Hovyannisyan estimates the lost rent, moving expenses and attorney fees cost him about $13,000.

“Hopefully, they’ll end up in some nice jail,” he said. “Free housing. That’s what they’re looking for, yes? Free housing.”

Rory Mallaghan

The home on Jonathan Circle was the first property that Rory Mallaghan owned. When he and his wife moved to a new home in anticipation of having their first child, Mallaghan listed the property for rent on Zillow, hoping to find a tenant who would care for the home where he’d created so many memories. 

The Callahans showed up to get a tour of the property and Mallaghan remembers how they gave the impression they would really enjoy living in the space.

“Linda was so bubbly,” Mallaghan recalled. “Every nook of the house, she thought she could put certain things in certain places and everything would be fantastic.”

The couple said they were looking at several properties and already had a packet of paperwork available, including pay stubs, references and credit reports. 

The Callahans said they were helping with family in Shrewsbury and staying at a nearby hotel just to get some space. Mallaghan gave them a ride back to the hotel after the showing. 

Like other landlord encounters, a familiar series of events followed.

Upon returning from a work trip, Mallaghan discovered the Callahans’ rent checks had bounced. The couple first blamed a problem with the IRS, then described an issue withdrawing funds from a 401k account. 

“They always had an excuse of why the money wasn’t there and they were working on it,” Mallaghan said. “They just preyed on my forgiveness and compassion and were able to live there rent-free.”

When he finally ran out of patience, Mallaghan hired an attorney to start the eviction process. After eight months of receiving no rent, Mallaghan wrote an email to the Callahans, pleading with them not to delay any longer and leave the property. 

“We’ve come to terms we will never see that money. It was an expensive lesson,” he wrote. “We had plans to buy baby necessities. It’s a tough pill to swallow.”

Mallaghan was there when a constable showed up to execute the eviction and a moving company packed up possession. When he entered the home for the first time, everything was stripped from the walls, including the toilet paper holders.

He said the ordeal cost him about $20,000.

“They know what they’re doing,” Mallaghan said. “They are just taking people for a ride.”

Sitanshu Sinha and Shilpi Gupta

The home on Egret Circle in Shrewsbury was the first property Sitanshu Sinha and Shilpi Gupta purchased when they immigrated to the United States. The couple later decided to move to a larger home in town and rented the old property to several different tenants without incident. Then they listed it again in August 2023. 

Russell and Linda Callahan showed up to look at the home and said they were trying to get a loan to buy some land, so they had already assembled a credit report, background check and pay stubs for their bank. 

The documents they provided to Sinha and Gupta falsely listed the couple’s last name as “O’Callagham” to avoid detection. 

Before moving in, Linda Callahan said she thought the basement would be a perfect space to work on her art and craft projects, and asked if she could pay to have it carpeted. Sinha and Gupta thought it was a strange request from tenants and declined the offer. 

“That still sticks with me because of the way things turned out,” Gupta said. 

A couple of days after moving into the property, the checks bounced. The pattern of excuses followed, but Sinha said it did not seem like there was any urgency to get the payment situation resolved. 

The couple eventually realized they needed to get a lawyer because they started dipping into emergency savings to pay the mortgages on both properties. 

“It was very stressful on us financially,” Gupta said. 

At the eviction proceedings in housing court, Russell Callahan declined to answer questions from the judge. He would not even state his name under oath without legal representation, according to audio we obtained. 

“I don’t credit your testimony, sir,” the judge told Callahan. “I actually don’t credit anything you said. I find you to be evasive and not particularly forthcoming.”

When Sinha called a moving company to get an estimate, the employee asked for the names of the tenants being evicted. A couple minutes later, the employee said he could provide an exact quote because the moving company had already boxed up the Callahans’ possessions on multiple occasions. 

On the eve of the move, Linda Callahan made a final plea to stay in the house until after Christmas.

“I know you are very angry with us, and truthfully, we don’t blame you,” read a text message. “We falsified the documents because we wanted to rent from you. And with our history, we knew you wouldn’t consider us.”

After the Callahans moved out, Sinha and Gupta found nail holes and other damage everywhere throughout the house. There were light fixtures, curtain rods and speakers missing.

The couple estimates the financial nightmare cost them about $30,000 in savings. They had planned to invest that money in their two kids’ college savings plans. 

The home on Egret Circle is the last known address for the Callahans. No new eviction cases have surfaced since movers packed them up last December. 

“I’m still at a loss for words,” Sinha said. “How can something live like this for so long and get away with it?”

Nadia Amrani

Nadia Amrani moved out of her home on Locust Avenue in Worcester and rented a home in Shrewsbury so her three daughters could attend a better high school. The single mom planned to move back to Worcester after her daughters graduated, but needed to find a tenant to help pay the mortgage in the interim. 

When the Callahans came to look at the property, they had a packet of paperwork ready to go. They told Amrani they were thinking about buying a home and applying for a mortgage, so they’d already assembled the financial records for the bank.

“I thought they were just being proactive,” Amrani said. “Making things easier for me.”

The documents like credit reports and pay stubs all seemed legit, so Amrani offered the Callahans a rental agreement. She remembers Linda Callahan seeming relieved and in control once she handed her the keys. 

Amrani read us the text message she received from Linda Callahan once the lease was signed. Years later, the words take on an ominous tone. 

“Thank you so much for your decision on selecting my family,” the message said. “I understand the financial agreement to be met. We will respect your home as if it were our own. Enjoy your day. I know you just made ours great.”

Linda Callahan delayed providing a security deposit until closer to the move-in date, saying her mom was in the hospital having heart surgery. By the time the check bounced, the Callahans were already living in the home.

Amrani said the couple initially blamed problems with the IRS on the lack of funds. When weeks passed with no payment, Amrani went to the bank and discovered the account had been closed. 

“I started panicking,” Amrani said. “I couldn’t afford to pay the mortgage and the rent where I was living.”

Amrani hired an attorney and won an eviction at the end of 2019. She is thankful she got rid of the Callahans just before the COVID pandemic. That’s when the government implemented an eviction moratorium, and Amrani believes she would’ve lost her home. 

Once the rental payment problems surfaced, Amrani remembers looking up the Callahans in the housing court’s online system. She was stunned when she saw their extensive eviction history, a track record that was nowhere to be found in the documents they had provided in that first encounter.

“They need to pay for what they did,” she said. “Those people have been evicted over and over and over again. The system knows them. And nothing has been done.”

More from the NBC10 Investigators

To Catch a Contractor Jul 31

‘A civil matter': Does Mass. law need to change to hold bad contractors criminally accountable?

Scams Jul 29

How police got a Bitcoin ATM scam victim's money back

The island’s police force confirmed the most recent arrest. Two island media outlets are reporting it was an American woman, though police did not confirm that detail.  This would be the fifth American detained there on possession of ammunition charges in the past six months and it comes as Tyler Wenrich – one of the Americans currently detained on the island on the same charges — was in court.

Wenrich was in court Monday. His father tells NBC10 Boston the judge said he had received a practice and direction order from the chief justice with an expedited timeline for the case.

Written arguments in the case will be submitted within seven days and oral arguments and a plea hearing are now scheduled for next Tuesday.   Sentencing for Wenrich could happen next week or by May 28 at the latest.

Wenrich was arrested on April 20.  He was a passenger on board a Royal Caribbean cruise ship and had been on a day excursion on Grand Turk.  Royal Caribbean security found two bullets in his bag as he reboarded the ship and turned him over to TCI authorities.

In comparison, the cases of Americans Michael Lee Evans of Texas, who was arrested in December, Bryan Hagerich of Pennsylvania who was charged in February and Ryan Watson of Oklahoma who was arrested in early April are still ongoing. NBC10 Boston was the first to break the story of Watson and Hagerich’s detainment.

The Wenrichs were not given an explanation for why the case is being expedited.

Hagerich is scheduled to be sentenced on May 29 and Watson’s next court date is June 7.

Evans is facing a sentencing hearing currently scheduled for June 18.

All of the men face a possible 12-year prison sentence under TCI’s guns and ammunition law, but judges can consider exceptional circumstances.

The four men have all admitted to being in possession of bullets but say it was an innocent mistake.

May 8

US tourist describes ‘nightmare' after arrest in Turks and Caicos

May 3

American dad awaits sentencing in Turks and Caicos ammo case

May 2

US State Department apologizes to mother of American imprisoned in Turks and Caicos

The 31-year-old has been on Grand Turk Island since his arrest over two weeks ago after two 9mm rounds were found in his bag as he tried to reboard a Royal Caribbean Cruise ship after a beach excursion.

“I’ve used that bag to go to the shooting range with friends and to carry my firearm in the past. So it was, you know, I checked it before I left, and it was just a complete oversight on me. TSA and, the port security, you know, three groups missed that ammunition,” said Wenrich.

“I spent, about three nights, in the jail and then I moved to the prison for about nine nights. It was extremely difficult,” said Wenrich. “The conditions were difficult but the people were more phenomenal, which helped.”

“It was still a very it was a very hard situation to be in,” shared Wenrich. “It’s definitely the hardest thing I’ve ever had to go through.”

Wenrich is a paramedic and said it has been hard being away from his wife and 1 1/2-year-old son, who live back in Virginia.

“They’re not doing great. You know, my son’s having trouble sleeping that night… something’s wrong,” shared Wenrich. “He’s old enough to know there’s something wrong and my wife is trying to do the best she can.”

Wenrich said that while his wife has a strong support system it has been hard having him thousands of miles away living in uncertainty.

Wenrich is now living on the island with his father as his case moves through the courts. He said the situation has taken an emotional and financial toll. 

“Tens of thousands of dollars that we’re facing and just trying to survive here and legal fees,” he explained.

He and his family have set up a crowdfunding website to help cover legal fees and expenses while he awaits his fate.

Bryan Hagerich of Pennsylvania and Ryan Watson of Oklahoma both pleaded guilty to possession of ammunition after bullets were found in their bags when they tried to board flights home after vacations on the island earlier this year. Hagerich will be sentenced May 29 and Watson will be in court next month. NBC10 Boston was the first to break the story of their detainment.

The TSA launched an investigation after our story aired, they confirmed they did a review of the airport Watson departed from and issued a statement saying, “TSA takes its security mission very seriously. TSA can confirm that four rounds of ammunition were not detected in the traveler’s bag during security screening at Will Rogers World Airport (OKC), which was the originating airport.”

“TSA is here to protect our transportation security systems, and an oversight occurred that the agency is addressing internally.” They confirmed to

A fourth American, Michael Evans was arrested in December, and pleaded guilty to possession of seven rounds of ammunition, according to police.  He is in the U.S. on bail and has a June 18 sentencing hearing. All of the men face a possible 12-year prison sentence under TCI’s guns and ammunition law, but judges can consider exceptional circumstances.

The Turks and Caicos attorney general and the director of public prosecutions issued a statement last month saying the islands’ firearm ordinance “requires the Supreme Court to impose a mandatory minimum sentence and fine for certain firearm offenses, except in circumstances where the court finds that there are exceptional circumstances….”

The statement went on to add that there have been five separate cases within a two-year period where the Supreme Court on the islands has found exceptional circumstances. Four of the offenders were fined and one was given a custodial sentence below the mandatory minimum.

Michael Grim of Indiana was arrested last August for possession of ammunition and sentenced to eight months in prison.

It is a frightening waiting game but Wenrich said he is grateful for all of the support he has received.

“It’s overwhelming. I am surprised and thankful about how many people and organizations have been supporting all of us,” said Wenrich. “My boss and my work has been phenomenal and they have helped us so much through this and I just can’t thank people enough for getting the word out there, supporting us and praying for us to get through this.”

Wenrich said he is, “Just trying to lean on my faith and pray and, I’m thankful for the support system that we have.”

“I’m hoping for the best outcome for everybody….it’s an unimaginable situation that we’re in and we’re all just trying to take it day by day to get through it.”

Unrelated to their cases, there have been a series of bomb threats on the islands of Turks and Caicos. The police commissioner of the Royal TCI Police Force issued a statement about a series of bomb threats on officials and the island’s two airports in recent weeks. They said no devices have been found and have asked the public for information about the hoax threats.

There have been a number of social media posts that have since made claims linking the threats to the American tourists, which prompted Hagerich and Watson to issue a statement:

“We condemn the recent threats against Turks and Caicos Islands officials and places, including airports and schools. We have nothing to do with them and hope authorities bring the perpetrator(s) to justice. Our families use the Turks and Caicos airports, we are parents of young children, and we take the safety of the TCI and everyone on them seriously.”

More on the threats

More coverage on the Turks and Caicos ammunition laws

May 3

American dad awaits sentencing in Turks and Caicos ammo case

May 2

US State Department apologizes to mother of American imprisoned in Turks and Caicos

May 1

Virginia man charged with ammunition possession in Turks and Caicos granted bail

This story uses functionality that may not work in our app. Click here to open the story in your web browser.

Some of those landlords are sharing their stories.

Mark Haskell 

In 2009, Mark Haskell and his family needed to move to a bigger home. Because the housing bubble had burst and the property on Shawnee Road in Worcester had lost value, he decided to rent the home instead of selling it. 

Haskell’s first tenant was a doctor who lived at the property with no problems.

The next time he listed it, the Callahans showed up. They came armed with a packet of pay stubs and credit reports. 

“They said all the right things,” Haskell said. “They were very relatable.”

In retrospect, Haskell said the only red flag was an urgency to get into the property as soon as possible, but he overlooked it at the time.

Upon returning from a business trip, Haskell received a call from the bank. The Callahans’ rental check had been written from a closed account. 

“There was a sinking feeling that something wasn’t right,” Haskell said. “I thought I had been scammed.”

Haskell said the couple made excuses about the money and tried to string him along as much as possible. After several months of paying both mortgages while supporting kids and juggling other bills, Haskell hired an attorney to begin the eviction process. 

The entire ordeal took about six months. On the eve of the eviction, there was still a last-minute plea from Russell Callahan about accessing funds from his work retirement account so he could stay in the property.

“We never meant for it to come to this point, believe me,” Haskell read from an email he received. “We very much enjoy living here. Please contact me at your earliest convenience to discuss. I want to work with you.”

After the eviction, Haskell said he received a call from a real estate agent who was listing a rental property. The Callahans had applied and the agent was checking with previous landlords. 

Haskell was able to help that property owner avoid the legal headache that he experienced. His judgment in housing court is for about $6,000, but he estimates his losses at closer to $10,000 with moving expenses and attorney fees.

Roughly 15 years later, Haskell shakes his head that the pattern continues. 

“I can’t believe they’re still up to this and the system allows it,” he said. “If you look at it as a whole, it’s a major scam.”

Tyler Lynch

In 2016, Tyler Lynch was a recent college graduate preparing for his first deployment with the Navy. 

Lynch decided to list his Jacksonville home for rent on Zillow. Before long, the Callahans contacted him to see the property. 

Lynch said they seemed like an “all-American couple” who asked questions about his collegiate football career and perhaps drinking a beer together at some point.

“They were the kind of people that you would expect a fun neighbor to be,” Lynch recalled. 

Shortly after Lynch deployed overseas, the Callahans moved into his home. Before long, they were late on the monthly rent. 

After Lynch sent a reminder about making a payment, he said Linda Callahan responded that her husband was in a horrible work accident and was on life support.

“I felt so bad about the situation, I sent flowers to the house,” Lynch said. 

More time passed and Lynch had still not received any rental payments. While dealing with limited cell service in a foreign country, Lynch finally managed to reach Russell Callahan on the phone.

During that conversation, Russell Callahan told him that he had not been in an accident. Instead, he blamed his wife for spending the rent money on other items and said the couple was getting a divorce.

Again, Lynch felt sympathy about the situation. But when more weeks passed with nothing but radio silence from the Callahans, reality hit.

“I have this house and I’m in a different country. I’m thinking, “What am I going to do?”” Lynch said. “I realized I made a horrible mistake.”

Lynch had to hire an attorney to assist with the eviction process during his deployment. He said the experience cost him about $10,000. 

Lynch, now a lieutenant commander with the Navy living in the Dallas area, was stunned when we contacted him eight years later about his landlord nightmare.

“The neighborly, welcoming people I first met, they’re just criminals,” he said. “They are cheating the system every way they can.”

Hayk Hovhannisyan

Hayk Hovhannisyan and his wife both lost their jobs at the beginning of 2018. Around the same time, the tenants at their Shrewsbury rental property also notified them that they were moving out. 

That’s why Hovhannisyan told us it was crucial to find new tenants and have the rental income to help support his two children.

During the open house, Linda Callahan seemed like the perfect prospective tenant.

“Suddenly, there’s this middle-aged, white, happy and trustworthy woman with all the paperwork in hand,” Hovhannisyan recalled. 

The Callahans were supposed to move in at the beginning of August, but asked if they could start their tenancy several days early. 

On the day they handed over the keys, Hovhannisyan said there were moving trucks at the property already loaded up with the Callahans’ possessions. In retrospect, he now realizes those trucks had come straight from the Callahans’ eviction at their previous rental property. 

Just like with other landlords, the first rental check bounced. Excuses followed about the IRS and the bank account being frozen.

Hovhannisyan eventually went to investigate at the bank branch. That’s when he learned the account from which the check was written had been closed for a long time. 

“These are professional con artists,” Hovyannisyan said. “I realized this is not some isolated thing. There are actually people who live like this.”

Like several other landlords we spoke with, Hovyannisyan believes he was targeted because he is an immigrant who is unfamiliar with the legal system and eviction process. 

He hired an attorney and discovered how long it can take to execute an eviction, even when the tenants are not paying a dime. 

On moving day, which landlords are required to pay under Massachusetts law, two trucks were not sufficient to load up all the Callahans’ items. Hovyannisyan had to call in a third truck to finish the job. 

When he entered the property for the first time after the eviction, he noticed the walls had been painted a different color. 

Hovyannisyan estimates the lost rent, moving expenses and attorney fees cost him about $13,000.

“Hopefully, they’ll end up in some nice jail,” he said. “Free housing. That’s what they’re looking for, yes? Free housing.”

Rory Mallaghan

The home on Jonathan Circle was the first property that Rory Mallaghan owned. When he and his wife moved to a new home in anticipation of having their first child, Mallaghan listed the property for rent on Zillow, hoping to find a tenant who would care for the home where he’d created so many memories. 

The Callahans showed up to get a tour of the property and Mallaghan remembers how they gave the impression they would really enjoy living in the space.

“Linda was so bubbly,” Mallaghan recalled. “Every nook of the house, she thought she could put certain things in certain places and everything would be fantastic.”

The couple said they were looking at several properties and already had a packet of paperwork available, including pay stubs, references and credit reports. 

The Callahans said they were helping with family in Shrewsbury and staying at a nearby hotel just to get some space. Mallaghan gave them a ride back to the hotel after the showing. 

Like other landlord encounters, a familiar series of events followed.

Upon returning from a work trip, Mallaghan discovered the Callahans’ rent checks had bounced. The couple first blamed a problem with the IRS, then described an issue withdrawing funds from a 401k account. 

“They always had an excuse of why the money wasn’t there and they were working on it,” Mallaghan said. “They just preyed on my forgiveness and compassion and were able to live there rent-free.”

When he finally ran out of patience, Mallaghan hired an attorney to start the eviction process. After eight months of receiving no rent, Mallaghan wrote an email to the Callahans, pleading with them not to delay any longer and leave the property. 

“We’ve come to terms we will never see that money. It was an expensive lesson,” he wrote. “We had plans to buy baby necessities. It’s a tough pill to swallow.”

Mallaghan was there when a constable showed up to execute the eviction and a moving company packed up possession. When he entered the home for the first time, everything was stripped from the walls, including the toilet paper holders.

He said the ordeal cost him about $20,000.

“They know what they’re doing,” Mallaghan said. “They are just taking people for a ride.”

Sitanshu Sinha and Shilpi Gupta

The home on Egret Circle in Shrewsbury was the first property Sitanshu Sinha and Shilpi Gupta purchased when they immigrated to the United States. The couple later decided to move to a larger home in town and rented the old property to several different tenants without incident. Then they listed it again in August 2023. 

Russell and Linda Callahan showed up to look at the home and said they were trying to get a loan to buy some land, so they had already assembled a credit report, background check and pay stubs for their bank. 

The documents they provided to Sinha and Gupta falsely listed the couple’s last name as “O’Callagham” to avoid detection. 

Before moving in, Linda Callahan said she thought the basement would be a perfect space to work on her art and craft projects, and asked if she could pay to have it carpeted. Sinha and Gupta thought it was a strange request from tenants and declined the offer. 

“That still sticks with me because of the way things turned out,” Gupta said. 

A couple of days after moving into the property, the checks bounced. The pattern of excuses followed, but Sinha said it did not seem like there was any urgency to get the payment situation resolved. 

The couple eventually realized they needed to get a lawyer because they started dipping into emergency savings to pay the mortgages on both properties. 

“It was very stressful on us financially,” Gupta said. 

At the eviction proceedings in housing court, Russell Callahan declined to answer questions from the judge. He would not even state his name under oath without legal representation, according to audio we obtained. 

“I don’t credit your testimony, sir,” the judge told Callahan. “I actually don’t credit anything you said. I find you to be evasive and not particularly forthcoming.”

When Sinha called a moving company to get an estimate, the employee asked for the names of the tenants being evicted. A couple minutes later, the employee said he could provide an exact quote because the moving company had already boxed up the Callahans’ possessions on multiple occasions. 

On the eve of the move, Linda Callahan made a final plea to stay in the house until after Christmas.

“I know you are very angry with us, and truthfully, we don’t blame you,” read a text message. “We falsified the documents because we wanted to rent from you. And with our history, we knew you wouldn’t consider us.”

After the Callahans moved out, Sinha and Gupta found nail holes and other damage everywhere throughout the house. There were light fixtures, curtain rods and speakers missing.

The couple estimates the financial nightmare cost them about $30,000 in savings. They had planned to invest that money in their two kids’ college savings plans. 

The home on Egret Circle is the last known address for the Callahans. No new eviction cases have surfaced since movers packed them up last December. 

“I’m still at a loss for words,” Sinha said. “How can something live like this for so long and get away with it?”

Nadia Amrani

Nadia Amrani moved out of her home on Locust Avenue in Worcester and rented a home in Shrewsbury so her three daughters could attend a better high school. The single mom planned to move back to Worcester after her daughters graduated, but needed to find a tenant to help pay the mortgage in the interim. 

When the Callahans came to look at the property, they had a packet of paperwork ready to go. They told Amrani they were thinking about buying a home and applying for a mortgage, so they’d already assembled the financial records for the bank.

“I thought they were just being proactive,” Amrani said. “Making things easier for me.”

The documents like credit reports and pay stubs all seemed legit, so Amrani offered the Callahans a rental agreement. She remembers Linda Callahan seeming relieved and in control once she handed her the keys. 

Amrani read us the text message she received from Linda Callahan once the lease was signed. Years later, the words take on an ominous tone. 

“Thank you so much for your decision on selecting my family,” the message said. “I understand the financial agreement to be met. We will respect your home as if it were our own. Enjoy your day. I know you just made ours great.”

Linda Callahan delayed providing a security deposit until closer to the move-in date, saying her mom was in the hospital having heart surgery. By the time the check bounced, the Callahans were already living in the home.

Amrani said the couple initially blamed problems with the IRS on the lack of funds. When weeks passed with no payment, Amrani went to the bank and discovered the account had been closed. 

“I started panicking,” Amrani said. “I couldn’t afford to pay the mortgage and the rent where I was living.”

Amrani hired an attorney and won an eviction at the end of 2019. She is thankful she got rid of the Callahans just before the COVID pandemic. That’s when the government implemented an eviction moratorium, and Amrani believes she would’ve lost her home. 

Once the rental payment problems surfaced, Amrani remembers looking up the Callahans in the housing court’s online system. She was stunned when she saw their extensive eviction history, a track record that was nowhere to be found in the documents they had provided in that first encounter.

“They need to pay for what they did,” she said. “Those people have been evicted over and over and over again. The system knows them. And nothing has been done.”

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Pennsylvanian Bryan Hagerich and his wife, Ashley, appeared in a Providenciales court Friday. He’s one of several Americans arrested under the Caribbean territory’s strict guns and ammunition law, which carries a mandatory minimum prison sentence to 12 years and has prompted new travel warnings from state officials.

NBC10 Boston was the first to break the story, which is now making international headlines.

Hagerich was arrested Feb. 13 while heading home from vacation with his family on charges he had ammunition — rounds from a previous hunting trip that he says he’d mistakenly brought with him. He spent eight days in prison before posting bail.

He’s pleaded guilty to possession of 20 rounds of ammunition. He faces anything from time served up to 12 years in prison — judges overseeing the cases can take into consideration exceptional circumstances.

After hearing arguments in court, the judge overseeing the case scheduled another hearing for later in May.

The one-time Florida Marlin draft pick lives in Pennsylvania with his wife and two kids, but hasn’t been able to leave Turks and Caicos Islands while the case is pending.

Three other American tourists are facing a possible 12-year sentence on possession of ammunition charges.

Michal Evans, of Texas, was arrested in December and has a sentencing hearing June 18.

Oklahoman Ryan Watson was arrested last month and will be back in court June 7. The Transportation Safety Administration has admitted it failed to detect bullets in Watson’s bag when he boarded a plane in Oklahoma April 7. The agency was not monitoring Hagerich’s case.

Tyler Wenrich of Virginia was charged two weeks ago, when he was trying to reboard his cruise ship. He was released from prison Friday after his family posted bail money.

The mother of another American who spent eight months in prison for violating the Turks and Caicos Islands guns and ammunition law, Michael Grim, told NBC10 Boston she thought U.S. embassy officials mishandled handled his case and communications with her, including delayed, incomplete and sometimes inaccurate responses from the embassy to her weekly emails.

Pfau said she relied on the U.S. Embassy in the Bahamas for help, but had trouble getting basic information from the staff, and that no one from the U.S. Embassy visited her son while he was held at His Majesty’s Prison (HMP) on the Grand Turk Island, which local Turks and Caicos media outlets have reported was found not fit for human habitation and in breach of international human rights standards by the TCI Human Rights Commission.

Pfau said she included the head of the U.S. Embassy, Usha Pitts, on an email to embassy staff requesting information about her son’s condition. She shared the following email response from Pitts with NBC10 Boston:

Please remove me from your emails. I do not involve myself in ongoing health-and-welfare cases, and I did not give you my email address. Nor will I provide you with details of my interactions with the Governor, which are not driven solely by Michael’s case, but rather a broad range of security topics. Regarding Embassy services, I ask that you restrict your communications to the team in charge of American Citizens (Jessica and Lance). I am confident they are giving your son the same high-level service they provide to all American citizens traveling in the archipelago – over 6 million of them every year.

Pfau said the email left her feeling “very defeated, that the U.S. Embassy was not going to keep my son at the forefront of their conversations with the government.”

When we asked Pitts about the email, she referred us to the U.S. State Department for comment.

“We apologize to the Grim family for the tone and substance of the emails. They were not in accordance with the high priority we place on care for Americans abroad,” a State Department spokesperson said. “The U.S. Department of State and our embassies and consulates abroad have no higher priority than the safety and security of U.S. citizens overseas. As permitted by law, we make every effort to share information with families in as timely a manner as possible.”

The spokesperson added that whenever a U.S. citizen is detained, they seek immediate access to the individual.

More on the Turks and Caicos ammunition arrests

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Apr 25

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NBC10 Boston was the first to break the story, which is now making international headlines.

Teresa Pfau, the mother of Michael Grim, spoke with NBC10 Boston and criticized how U.S. Embassy officials handled Grim’s case and communications with her.

“I would say we received minimal support from the U.S. Embassy” in the Bahamas, Pfau said.

She told NBC10 Boston that she often got delayed, incomplete and sometimes inaccurate responses from the embassy to her weekly emails.

“My expectation was really that they could have compassion and kindness,” said Pfau. “That just seemed to be lacking. We were told … ‘Our policy is that you have to abide by another country’s law and we’re sorry. There can not be given any special treatment.'”

Grim was sentenced to eight months in prison on Turks and Caicos Islands last year for possession of ammunition. Pfau said she relied on the U.S. Embassy in the Bahamas for help, but had trouble getting basic information from the staff.

“I felt like I continually said, ‘We’re not asking for special treatment. We’re asking to understand, what are the rules of the prison? What are the visitation policies? … Are we going to be able to communicate with our son?'” said Pfau. “We found out all of that information usually a few days before the embassy got back to us.”

Pfau said Grim was incarcerated at His Majesty’s Prison (HMP) on the Grand Turk Island.

Last March, local Turks and Caicos media outlets reported the TCI Human Rights Commission found the prison was not fit for human habitation and was in breach of international human rights standards. They specifically referenced overcrowding, poor sanitation and sewage issues as being the main concerns. In those same media reports, the nation’s Ministry of Home Affairs admitted there were issues with sewage that officials were beginning to deal with.

Pfau said despite those concerns, no one from the U.S. Embassy visited her son while he was held there. She said officials told her his sentence was too short to warrant a visit.

“I was extremely, like, extremely fearful and worried about his safety,” said Pfau. “I was very concerned about his health.”

Pfau said she felt like there was no one that could help her keep tabs on her son.

“I was going to have to do it along with our family,” she said. “Because the only person that we had was the attorney, the only link we had to Michael was the attorney.”

Pfau said she included the head of the U.S. Embassy, Usha Pitts, on an email to embassy staff requesting information about her son’s condition. She shared the following email response from Pitts with NBC10 Boston:

“Please remove me from your emails. I do not involve myself in ongoing health-and-welfare cases, and I did not give you my email address. Nor will I provide you with details of my interactions with the Governor, which are not driven solely by Michael’s case, but rather a broad range of security topics. Regarding Embassy services, I ask that you restrict your communications to the team in charge of American Citizens (Jessica and Lance). I am confident they are giving your son the same high-level service they provide to all American citizens traveling in the archipelago – over 6 million of them every year.”

“I felt very angry, I felt very defeated, that the U.S. Embassy was not going to keep my son at the forefront of their conversations with the government,” said Pfau.

We asked Pitts about the email and she referred us to the U.S. State Department for comment.

“We apologize to the Grim family for the tone and substance of the emails. They were not in accordance with the high priority we place on care for Americans abroad,” a State Department spokesperson said. “The U.S. Department of State and our embassies and consulates abroad have no higher priority than the safety and security of U.S. citizens overseas. As permitted by law, we make every effort to share information with families in as timely a manner as possible.”

The spokesperson added that whenever a U.S. citizen is detained, they seek immediate access to the individual.

Former U.S. Sen. Scott Brown, R-Massachusetts, who served as the U.S. ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa under former President Donald Trump, told NBC10 Boston that he would have handled it differently.

“We would have dispatched a team, certainly, to make sure that they were getting proper representation,” said Brown. “Making sure that that citizen was safe in that country in that circumstance.”

Brown was critical of the U.S. Embassy’s response to Pfau’s attempts to get answers.

“If they’re not doing their jobs and they’re not communicating, then respectfully, I think they’re failing at the number one job, which is to take care of U.S. citizens and their families and make sure that’s an open and continuous line of communication,” he said.

Pfau said she hopes the embassy does better with the other detained Americans.

More on the Turks and Caicos ammunition arrests

May 1

Virginia man charged with ammunition possession in Turks and Caicos granted bail

Travel Apr 29

Tourists' Caribbean arrests highlight value of US travel warnings, expert says

Apr 25

TSA reviews airport security after Turks and Caicos ammo arrests

“There needs to be more assistance to their safety — their health, their mental health and their physical health, and just their general well-being,” she said. “Even if it’s a short sentence, there needs to be a visit.”

Bryan Hagerich of Pennsylvania will be in court in Providenciales Friday morning. He was charged with possession of ammunition in February. He said the bullets were in his bag from a previous hunting trip. His lawyer will present their case and a judge will deliver a sentence, which could be anything from time served up to 12 years in prison.

Turks and Caicos’ attorney general and the director of public prosecutions issued a statement last week saying the islands’ firearm ordinance “requires the Supreme Court to impose a mandatory minimum sentence and fine for certain firearm offenses, except in circumstances where the court finds that there are exceptional circumstances.”

The statement went on to add that there have been five separate cases within a two-year period where the Supreme Court on the islands have found exceptional circumstances, and only four of the offenders were fined and one was given custodial sentence below the mandatory minimum. Grim’s eight-month sentence was below the mandatory minimum of 12 years in prison.

Some of those landlords are sharing their stories.

Mark Haskell 

In 2009, Mark Haskell and his family needed to move to a bigger home. Because the housing bubble had burst and the property on Shawnee Road in Worcester had lost value, he decided to rent the home instead of selling it. 

Haskell’s first tenant was a doctor who lived at the property with no problems.

The next time he listed it, the Callahans showed up. They came armed with a packet of pay stubs and credit reports. 

“They said all the right things,” Haskell said. “They were very relatable.”

In retrospect, Haskell said the only red flag was an urgency to get into the property as soon as possible, but he overlooked it at the time.

Upon returning from a business trip, Haskell received a call from the bank. The Callahans’ rental check had been written from a closed account. 

“There was a sinking feeling that something wasn’t right,” Haskell said. “I thought I had been scammed.”

Haskell said the couple made excuses about the money and tried to string him along as much as possible. After several months of paying both mortgages while supporting kids and juggling other bills, Haskell hired an attorney to begin the eviction process. 

The entire ordeal took about six months. On the eve of the eviction, there was still a last-minute plea from Russell Callahan about accessing funds from his work retirement account so he could stay in the property.

“We never meant for it to come to this point, believe me,” Haskell read from an email he received. “We very much enjoy living here. Please contact me at your earliest convenience to discuss. I want to work with you.”

After the eviction, Haskell said he received a call from a real estate agent who was listing a rental property. The Callahans had applied and the agent was checking with previous landlords. 

Haskell was able to help that property owner avoid the legal headache that he experienced. His judgment in housing court is for about $6,000, but he estimates his losses at closer to $10,000 with moving expenses and attorney fees.

Roughly 15 years later, Haskell shakes his head that the pattern continues. 

“I can’t believe they’re still up to this and the system allows it,” he said. “If you look at it as a whole, it’s a major scam.”

Tyler Lynch

In 2016, Tyler Lynch was a recent college graduate preparing for his first deployment with the Navy. 

Lynch decided to list his Jacksonville home for rent on Zillow. Before long, the Callahans contacted him to see the property. 

Lynch said they seemed like an “all-American couple” who asked questions about his collegiate football career and perhaps drinking a beer together at some point.

“They were the kind of people that you would expect a fun neighbor to be,” Lynch recalled. 

Shortly after Lynch deployed overseas, the Callahans moved into his home. Before long, they were late on the monthly rent. 

After Lynch sent a reminder about making a payment, he said Linda Callahan responded that her husband was in a horrible work accident and was on life support.

“I felt so bad about the situation, I sent flowers to the house,” Lynch said. 

More time passed and Lynch had still not received any rental payments. While dealing with limited cell service in a foreign country, Lynch finally managed to reach Russell Callahan on the phone.

During that conversation, Russell Callahan told him that he had not been in an accident. Instead, he blamed his wife for spending the rent money on other items and said the couple was getting a divorce.

Again, Lynch felt sympathy about the situation. But when more weeks passed with nothing but radio silence from the Callahans, reality hit.

“I have this house and I’m in a different country. I’m thinking, “What am I going to do?”” Lynch said. “I realized I made a horrible mistake.”

Lynch had to hire an attorney to assist with the eviction process during his deployment. He said the experience cost him about $10,000. 

Lynch, now a lieutenant commander with the Navy living in the Dallas area, was stunned when we contacted him eight years later about his landlord nightmare.

“The neighborly, welcoming people I first met, they’re just criminals,” he said. “They are cheating the system every way they can.”

Hayk Hovhannisyan

Hayk Hovhannisyan and his wife both lost their jobs at the beginning of 2018. Around the same time, the tenants at their Shrewsbury rental property also notified them that they were moving out. 

That’s why Hovhannisyan told us it was crucial to find new tenants and have the rental income to help support his two children.

During the open house, Linda Callahan seemed like the perfect prospective tenant.

“Suddenly, there’s this middle-aged, white, happy and trustworthy woman with all the paperwork in hand,” Hovhannisyan recalled. 

The Callahans were supposed to move in at the beginning of August, but asked if they could start their tenancy several days early. 

On the day they handed over the keys, Hovhannisyan said there were moving trucks at the property already loaded up with the Callahans’ possessions. In retrospect, he now realizes those trucks had come straight from the Callahans’ eviction at their previous rental property. 

Just like with other landlords, the first rental check bounced. Excuses followed about the IRS and the bank account being frozen.

Hovhannisyan eventually went to investigate at the bank branch. That’s when he learned the account from which the check was written had been closed for a long time. 

“These are professional con artists,” Hovyannisyan said. “I realized this is not some isolated thing. There are actually people who live like this.”

Like several other landlords we spoke with, Hovyannisyan believes he was targeted because he is an immigrant who is unfamiliar with the legal system and eviction process. 

He hired an attorney and discovered how long it can take to execute an eviction, even when the tenants are not paying a dime. 

On moving day, which landlords are required to pay under Massachusetts law, two trucks were not sufficient to load up all the Callahans’ items. Hovyannisyan had to call in a third truck to finish the job. 

When he entered the property for the first time after the eviction, he noticed the walls had been painted a different color. 

Hovyannisyan estimates the lost rent, moving expenses and attorney fees cost him about $13,000.

“Hopefully, they’ll end up in some nice jail,” he said. “Free housing. That’s what they’re looking for, yes? Free housing.”

Rory Mallaghan

The home on Jonathan Circle was the first property that Rory Mallaghan owned. When he and his wife moved to a new home in anticipation of having their first child, Mallaghan listed the property for rent on Zillow, hoping to find a tenant who would care for the home where he’d created so many memories. 

The Callahans showed up to get a tour of the property and Mallaghan remembers how they gave the impression they would really enjoy living in the space.

“Linda was so bubbly,” Mallaghan recalled. “Every nook of the house, she thought she could put certain things in certain places and everything would be fantastic.”

The couple said they were looking at several properties and already had a packet of paperwork available, including pay stubs, references and credit reports. 

The Callahans said they were helping with family in Shrewsbury and staying at a nearby hotel just to get some space. Mallaghan gave them a ride back to the hotel after the showing. 

Like other landlord encounters, a familiar series of events followed.

Upon returning from a work trip, Mallaghan discovered the Callahans’ rent checks had bounced. The couple first blamed a problem with the IRS, then described an issue withdrawing funds from a 401k account. 

“They always had an excuse of why the money wasn’t there and they were working on it,” Mallaghan said. “They just preyed on my forgiveness and compassion and were able to live there rent-free.”

When he finally ran out of patience, Mallaghan hired an attorney to start the eviction process. After eight months of receiving no rent, Mallaghan wrote an email to the Callahans, pleading with them not to delay any longer and leave the property. 

“We’ve come to terms we will never see that money. It was an expensive lesson,” he wrote. “We had plans to buy baby necessities. It’s a tough pill to swallow.”

Mallaghan was there when a constable showed up to execute the eviction and a moving company packed up possession. When he entered the home for the first time, everything was stripped from the walls, including the toilet paper holders.

He said the ordeal cost him about $20,000.

“They know what they’re doing,” Mallaghan said. “They are just taking people for a ride.”

Sitanshu Sinha and Shilpi Gupta

The home on Egret Circle in Shrewsbury was the first property Sitanshu Sinha and Shilpi Gupta purchased when they immigrated to the United States. The couple later decided to move to a larger home in town and rented the old property to several different tenants without incident. Then they listed it again in August 2023. 

Russell and Linda Callahan showed up to look at the home and said they were trying to get a loan to buy some land, so they had already assembled a credit report, background check and pay stubs for their bank. 

The documents they provided to Sinha and Gupta falsely listed the couple’s last name as “O’Callagham” to avoid detection. 

Before moving in, Linda Callahan said she thought the basement would be a perfect space to work on her art and craft projects, and asked if she could pay to have it carpeted. Sinha and Gupta thought it was a strange request from tenants and declined the offer. 

“That still sticks with me because of the way things turned out,” Gupta said. 

A couple of days after moving into the property, the checks bounced. The pattern of excuses followed, but Sinha said it did not seem like there was any urgency to get the payment situation resolved. 

The couple eventually realized they needed to get a lawyer because they started dipping into emergency savings to pay the mortgages on both properties. 

“It was very stressful on us financially,” Gupta said. 

At the eviction proceedings in housing court, Russell Callahan declined to answer questions from the judge. He would not even state his name under oath without legal representation, according to audio we obtained. 

“I don’t credit your testimony, sir,” the judge told Callahan. “I actually don’t credit anything you said. I find you to be evasive and not particularly forthcoming.”

When Sinha called a moving company to get an estimate, the employee asked for the names of the tenants being evicted. A couple minutes later, the employee said he could provide an exact quote because the moving company had already boxed up the Callahans’ possessions on multiple occasions. 

On the eve of the move, Linda Callahan made a final plea to stay in the house until after Christmas.

“I know you are very angry with us, and truthfully, we don’t blame you,” read a text message. “We falsified the documents because we wanted to rent from you. And with our history, we knew you wouldn’t consider us.”

After the Callahans moved out, Sinha and Gupta found nail holes and other damage everywhere throughout the house. There were light fixtures, curtain rods and speakers missing.

The couple estimates the financial nightmare cost them about $30,000 in savings. They had planned to invest that money in their two kids’ college savings plans. 

The home on Egret Circle is the last known address for the Callahans. No new eviction cases have surfaced since movers packed them up last December. 

“I’m still at a loss for words,” Sinha said. “How can something live like this for so long and get away with it?”

Nadia Amrani

Nadia Amrani moved out of her home on Locust Avenue in Worcester and rented a home in Shrewsbury so her three daughters could attend a better high school. The single mom planned to move back to Worcester after her daughters graduated, but needed to find a tenant to help pay the mortgage in the interim. 

When the Callahans came to look at the property, they had a packet of paperwork ready to go. They told Amrani they were thinking about buying a home and applying for a mortgage, so they’d already assembled the financial records for the bank.

“I thought they were just being proactive,” Amrani said. “Making things easier for me.”

The documents like credit reports and pay stubs all seemed legit, so Amrani offered the Callahans a rental agreement. She remembers Linda Callahan seeming relieved and in control once she handed her the keys. 

Amrani read us the text message she received from Linda Callahan once the lease was signed. Years later, the words take on an ominous tone. 

“Thank you so much for your decision on selecting my family,” the message said. “I understand the financial agreement to be met. We will respect your home as if it were our own. Enjoy your day. I know you just made ours great.”

Linda Callahan delayed providing a security deposit until closer to the move-in date, saying her mom was in the hospital having heart surgery. By the time the check bounced, the Callahans were already living in the home.

Amrani said the couple initially blamed problems with the IRS on the lack of funds. When weeks passed with no payment, Amrani went to the bank and discovered the account had been closed. 

“I started panicking,” Amrani said. “I couldn’t afford to pay the mortgage and the rent where I was living.”

Amrani hired an attorney and won an eviction at the end of 2019. She is thankful she got rid of the Callahans just before the COVID pandemic. That’s when the government implemented an eviction moratorium, and Amrani believes she would’ve lost her home. 

Once the rental payment problems surfaced, Amrani remembers looking up the Callahans in the housing court’s online system. She was stunned when she saw their extensive eviction history, a track record that was nowhere to be found in the documents they had provided in that first encounter.

“They need to pay for what they did,” she said. “Those people have been evicted over and over and over again. The system knows them. And nothing has been done.”

More from the NBC10 Investigators

To Catch a Contractor Jul 31

‘A civil matter': Does Mass. law need to change to hold bad contractors criminally accountable?

Scams Jul 29

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Some of those landlords are sharing their stories.

Mark Haskell 

In 2009, Mark Haskell and his family needed to move to a bigger home. Because the housing bubble had burst and the property on Shawnee Road in Worcester had lost value, he decided to rent the home instead of selling it. 

Haskell’s first tenant was a doctor who lived at the property with no problems.

The next time he listed it, the Callahans showed up. They came armed with a packet of pay stubs and credit reports. 

“They said all the right things,” Haskell said. “They were very relatable.”

In retrospect, Haskell said the only red flag was an urgency to get into the property as soon as possible, but he overlooked it at the time.

Upon returning from a business trip, Haskell received a call from the bank. The Callahans’ rental check had been written from a closed account. 

“There was a sinking feeling that something wasn’t right,” Haskell said. “I thought I had been scammed.”

Haskell said the couple made excuses about the money and tried to string him along as much as possible. After several months of paying both mortgages while supporting kids and juggling other bills, Haskell hired an attorney to begin the eviction process. 

The entire ordeal took about six months. On the eve of the eviction, there was still a last-minute plea from Russell Callahan about accessing funds from his work retirement account so he could stay in the property.

“We never meant for it to come to this point, believe me,” Haskell read from an email he received. “We very much enjoy living here. Please contact me at your earliest convenience to discuss. I want to work with you.”

After the eviction, Haskell said he received a call from a real estate agent who was listing a rental property. The Callahans had applied and the agent was checking with previous landlords. 

Haskell was able to help that property owner avoid the legal headache that he experienced. His judgment in housing court is for about $6,000, but he estimates his losses at closer to $10,000 with moving expenses and attorney fees.

Roughly 15 years later, Haskell shakes his head that the pattern continues. 

“I can’t believe they’re still up to this and the system allows it,” he said. “If you look at it as a whole, it’s a major scam.”

Tyler Lynch

In 2016, Tyler Lynch was a recent college graduate preparing for his first deployment with the Navy. 

Lynch decided to list his Jacksonville home for rent on Zillow. Before long, the Callahans contacted him to see the property. 

Lynch said they seemed like an “all-American couple” who asked questions about his collegiate football career and perhaps drinking a beer together at some point.

“They were the kind of people that you would expect a fun neighbor to be,” Lynch recalled. 

Shortly after Lynch deployed overseas, the Callahans moved into his home. Before long, they were late on the monthly rent. 

After Lynch sent a reminder about making a payment, he said Linda Callahan responded that her husband was in a horrible work accident and was on life support.

“I felt so bad about the situation, I sent flowers to the house,” Lynch said. 

More time passed and Lynch had still not received any rental payments. While dealing with limited cell service in a foreign country, Lynch finally managed to reach Russell Callahan on the phone.

During that conversation, Russell Callahan told him that he had not been in an accident. Instead, he blamed his wife for spending the rent money on other items and said the couple was getting a divorce.

Again, Lynch felt sympathy about the situation. But when more weeks passed with nothing but radio silence from the Callahans, reality hit.

“I have this house and I’m in a different country. I’m thinking, “What am I going to do?”” Lynch said. “I realized I made a horrible mistake.”

Lynch had to hire an attorney to assist with the eviction process during his deployment. He said the experience cost him about $10,000. 

Lynch, now a lieutenant commander with the Navy living in the Dallas area, was stunned when we contacted him eight years later about his landlord nightmare.

“The neighborly, welcoming people I first met, they’re just criminals,” he said. “They are cheating the system every way they can.”

Hayk Hovhannisyan

Hayk Hovhannisyan and his wife both lost their jobs at the beginning of 2018. Around the same time, the tenants at their Shrewsbury rental property also notified them that they were moving out. 

That’s why Hovhannisyan told us it was crucial to find new tenants and have the rental income to help support his two children.

During the open house, Linda Callahan seemed like the perfect prospective tenant.

“Suddenly, there’s this middle-aged, white, happy and trustworthy woman with all the paperwork in hand,” Hovhannisyan recalled. 

The Callahans were supposed to move in at the beginning of August, but asked if they could start their tenancy several days early. 

On the day they handed over the keys, Hovhannisyan said there were moving trucks at the property already loaded up with the Callahans’ possessions. In retrospect, he now realizes those trucks had come straight from the Callahans’ eviction at their previous rental property. 

Just like with other landlords, the first rental check bounced. Excuses followed about the IRS and the bank account being frozen.

Hovhannisyan eventually went to investigate at the bank branch. That’s when he learned the account from which the check was written had been closed for a long time. 

“These are professional con artists,” Hovyannisyan said. “I realized this is not some isolated thing. There are actually people who live like this.”

Like several other landlords we spoke with, Hovyannisyan believes he was targeted because he is an immigrant who is unfamiliar with the legal system and eviction process. 

He hired an attorney and discovered how long it can take to execute an eviction, even when the tenants are not paying a dime. 

On moving day, which landlords are required to pay under Massachusetts law, two trucks were not sufficient to load up all the Callahans’ items. Hovyannisyan had to call in a third truck to finish the job. 

When he entered the property for the first time after the eviction, he noticed the walls had been painted a different color. 

Hovyannisyan estimates the lost rent, moving expenses and attorney fees cost him about $13,000.

“Hopefully, they’ll end up in some nice jail,” he said. “Free housing. That’s what they’re looking for, yes? Free housing.”

Rory Mallaghan

The home on Jonathan Circle was the first property that Rory Mallaghan owned. When he and his wife moved to a new home in anticipation of having their first child, Mallaghan listed the property for rent on Zillow, hoping to find a tenant who would care for the home where he’d created so many memories. 

The Callahans showed up to get a tour of the property and Mallaghan remembers how they gave the impression they would really enjoy living in the space.

“Linda was so bubbly,” Mallaghan recalled. “Every nook of the house, she thought she could put certain things in certain places and everything would be fantastic.”

The couple said they were looking at several properties and already had a packet of paperwork available, including pay stubs, references and credit reports. 

The Callahans said they were helping with family in Shrewsbury and staying at a nearby hotel just to get some space. Mallaghan gave them a ride back to the hotel after the showing. 

Like other landlord encounters, a familiar series of events followed.

Upon returning from a work trip, Mallaghan discovered the Callahans’ rent checks had bounced. The couple first blamed a problem with the IRS, then described an issue withdrawing funds from a 401k account. 

“They always had an excuse of why the money wasn’t there and they were working on it,” Mallaghan said. “They just preyed on my forgiveness and compassion and were able to live there rent-free.”

When he finally ran out of patience, Mallaghan hired an attorney to start the eviction process. After eight months of receiving no rent, Mallaghan wrote an email to the Callahans, pleading with them not to delay any longer and leave the property. 

“We’ve come to terms we will never see that money. It was an expensive lesson,” he wrote. “We had plans to buy baby necessities. It’s a tough pill to swallow.”

Mallaghan was there when a constable showed up to execute the eviction and a moving company packed up possession. When he entered the home for the first time, everything was stripped from the walls, including the toilet paper holders.

He said the ordeal cost him about $20,000.

“They know what they’re doing,” Mallaghan said. “They are just taking people for a ride.”

Sitanshu Sinha and Shilpi Gupta

The home on Egret Circle in Shrewsbury was the first property Sitanshu Sinha and Shilpi Gupta purchased when they immigrated to the United States. The couple later decided to move to a larger home in town and rented the old property to several different tenants without incident. Then they listed it again in August 2023. 

Russell and Linda Callahan showed up to look at the home and said they were trying to get a loan to buy some land, so they had already assembled a credit report, background check and pay stubs for their bank. 

The documents they provided to Sinha and Gupta falsely listed the couple’s last name as “O’Callagham” to avoid detection. 

Before moving in, Linda Callahan said she thought the basement would be a perfect space to work on her art and craft projects, and asked if she could pay to have it carpeted. Sinha and Gupta thought it was a strange request from tenants and declined the offer. 

“That still sticks with me because of the way things turned out,” Gupta said. 

A couple of days after moving into the property, the checks bounced. The pattern of excuses followed, but Sinha said it did not seem like there was any urgency to get the payment situation resolved. 

The couple eventually realized they needed to get a lawyer because they started dipping into emergency savings to pay the mortgages on both properties. 

“It was very stressful on us financially,” Gupta said. 

At the eviction proceedings in housing court, Russell Callahan declined to answer questions from the judge. He would not even state his name under oath without legal representation, according to audio we obtained. 

“I don’t credit your testimony, sir,” the judge told Callahan. “I actually don’t credit anything you said. I find you to be evasive and not particularly forthcoming.”

When Sinha called a moving company to get an estimate, the employee asked for the names of the tenants being evicted. A couple minutes later, the employee said he could provide an exact quote because the moving company had already boxed up the Callahans’ possessions on multiple occasions. 

On the eve of the move, Linda Callahan made a final plea to stay in the house until after Christmas.

“I know you are very angry with us, and truthfully, we don’t blame you,” read a text message. “We falsified the documents because we wanted to rent from you. And with our history, we knew you wouldn’t consider us.”

After the Callahans moved out, Sinha and Gupta found nail holes and other damage everywhere throughout the house. There were light fixtures, curtain rods and speakers missing.

The couple estimates the financial nightmare cost them about $30,000 in savings. They had planned to invest that money in their two kids’ college savings plans. 

The home on Egret Circle is the last known address for the Callahans. No new eviction cases have surfaced since movers packed them up last December. 

“I’m still at a loss for words,” Sinha said. “How can something live like this for so long and get away with it?”

Nadia Amrani

Nadia Amrani moved out of her home on Locust Avenue in Worcester and rented a home in Shrewsbury so her three daughters could attend a better high school. The single mom planned to move back to Worcester after her daughters graduated, but needed to find a tenant to help pay the mortgage in the interim. 

When the Callahans came to look at the property, they had a packet of paperwork ready to go. They told Amrani they were thinking about buying a home and applying for a mortgage, so they’d already assembled the financial records for the bank.

“I thought they were just being proactive,” Amrani said. “Making things easier for me.”

The documents like credit reports and pay stubs all seemed legit, so Amrani offered the Callahans a rental agreement. She remembers Linda Callahan seeming relieved and in control once she handed her the keys. 

Amrani read us the text message she received from Linda Callahan once the lease was signed. Years later, the words take on an ominous tone. 

“Thank you so much for your decision on selecting my family,” the message said. “I understand the financial agreement to be met. We will respect your home as if it were our own. Enjoy your day. I know you just made ours great.”

Linda Callahan delayed providing a security deposit until closer to the move-in date, saying her mom was in the hospital having heart surgery. By the time the check bounced, the Callahans were already living in the home.

Amrani said the couple initially blamed problems with the IRS on the lack of funds. When weeks passed with no payment, Amrani went to the bank and discovered the account had been closed. 

“I started panicking,” Amrani said. “I couldn’t afford to pay the mortgage and the rent where I was living.”

Amrani hired an attorney and won an eviction at the end of 2019. She is thankful she got rid of the Callahans just before the COVID pandemic. That’s when the government implemented an eviction moratorium, and Amrani believes she would’ve lost her home. 

Once the rental payment problems surfaced, Amrani remembers looking up the Callahans in the housing court’s online system. She was stunned when she saw their extensive eviction history, a track record that was nowhere to be found in the documents they had provided in that first encounter.

“They need to pay for what they did,” she said. “Those people have been evicted over and over and over again. The system knows them. And nothing has been done.”

More from the NBC10 Investigators

To Catch a Contractor Jul 31

‘A civil matter': Does Mass. law need to change to hold bad contractors criminally accountable?

Scams Jul 29

How police got a Bitcoin ATM scam victim's money back

Some of those landlords are sharing their stories.

Mark Haskell 

In 2009, Mark Haskell and his family needed to move to a bigger home. Because the housing bubble had burst and the property on Shawnee Road in Worcester had lost value, he decided to rent the home instead of selling it. 

Haskell’s first tenant was a doctor who lived at the property with no problems.

The next time he listed it, the Callahans showed up. They came armed with a packet of pay stubs and credit reports. 

“They said all the right things,” Haskell said. “They were very relatable.”

In retrospect, Haskell said the only red flag was an urgency to get into the property as soon as possible, but he overlooked it at the time.

Upon returning from a business trip, Haskell received a call from the bank. The Callahans’ rental check had been written from a closed account. 

“There was a sinking feeling that something wasn’t right,” Haskell said. “I thought I had been scammed.”

Haskell said the couple made excuses about the money and tried to string him along as much as possible. After several months of paying both mortgages while supporting kids and juggling other bills, Haskell hired an attorney to begin the eviction process. 

The entire ordeal took about six months. On the eve of the eviction, there was still a last-minute plea from Russell Callahan about accessing funds from his work retirement account so he could stay in the property.

“We never meant for it to come to this point, believe me,” Haskell read from an email he received. “We very much enjoy living here. Please contact me at your earliest convenience to discuss. I want to work with you.”

After the eviction, Haskell said he received a call from a real estate agent who was listing a rental property. The Callahans had applied and the agent was checking with previous landlords. 

Haskell was able to help that property owner avoid the legal headache that he experienced. His judgment in housing court is for about $6,000, but he estimates his losses at closer to $10,000 with moving expenses and attorney fees.

Roughly 15 years later, Haskell shakes his head that the pattern continues. 

“I can’t believe they’re still up to this and the system allows it,” he said. “If you look at it as a whole, it’s a major scam.”

Tyler Lynch

In 2016, Tyler Lynch was a recent college graduate preparing for his first deployment with the Navy. 

Lynch decided to list his Jacksonville home for rent on Zillow. Before long, the Callahans contacted him to see the property. 

Lynch said they seemed like an “all-American couple” who asked questions about his collegiate football career and perhaps drinking a beer together at some point.

“They were the kind of people that you would expect a fun neighbor to be,” Lynch recalled. 

Shortly after Lynch deployed overseas, the Callahans moved into his home. Before long, they were late on the monthly rent. 

After Lynch sent a reminder about making a payment, he said Linda Callahan responded that her husband was in a horrible work accident and was on life support.

“I felt so bad about the situation, I sent flowers to the house,” Lynch said. 

More time passed and Lynch had still not received any rental payments. While dealing with limited cell service in a foreign country, Lynch finally managed to reach Russell Callahan on the phone.

During that conversation, Russell Callahan told him that he had not been in an accident. Instead, he blamed his wife for spending the rent money on other items and said the couple was getting a divorce.

Again, Lynch felt sympathy about the situation. But when more weeks passed with nothing but radio silence from the Callahans, reality hit.

“I have this house and I’m in a different country. I’m thinking, “What am I going to do?”” Lynch said. “I realized I made a horrible mistake.”

Lynch had to hire an attorney to assist with the eviction process during his deployment. He said the experience cost him about $10,000. 

Lynch, now a lieutenant commander with the Navy living in the Dallas area, was stunned when we contacted him eight years later about his landlord nightmare.

“The neighborly, welcoming people I first met, they’re just criminals,” he said. “They are cheating the system every way they can.”

Hayk Hovhannisyan

Hayk Hovhannisyan and his wife both lost their jobs at the beginning of 2018. Around the same time, the tenants at their Shrewsbury rental property also notified them that they were moving out. 

That’s why Hovhannisyan told us it was crucial to find new tenants and have the rental income to help support his two children.

During the open house, Linda Callahan seemed like the perfect prospective tenant.

“Suddenly, there’s this middle-aged, white, happy and trustworthy woman with all the paperwork in hand,” Hovhannisyan recalled. 

The Callahans were supposed to move in at the beginning of August, but asked if they could start their tenancy several days early. 

On the day they handed over the keys, Hovhannisyan said there were moving trucks at the property already loaded up with the Callahans’ possessions. In retrospect, he now realizes those trucks had come straight from the Callahans’ eviction at their previous rental property. 

Just like with other landlords, the first rental check bounced. Excuses followed about the IRS and the bank account being frozen.

Hovhannisyan eventually went to investigate at the bank branch. That’s when he learned the account from which the check was written had been closed for a long time. 

“These are professional con artists,” Hovyannisyan said. “I realized this is not some isolated thing. There are actually people who live like this.”

Like several other landlords we spoke with, Hovyannisyan believes he was targeted because he is an immigrant who is unfamiliar with the legal system and eviction process. 

He hired an attorney and discovered how long it can take to execute an eviction, even when the tenants are not paying a dime. 

On moving day, which landlords are required to pay under Massachusetts law, two trucks were not sufficient to load up all the Callahans’ items. Hovyannisyan had to call in a third truck to finish the job. 

When he entered the property for the first time after the eviction, he noticed the walls had been painted a different color. 

Hovyannisyan estimates the lost rent, moving expenses and attorney fees cost him about $13,000.

“Hopefully, they’ll end up in some nice jail,” he said. “Free housing. That’s what they’re looking for, yes? Free housing.”

Rory Mallaghan

The home on Jonathan Circle was the first property that Rory Mallaghan owned. When he and his wife moved to a new home in anticipation of having their first child, Mallaghan listed the property for rent on Zillow, hoping to find a tenant who would care for the home where he’d created so many memories. 

The Callahans showed up to get a tour of the property and Mallaghan remembers how they gave the impression they would really enjoy living in the space.

“Linda was so bubbly,” Mallaghan recalled. “Every nook of the house, she thought she could put certain things in certain places and everything would be fantastic.”

The couple said they were looking at several properties and already had a packet of paperwork available, including pay stubs, references and credit reports. 

The Callahans said they were helping with family in Shrewsbury and staying at a nearby hotel just to get some space. Mallaghan gave them a ride back to the hotel after the showing. 

Like other landlord encounters, a familiar series of events followed.

Upon returning from a work trip, Mallaghan discovered the Callahans’ rent checks had bounced. The couple first blamed a problem with the IRS, then described an issue withdrawing funds from a 401k account. 

“They always had an excuse of why the money wasn’t there and they were working on it,” Mallaghan said. “They just preyed on my forgiveness and compassion and were able to live there rent-free.”

When he finally ran out of patience, Mallaghan hired an attorney to start the eviction process. After eight months of receiving no rent, Mallaghan wrote an email to the Callahans, pleading with them not to delay any longer and leave the property. 

“We’ve come to terms we will never see that money. It was an expensive lesson,” he wrote. “We had plans to buy baby necessities. It’s a tough pill to swallow.”

Mallaghan was there when a constable showed up to execute the eviction and a moving company packed up possession. When he entered the home for the first time, everything was stripped from the walls, including the toilet paper holders.

He said the ordeal cost him about $20,000.

“They know what they’re doing,” Mallaghan said. “They are just taking people for a ride.”

Sitanshu Sinha and Shilpi Gupta

The home on Egret Circle in Shrewsbury was the first property Sitanshu Sinha and Shilpi Gupta purchased when they immigrated to the United States. The couple later decided to move to a larger home in town and rented the old property to several different tenants without incident. Then they listed it again in August 2023. 

Russell and Linda Callahan showed up to look at the home and said they were trying to get a loan to buy some land, so they had already assembled a credit report, background check and pay stubs for their bank. 

The documents they provided to Sinha and Gupta falsely listed the couple’s last name as “O’Callagham” to avoid detection. 

Before moving in, Linda Callahan said she thought the basement would be a perfect space to work on her art and craft projects, and asked if she could pay to have it carpeted. Sinha and Gupta thought it was a strange request from tenants and declined the offer. 

“That still sticks with me because of the way things turned out,” Gupta said. 

A couple of days after moving into the property, the checks bounced. The pattern of excuses followed, but Sinha said it did not seem like there was any urgency to get the payment situation resolved. 

The couple eventually realized they needed to get a lawyer because they started dipping into emergency savings to pay the mortgages on both properties. 

“It was very stressful on us financially,” Gupta said. 

At the eviction proceedings in housing court, Russell Callahan declined to answer questions from the judge. He would not even state his name under oath without legal representation, according to audio we obtained. 

“I don’t credit your testimony, sir,” the judge told Callahan. “I actually don’t credit anything you said. I find you to be evasive and not particularly forthcoming.”

When Sinha called a moving company to get an estimate, the employee asked for the names of the tenants being evicted. A couple minutes later, the employee said he could provide an exact quote because the moving company had already boxed up the Callahans’ possessions on multiple occasions. 

On the eve of the move, Linda Callahan made a final plea to stay in the house until after Christmas.

“I know you are very angry with us, and truthfully, we don’t blame you,” read a text message. “We falsified the documents because we wanted to rent from you. And with our history, we knew you wouldn’t consider us.”

After the Callahans moved out, Sinha and Gupta found nail holes and other damage everywhere throughout the house. There were light fixtures, curtain rods and speakers missing.

The couple estimates the financial nightmare cost them about $30,000 in savings. They had planned to invest that money in their two kids’ college savings plans. 

The home on Egret Circle is the last known address for the Callahans. No new eviction cases have surfaced since movers packed them up last December. 

“I’m still at a loss for words,” Sinha said. “How can something live like this for so long and get away with it?”

Nadia Amrani

Nadia Amrani moved out of her home on Locust Avenue in Worcester and rented a home in Shrewsbury so her three daughters could attend a better high school. The single mom planned to move back to Worcester after her daughters graduated, but needed to find a tenant to help pay the mortgage in the interim. 

When the Callahans came to look at the property, they had a packet of paperwork ready to go. They told Amrani they were thinking about buying a home and applying for a mortgage, so they’d already assembled the financial records for the bank.

“I thought they were just being proactive,” Amrani said. “Making things easier for me.”

The documents like credit reports and pay stubs all seemed legit, so Amrani offered the Callahans a rental agreement. She remembers Linda Callahan seeming relieved and in control once she handed her the keys. 

Amrani read us the text message she received from Linda Callahan once the lease was signed. Years later, the words take on an ominous tone. 

“Thank you so much for your decision on selecting my family,” the message said. “I understand the financial agreement to be met. We will respect your home as if it were our own. Enjoy your day. I know you just made ours great.”

Linda Callahan delayed providing a security deposit until closer to the move-in date, saying her mom was in the hospital having heart surgery. By the time the check bounced, the Callahans were already living in the home.

Amrani said the couple initially blamed problems with the IRS on the lack of funds. When weeks passed with no payment, Amrani went to the bank and discovered the account had been closed. 

“I started panicking,” Amrani said. “I couldn’t afford to pay the mortgage and the rent where I was living.”

Amrani hired an attorney and won an eviction at the end of 2019. She is thankful she got rid of the Callahans just before the COVID pandemic. That’s when the government implemented an eviction moratorium, and Amrani believes she would’ve lost her home. 

Once the rental payment problems surfaced, Amrani remembers looking up the Callahans in the housing court’s online system. She was stunned when she saw their extensive eviction history, a track record that was nowhere to be found in the documents they had provided in that first encounter.

“They need to pay for what they did,” she said. “Those people have been evicted over and over and over again. The system knows them. And nothing has been done.”

More from the NBC10 Investigators

To Catch a Contractor Jul 31

‘A civil matter': Does Mass. law need to change to hold bad contractors criminally accountable?

Scams Jul 29

How police got a Bitcoin ATM scam victim's money back

There are currently three U.S tourists being held on bail for firearms and ammunition prosecutions, according to a statement released Wednesday by the Turks and Caicos Islands Attorney General’s Chambers and the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions.

Consumer investigative reporter Leslie Gaydos spoke with Teresea Pfau, the mother of an Indiana man who was released in February after receiving an eight-month prison sentence on the Island. She is speaking out after learning there are more U.S. citizens potentially facing a similar fate as her son.

“It has been one of the most traumatic times of my life,” Pfau shared.

She says she is closely following the story of Americans Ryan Watson and Bryan Hagerich, who are currently detained in Turks and Caicos Islands on charges of possession of ammunition.

Pfau’s son Michael Grimm was sentenced last year for the same offense.

“It’s very heartbreaking because I know the pain that they’re going through,” Pfau said.

Her family was vacationing in the British Overseas Territory last August when her son mistakenly brought ammunition in a bag he used during a previous trip, according to Pfau.

“He did not have a gun. And, you know, there was no violence involved. And so we really did hold out hope that he would possibly get a very hefty fine,” said Pfau. “Maybe he would get, you know, barred from ever returning. But once everything was set into motion, you know, it was a devastating experience.”

She said the family spent more than $100,000 on an extended stay, bail money and attorney fees and were constantly worried about Grimm’s safety.

“It was the hardest time in my life and for our immediate family, and feeling helpless that there was nothing that we could do,” Pfau said.

“Just the trying to arrange to see him or speak with him was the biggest, I think, barrier,” Pfau shared about the experience of having her son in prison on the Island, adding, “knowing the conditions — the prison had been sanctioned by the U.N. for unsanitary conditions.”

She told Gaydos she often worried about whether or not her son was safe or healthy.

Grimm spent more than five months in prison in Grand Turk before being released in February. Pfau said she and her son are still processing their traumatic experience.

“We both have sought professional services to help us deal with this trauma and this PTSD, so it’s not behind us. So we’re just trying to figure out how we can be helpful to others who may be in this situation and how we can make a change, whether it’s through the embassy, the travel alerts or in any way that we can. We don’t want anyone else to ever have to experience this,” Pfau said.

At a State Department news conference, a representative addressed the detainment of Watson and Hagerich: “We’re aware of the arrest of U.S. citizens in Turks and Caicos. When a U.S. citizen is arrested, we stand by ready to provide all appropriate consular assistance, but in a foreign country, U.S. citizens are subject to the country’s laws, even if they may differ from what is law in the United States.”

On Wednesday, the U.S. Embassy in the Bahamas re-issued an alert urging all travelers going to Turks & Caicos Islands to carefully check their luggage for stray ammunition or forgotten weapons before departing from the United States.

And the Turks and Caicos Attorney General and the Director of Public Prosecutions issued a statement Wednesday saying the islands’ firearm ordinance “requires the Supreme Court to impose a mandatory minimum sentence and fine for certain firearm offenses, except in circumstances where the court finds that there are exceptional circumstances.”

The statement went on to add that there have been five separate cases within a two-year period where the Supreme Court of the islands found exceptional circumstances: only four of the offenders were fined and one was given a custodial sentence below the mandatory minimum.

Grimm’s eight-month sentence was below the mandatory minimum of 12 years in prison.

The director of public prosecutions said in their statement, “8 firearms and ammunitions prosecutions in total were done involving tourists from the United States, 3 of which are currently before the court with each of the defendants on bail.”

Ryan Watson is one of those three. He was let out on bail today pending his next hearing.

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Ryan and Valerie Watson, who live in Oklahoma, left for Turks and Caicos Islands on April 7 to celebrate the 40th birthdays of Ryan and two friends. When they went through security for their return flight, their carry-on was flagged and searched and officials found a Ziploc bag of bullets.

“They were hunting ammunition rounds that I use for whitetail deer,” said Ryan, “and I recognized them and I thought, oh man, what a bonehead mistake that I had no idea that those were in there.”

The two shared their story virtually with NBC10 Boston last week before their first court hearing. They were stuck on the island, their passports confiscated, separated from their young son and daughter.

“When I heard that, I immediately was terrified because I was like, we can’t both be in prison for 12 years. We have kids at home. And this is such an innocent mistake that we didn’t even know we weren’t– we didn’t even know it was there. So yeah, my immediate thought was our kids and them being, you know, parentless for, for that long,” Valerie said.

The Watsons were questioned and charged with possession of ammunition. In 2022, Turks and Caicos passed an amendment with stiffer penalties for possession of weapons or ammunition, increasing the mandatory minimum prison sentence to 12 years.

Last September, the U.S. Embassy in the Bahamas issued a travel alert warning Americans after a tourist from Indiana got an eight-month prison sentence for possession of ammunition.

The alert says: “We wish to remind all travelers that declaring a weapon in your luggage with an airline carrier does not grant permission to bring the weapon into TCI [Turks and Caicos Islands] and will result in your arrest.

“We strongly encourage you to carefully check your luggage for stray ammunition or forgotten weapons before departing for TCI. If you bring a firearm or ammunition into TCI, we will not be able to secure your release from custody. You are subject to TCI laws and must follow local law enforcement procedures,” the alert continued.

Bryan Hagerich was detained by Turks and Caicos authorities after a family vacation in February when hunting ammunition was found in his luggage before he boarded a flight home. He said the ammunition was found in a bag he frequently used for weekend hunting trips.

“I’ve been here for almost 70 days now after posting bail. I’ve been out, right now just waiting to go to the hearing. That’s where my case would be heard, then following that would be sentencing,” Hagerich said.

Hagerich, who played baseball professionally and was once drafted by the Florida Marlins, lives in Pennsylvania with his wife and two young kids. He spent eight days in prison before posting bail and is awaiting a May 3 court hearing.

“It’s incredibly scary. You know, you just don’t know what the next day may bring. You know, what path this may take. You know, you’re in a completely different culture, a different country by yourself. You know, it’s certainly a lot different than packing your bags and going away with your family for a few days. It’s been the worst 70 days of my life,” Hagerich said.

He and the Watsons are also dealing with the financial strain of paying for an extended stay and being away from their jobs.

“We’ve already talked, and we’re like, what if, you know, what if we lose our house? Which, when we moved to Oklahoma, we built a home that we thought was our forever home. And to think that this is going to ruin us…” said an emotional Valerie.

“This is something that we may never recover from,” Ryan said.

“I’m just very anxious, eager to get home to my family,” said Hagerich. “This has been too long. You know, it’s just had so much irreparable harm to my family, that, you know, I just can’t continue to see them struggle anymore. I just want to hug my family and start this healing process together.”

After their hearing yesterday, Ryan was sent to jail and is awaiting a bail hearing Wednesday. Charges were dropped for Valerie on Monday and she is now back in Oklahoma with her two children.

The judges in Turks and Caicos Islands are able to make exceptions to the mandatory minimum sentence if they determine there are “exceptional circumstances” in a case.

NBC10 Boston reached out to the U.S. Embassy in the Bahamas and Turks and Caicos Islands’ tourism bureau about the Watsons’ situation and have not heard back. We contacted the State Department and a spokesperson told NBC10 Boston they are aware of the arrest of U.S. citizens in Turks and Caicos and that, “The U.S. Department of State and our embassies and consulates abroad have no greater priority than the safety and security of U.S. citizens overseas.”

The spokesperson added, “When a U.S. citizen is arrested overseas, we stand ready to provide all appropriate consular assistance. In a foreign country, U.S. citizens are subject to that country’s laws, even if they differ from those in the United States… As our security alert from September 22, 2023 states, in the Turks and Caicos Islands (TCI), firearms, ammunition, and other weapons are not permitted. TCI authorities strictly enforce all firearms related laws. The penalty for traveling to TCI with a firearm, ammunition, or other weapon is a minimum custodial sentence of twelve (12) years. If a traveler brings a firearm or ammunition into TCI, the U.S. Department of State will not be able to secure their release from custody. Travelers are subject to TCI laws and must follow local law enforcement procedures.”

The State Department said they are unable to provide the number of U.S. citizens charged with weapon/ammunition possession since the department is unable to track local arrests.

The mother of three kids said she saved up for years working 80-hour weeks in the health care field to afford a place to live.

Standing and looking at the plot of land, Vazquez recalled the excitement of finally finding a location to build.

“I felt like everything was aligned with the universe,” Vazquez said. “I wanted to give my kids the home that they deserve.”

When it was time to break ground, Vazquez did some online research and found a contractor she thought she could rely on: Liam McNeil of LHS Construction.

Along with positive online reviews, Vazquez learned that McNeil was a nurse practitioner.

“As a fellow nurse, I thought, ‘This is someone I can trust,'” Vazquez said.

To get the project in motion, Vazquez paid a $40,000 deposit to get the land cleared and the foundation poured.

When McNeil asked for another payment, Vazquez said she and her bank wanted records of how the funds had been spent before approving more expenditures. At that point, only about dozen trees had been chopped down, according to an inspection report of the property.

A short time later, Vazquez got the ultimate gut punch: The business owner said he was filing for bankruptcy, and her money was gone.

“I was in complete shock,” Vazquez said. “Our holidays were ruined. We were grieving the whole holidays.”

Alyssa Pacheco got the same shock the night before Thanksgiving.

Upon returning to her Freetown home, a worker who had poured the foundation for her home addition project was waiting. The subcontractor said he had not been paid and had learned McNeil was filing for bankruptcy.

“He told us he was planning to place a mechanic’s lien against our property,” Pacheco said. “It was pretty terrifying.”

At that point, Pacheco and her husband had already sunk more than $100,000 into the project that was supposed to add a two-car garage and more living space.

However, despite spending all that money, there was little progress to show. In the driveway and yard, Pacheco showed us piles of lumber that had not been paid for.

A couple of weeks before learning the bankruptcy news in November, Pacheco said she had handed McNeil another $10,000 payment.

“How could he continue to take payments from us?” Pacheco wondered. “Essentially, we realized that we got hosed.”

Standing in the backyard of his home in Boston’s West Roxbury neighborhood, Sean Tully shook his head while staring at the giant hole left behind.

“I hate coming back here,” Tully told us.

After agreeing on a contract for a new garage, Tully paid a $17,000 deposit to McNeil. A crew came and dug the hole and then the project stalled.

Meanwhile, the hole constantly filled with water, eroding the soil around it and threatening the structural integrity of his neighbors’ fences. Tully said he had nightmares of everything caving into the trench.

Tully contacted us after seeing our previous “To Catch a Contractor” coverage. He wonders how it could be legal to have homeowners lose hard-earned savings in the blink of an eye and have the debts potentially wiped away by bankruptcy.

“I feel like we got robbed,” Tully said. “To simply walk away and leave other people holding the bag, it just feels like a big scam.”

As we looked into some of the details about McNeil’s business, we learned some of the angry customers even include some former coworkers in the health care field.

Jen Rowan, a nurse, met McNeil when they worked at the same hospital on the South Shore. Rowan hired the contractor to build an addition at her home in Weymouth last year.

“I figured that at least I knew him. I could hopefully trust him,” Rowan recalled. “Yeah, he pulled a fast one on me.”

After demolition for her project began, Rowan said a part of her house was left exposed to the elements as the project ran into delays.

On top of the $100,000 she has already paid, Rowan said there are now other big expenses to repair water and mold damage, along with paying a new contractor to correct other issues that surfaced during construction.

Rowan said she knows another nurse and a doctor who hired McNeil because of the work relationship and are now in even bigger financial holes.

“Where’s the money?” Rowan questioned. “You’re not paying employees. You’re not paying your bills. Where is the money going?”

That is the $1 million question. Bankruptcy filings show McNeil owes to somewhere between 50 to 100 people, including homeowners, subcontractors, vendors and former employees. The debts also include a slew of credit cards and lines of credit.

State records show McNeil incorporated the construction business in September 2021.

In a recorded call with his creditors in January, McNeil said he did not decide to file bankruptcy until the night before he sent out letters to his customers.

“Even two days before that, or a day before that, I really was pretty much oblivious to the fact that my company was egregiously failing financially,” McNeil said on the call.

According to bankruptcy documents, a handful of people are filing legal challenges that their debts should not be discharged.

That includes several former employees, who claimed that McNeil started writing them paper checks instead of paying them via direct deposit in the months leading up to the bankruptcy. They also claimed that they performed home improvement work at McNeil’s home in Weymouth.

During the phone call with creditors, homeowners like Vazquez pressed for answers about how their money was spent.

“What did you do with the $40,000 we gave you?” Vazquez asked. “Did you use it for other projects or personal debt?”

McNeil responded that he did not use her money on other projects or personal debt.

“So then what was the money used for?” Vazquez asked.

After a pause, McNeil responded, “Projects.”

We caught up to McNeil this month before one of his shifts at an urgent care clinic to see if we could get more specific answers.

When asked why he owed so much money to so many different people, McNeil responded, “Just way in over my head. I wasn’t prepared to have a business. Just wasn’t good at it. It’s terrible.”

During the interview, McNeil denied that he ever used company assets on his personal expenses, adding that nothing “nefarious” happened with the money.

“I feel horrible about the whole thing. It’s not why I started a business,” McNeil said. “We had way more expenses that we had income. I really didn’t do it to make money, because I didn’t make money. That’s why it’s disappointing.”

Homeowners told us something about McNeil’s explanation doesn’t add up.

The trustee overseeing the case is slated to make a recommendation about whether the bankruptcy should move forward in May.

While they are not optimistic about getting any funds back, homeowners are hoping for a measure of justice or accountability.

“There needs to be some sort of repercussion if a contractor is going to do this to somebody,” Pacheco said.

NBC10 Boston has learned one of McNeil’s family members had a very similar scenario play out with his home construction business several years ago. What we discovered about that situation, including the criminal charges that resulted, will be coming up in a future report.

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Some of those landlords are sharing their stories.

Mark Haskell 

In 2009, Mark Haskell and his family needed to move to a bigger home. Because the housing bubble had burst and the property on Shawnee Road in Worcester had lost value, he decided to rent the home instead of selling it. 

Haskell’s first tenant was a doctor who lived at the property with no problems.

The next time he listed it, the Callahans showed up. They came armed with a packet of pay stubs and credit reports. 

“They said all the right things,” Haskell said. “They were very relatable.”

In retrospect, Haskell said the only red flag was an urgency to get into the property as soon as possible, but he overlooked it at the time.

Upon returning from a business trip, Haskell received a call from the bank. The Callahans’ rental check had been written from a closed account. 

“There was a sinking feeling that something wasn’t right,” Haskell said. “I thought I had been scammed.”

Haskell said the couple made excuses about the money and tried to string him along as much as possible. After several months of paying both mortgages while supporting kids and juggling other bills, Haskell hired an attorney to begin the eviction process. 

The entire ordeal took about six months. On the eve of the eviction, there was still a last-minute plea from Russell Callahan about accessing funds from his work retirement account so he could stay in the property.

“We never meant for it to come to this point, believe me,” Haskell read from an email he received. “We very much enjoy living here. Please contact me at your earliest convenience to discuss. I want to work with you.”

After the eviction, Haskell said he received a call from a real estate agent who was listing a rental property. The Callahans had applied and the agent was checking with previous landlords. 

Haskell was able to help that property owner avoid the legal headache that he experienced. His judgment in housing court is for about $6,000, but he estimates his losses at closer to $10,000 with moving expenses and attorney fees.

Roughly 15 years later, Haskell shakes his head that the pattern continues. 

“I can’t believe they’re still up to this and the system allows it,” he said. “If you look at it as a whole, it’s a major scam.”

Tyler Lynch

In 2016, Tyler Lynch was a recent college graduate preparing for his first deployment with the Navy. 

Lynch decided to list his Jacksonville home for rent on Zillow. Before long, the Callahans contacted him to see the property. 

Lynch said they seemed like an “all-American couple” who asked questions about his collegiate football career and perhaps drinking a beer together at some point.

“They were the kind of people that you would expect a fun neighbor to be,” Lynch recalled. 

Shortly after Lynch deployed overseas, the Callahans moved into his home. Before long, they were late on the monthly rent. 

After Lynch sent a reminder about making a payment, he said Linda Callahan responded that her husband was in a horrible work accident and was on life support.

“I felt so bad about the situation, I sent flowers to the house,” Lynch said. 

More time passed and Lynch had still not received any rental payments. While dealing with limited cell service in a foreign country, Lynch finally managed to reach Russell Callahan on the phone.

During that conversation, Russell Callahan told him that he had not been in an accident. Instead, he blamed his wife for spending the rent money on other items and said the couple was getting a divorce.

Again, Lynch felt sympathy about the situation. But when more weeks passed with nothing but radio silence from the Callahans, reality hit.

“I have this house and I’m in a different country. I’m thinking, “What am I going to do?”” Lynch said. “I realized I made a horrible mistake.”

Lynch had to hire an attorney to assist with the eviction process during his deployment. He said the experience cost him about $10,000. 

Lynch, now a lieutenant commander with the Navy living in the Dallas area, was stunned when we contacted him eight years later about his landlord nightmare.

“The neighborly, welcoming people I first met, they’re just criminals,” he said. “They are cheating the system every way they can.”

Hayk Hovhannisyan

Hayk Hovhannisyan and his wife both lost their jobs at the beginning of 2018. Around the same time, the tenants at their Shrewsbury rental property also notified them that they were moving out. 

That’s why Hovhannisyan told us it was crucial to find new tenants and have the rental income to help support his two children.

During the open house, Linda Callahan seemed like the perfect prospective tenant.

“Suddenly, there’s this middle-aged, white, happy and trustworthy woman with all the paperwork in hand,” Hovhannisyan recalled. 

The Callahans were supposed to move in at the beginning of August, but asked if they could start their tenancy several days early. 

On the day they handed over the keys, Hovhannisyan said there were moving trucks at the property already loaded up with the Callahans’ possessions. In retrospect, he now realizes those trucks had come straight from the Callahans’ eviction at their previous rental property. 

Just like with other landlords, the first rental check bounced. Excuses followed about the IRS and the bank account being frozen.

Hovhannisyan eventually went to investigate at the bank branch. That’s when he learned the account from which the check was written had been closed for a long time. 

“These are professional con artists,” Hovyannisyan said. “I realized this is not some isolated thing. There are actually people who live like this.”

Like several other landlords we spoke with, Hovyannisyan believes he was targeted because he is an immigrant who is unfamiliar with the legal system and eviction process. 

He hired an attorney and discovered how long it can take to execute an eviction, even when the tenants are not paying a dime. 

On moving day, which landlords are required to pay under Massachusetts law, two trucks were not sufficient to load up all the Callahans’ items. Hovyannisyan had to call in a third truck to finish the job. 

When he entered the property for the first time after the eviction, he noticed the walls had been painted a different color. 

Hovyannisyan estimates the lost rent, moving expenses and attorney fees cost him about $13,000.

“Hopefully, they’ll end up in some nice jail,” he said. “Free housing. That’s what they’re looking for, yes? Free housing.”

Rory Mallaghan

The home on Jonathan Circle was the first property that Rory Mallaghan owned. When he and his wife moved to a new home in anticipation of having their first child, Mallaghan listed the property for rent on Zillow, hoping to find a tenant who would care for the home where he’d created so many memories. 

The Callahans showed up to get a tour of the property and Mallaghan remembers how they gave the impression they would really enjoy living in the space.

“Linda was so bubbly,” Mallaghan recalled. “Every nook of the house, she thought she could put certain things in certain places and everything would be fantastic.”

The couple said they were looking at several properties and already had a packet of paperwork available, including pay stubs, references and credit reports. 

The Callahans said they were helping with family in Shrewsbury and staying at a nearby hotel just to get some space. Mallaghan gave them a ride back to the hotel after the showing. 

Like other landlord encounters, a familiar series of events followed.

Upon returning from a work trip, Mallaghan discovered the Callahans’ rent checks had bounced. The couple first blamed a problem with the IRS, then described an issue withdrawing funds from a 401k account. 

“They always had an excuse of why the money wasn’t there and they were working on it,” Mallaghan said. “They just preyed on my forgiveness and compassion and were able to live there rent-free.”

When he finally ran out of patience, Mallaghan hired an attorney to start the eviction process. After eight months of receiving no rent, Mallaghan wrote an email to the Callahans, pleading with them not to delay any longer and leave the property. 

“We’ve come to terms we will never see that money. It was an expensive lesson,” he wrote. “We had plans to buy baby necessities. It’s a tough pill to swallow.”

Mallaghan was there when a constable showed up to execute the eviction and a moving company packed up possession. When he entered the home for the first time, everything was stripped from the walls, including the toilet paper holders.

He said the ordeal cost him about $20,000.

“They know what they’re doing,” Mallaghan said. “They are just taking people for a ride.”

Sitanshu Sinha and Shilpi Gupta

The home on Egret Circle in Shrewsbury was the first property Sitanshu Sinha and Shilpi Gupta purchased when they immigrated to the United States. The couple later decided to move to a larger home in town and rented the old property to several different tenants without incident. Then they listed it again in August 2023. 

Russell and Linda Callahan showed up to look at the home and said they were trying to get a loan to buy some land, so they had already assembled a credit report, background check and pay stubs for their bank. 

The documents they provided to Sinha and Gupta falsely listed the couple’s last name as “O’Callagham” to avoid detection. 

Before moving in, Linda Callahan said she thought the basement would be a perfect space to work on her art and craft projects, and asked if she could pay to have it carpeted. Sinha and Gupta thought it was a strange request from tenants and declined the offer. 

“That still sticks with me because of the way things turned out,” Gupta said. 

A couple of days after moving into the property, the checks bounced. The pattern of excuses followed, but Sinha said it did not seem like there was any urgency to get the payment situation resolved. 

The couple eventually realized they needed to get a lawyer because they started dipping into emergency savings to pay the mortgages on both properties. 

“It was very stressful on us financially,” Gupta said. 

At the eviction proceedings in housing court, Russell Callahan declined to answer questions from the judge. He would not even state his name under oath without legal representation, according to audio we obtained. 

“I don’t credit your testimony, sir,” the judge told Callahan. “I actually don’t credit anything you said. I find you to be evasive and not particularly forthcoming.”

When Sinha called a moving company to get an estimate, the employee asked for the names of the tenants being evicted. A couple minutes later, the employee said he could provide an exact quote because the moving company had already boxed up the Callahans’ possessions on multiple occasions. 

On the eve of the move, Linda Callahan made a final plea to stay in the house until after Christmas.

“I know you are very angry with us, and truthfully, we don’t blame you,” read a text message. “We falsified the documents because we wanted to rent from you. And with our history, we knew you wouldn’t consider us.”

After the Callahans moved out, Sinha and Gupta found nail holes and other damage everywhere throughout the house. There were light fixtures, curtain rods and speakers missing.

The couple estimates the financial nightmare cost them about $30,000 in savings. They had planned to invest that money in their two kids’ college savings plans. 

The home on Egret Circle is the last known address for the Callahans. No new eviction cases have surfaced since movers packed them up last December. 

“I’m still at a loss for words,” Sinha said. “How can something live like this for so long and get away with it?”

Nadia Amrani

Nadia Amrani moved out of her home on Locust Avenue in Worcester and rented a home in Shrewsbury so her three daughters could attend a better high school. The single mom planned to move back to Worcester after her daughters graduated, but needed to find a tenant to help pay the mortgage in the interim. 

When the Callahans came to look at the property, they had a packet of paperwork ready to go. They told Amrani they were thinking about buying a home and applying for a mortgage, so they’d already assembled the financial records for the bank.

“I thought they were just being proactive,” Amrani said. “Making things easier for me.”

The documents like credit reports and pay stubs all seemed legit, so Amrani offered the Callahans a rental agreement. She remembers Linda Callahan seeming relieved and in control once she handed her the keys. 

Amrani read us the text message she received from Linda Callahan once the lease was signed. Years later, the words take on an ominous tone. 

“Thank you so much for your decision on selecting my family,” the message said. “I understand the financial agreement to be met. We will respect your home as if it were our own. Enjoy your day. I know you just made ours great.”

Linda Callahan delayed providing a security deposit until closer to the move-in date, saying her mom was in the hospital having heart surgery. By the time the check bounced, the Callahans were already living in the home.

Amrani said the couple initially blamed problems with the IRS on the lack of funds. When weeks passed with no payment, Amrani went to the bank and discovered the account had been closed. 

“I started panicking,” Amrani said. “I couldn’t afford to pay the mortgage and the rent where I was living.”

Amrani hired an attorney and won an eviction at the end of 2019. She is thankful she got rid of the Callahans just before the COVID pandemic. That’s when the government implemented an eviction moratorium, and Amrani believes she would’ve lost her home. 

Once the rental payment problems surfaced, Amrani remembers looking up the Callahans in the housing court’s online system. She was stunned when she saw their extensive eviction history, a track record that was nowhere to be found in the documents they had provided in that first encounter.

“They need to pay for what they did,” she said. “Those people have been evicted over and over and over again. The system knows them. And nothing has been done.”

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“What’s at stake here are these core constitutional protections,” said Daniel Woislaw, an attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation, the nonprofit firm representing the family. “What the city has done and what the officers did is they came to the house and they threatened to break in and take the children away. Without a court order. Without an emergency. And without, really, any evidence at all of child abuse.”

The government agencies had filed motions to dismiss the case, arguing the public workers were protected by qualified immunity. However, Judge Patti Saris determined the case should proceed.

“It’s a big victory to get past this hurdle and try to protect people from government overreach,” Sabey told us.

The ordeal for the parents started in July 2022, when they took their 4-month-old son, Cal, to the hospital with a high fever. Tests by doctors revealed an almost-healed rib fracture.

The parents had no explanation for Cal’s injury, triggering health care workers to notify DCF. Perkins stayed at the hospital as doctors performed more tests and social workers questioned her about the circumstances.

Health care workers who specialize in child abuse told NBC10 Boston that certain injuries in babies — including broken ribs — immediately raise suspicion and can trigger an in-depth evaluation. Doctors are required by law to report suspicions of child abuse or neglect to DCF.

After hours of scrutiny and an overnight stay at Newton-Wellesley Hospital, the mother left with her child.

The family thought the nightmare was over — until unexpected visitors arrived at their front door at 1 a.m.

Police and DCF workers were there to make an emergency removal of the two children. They did not provide any paperwork to the parents that justified the drastic decision.

Cellphone video of the incident captured 3-year-old Clarence screaming in fear about leaving with strangers in the middle of the night.

The lawsuit alleges several constitutional violations, including unlawful search and seizure and deprivation of parental rights without due process. It says the initial DCF investigation turned up no evidence of domestic abuse, no police calls to the parents’ home, no evidence of substance abuse, and no concerns from the pediatrician who had regularly seen both boys.

We reached out to the City of Waltham and DCF about the latest legal development with the case. A DCF spokesperson said the agency doesn’t comment on pending legislation, and we have not yet received a response from the City of Waltham.

Following the original NBC10 Boston investigation, a Massachusetts state lawmaker proposed another layer of oversight before DCF workers can make an emergency removal of children.

The legislation filed by Rep. Joan Meschino, D-Plymouth, would require DCF workers to get them to sign off before emergency removals are made during hours when courthouses are closed, similar to a search warrant or restraining order.

Sabey and Perkins moved to Idaho with their kids after the DCF investigation was closed. The parents say they are continuing the fight to change the system.

“We’ve had, like, hundreds of families now reach out to us and tell us their stories,” said Perkins. “I just feel so fortunate that we’re in a position to be able to do something, to try to enforce basic constitutional protections for families that people can’t come to their house without paperwork and take their children.”

Have a tip for the NBC10 Boston Investigators? Email us at tips@nbcboston.com.

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After almost one year, the department finally turned over the data that shows an uptick in assaults in the past few years.  The increase comes in the wake of a violent attack on one correction officer that almost ended his life.  

Tears flowed as former correctional officer, Matt Tidman, tried to recall the extremely painful memory of the attack inside the walls of MCI Shirley that almost ended his life on August 31, 2022.  

“I don’t really-luckily remember, but I kind of have an idea. I’m pretty much just thankful to be alive and able to keep thriving,” Tidman said. 

He only had an hour left on his shift at the medium-security prison when he was brutally beaten with a metal bar from the prison gym allegedly at the hands of convicted murderer Roy Booth. Tidmans’s skull was crushed, leaving him with a traumatic brain injury and blind and deaf on one side. He was in a coma for weeks.

When asked about the moment he woke up Tidman told us, “You know my family was there from the day it happened talking with a person that they didn’t know was going to survive or not.”

Tidman’s assault highlights the dangers in our prisons.  Booth was transferred to Massachusetts from Virginia where prison records show he was classified as maximum security, violently assaulted an inmate and had a history of making threats to inmates and staff. Booth pleaded not guilty to the Tidman attack. His criminal case is pending.

The data NBC10 finally received from the Department of Correction shows there have been 711 cases of inmate assaults on staff in state prisons from 2020 to 2023 – 25 with serious injuries. The largest number of assaults happened inside the state’s most secure prison, Souza Baranowski Correctional Center. 

Kevin Flanagan, legislative representative for the Massachusetts Correction Officers Federated Union said, “The uptick in violence has just gone beyond anything we’ve seen before. Officers are continuously getting assaulted with bodily fluid and getting punched and kicked and the constant mental and verbal attacks on our staff.”

The rise in the number of assaults comes five years after the state’s sweeping criminal justice reform aimed at providing rehabilitation for inmates and lowering the incarceration rate.

“I think we can all agree rehabilitation is important but it has to start with that inmate. The inmate has to want to be rehabilitated, that inmate has to be able to follow the rules to keep them safe, to keep our officers safe,” added Flanagan.

While the prison population has plummeted in the last decade from 11,403 incarcerated individuals to 6,148 overtime has skyrocketed.  The department shelled out $22.71 million in overtime in 2013 and $63.21 million last year.  Many officers are forced to work 16-hour days on a regular basis because there are fewer officers on the job.

A veteran officer whose identity we’re protecting said he was assaulted and blamed the reforms for increasing the risk inside our prisons.

“We don’t feel safe. It’s stressful and mentally taxing. A lot of those guys who were doing lengthy time for heinous assaults, whether it was assaulting staff or another inmate are now in general population.” 

He told us his biggest fear is that someone is going to get killed.

According to recent reports obtained by the NBC10 Investigators, an inmate inside Souza threatened to kill correction officers. Other officers reported that four officers were hit with urine and feces in less than a week and that the climate was so dangerous even counselors fear for their safety.

“It’s absolute mayhem in that place and the only thing that we have for ourselves is each other. We’re so demoralized in that place it’s tough to even come to work now,” said the correction officer who wanted to remain anonymous.

A spokesperson for the Department of Correction released a statement that said the department believes one staff assault is too many and they’re committed to the safety of everyone in our prisons.

Advocates for incarcerated individuals told us poor conditions give rise to tension and violence. Jesse White, policy director for Prisoner Legal Services said, “If we value violence prevention, we must improve access to out-of-cell time, programming, education, and health care, and create independent oversight and meaningful pathways to release.”

The conditions inside our prisons has led to a call for action from some state lawmakers to try to stem the tide of violence. After Tidman’s attack, State Representative Steven Xiarhos, R -5^th Barnstable, filed a bill to ban free weights and secure gym equipment. 

Xiarhos toured Souza Baranowski with State Rep. Michael Soter, R -8^th Worcester, and others who believe more needs to be done because lives are on the line.  “What I see here is if we’re not proactive somebody is going to get either severely hurt again, somebody is going to lose their life. If we’re going to be reactive it’s going to be too late,” said Representative Soter.

That thought is echoed by Tidman who fought his way back and miraculously survived.

“I remember waking up and they were saying Miracle Matt. I’m hoping that this kind of sheds light on a lot of the things that really happen and the impact.”

More from the NBC10 Investigators

Mar 7

Audit reveals more erroneous payments to Boxborough Police payroll

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Should convicted ex-Stoneham cop lose his pension?

Some of those landlords are sharing their stories.

Mark Haskell 

In 2009, Mark Haskell and his family needed to move to a bigger home. Because the housing bubble had burst and the property on Shawnee Road in Worcester had lost value, he decided to rent the home instead of selling it. 

Haskell’s first tenant was a doctor who lived at the property with no problems.

The next time he listed it, the Callahans showed up. They came armed with a packet of pay stubs and credit reports. 

“They said all the right things,” Haskell said. “They were very relatable.”

In retrospect, Haskell said the only red flag was an urgency to get into the property as soon as possible, but he overlooked it at the time.

Upon returning from a business trip, Haskell received a call from the bank. The Callahans’ rental check had been written from a closed account. 

“There was a sinking feeling that something wasn’t right,” Haskell said. “I thought I had been scammed.”

Haskell said the couple made excuses about the money and tried to string him along as much as possible. After several months of paying both mortgages while supporting kids and juggling other bills, Haskell hired an attorney to begin the eviction process. 

The entire ordeal took about six months. On the eve of the eviction, there was still a last-minute plea from Russell Callahan about accessing funds from his work retirement account so he could stay in the property.

“We never meant for it to come to this point, believe me,” Haskell read from an email he received. “We very much enjoy living here. Please contact me at your earliest convenience to discuss. I want to work with you.”

After the eviction, Haskell said he received a call from a real estate agent who was listing a rental property. The Callahans had applied and the agent was checking with previous landlords. 

Haskell was able to help that property owner avoid the legal headache that he experienced. His judgment in housing court is for about $6,000, but he estimates his losses at closer to $10,000 with moving expenses and attorney fees.

Roughly 15 years later, Haskell shakes his head that the pattern continues. 

“I can’t believe they’re still up to this and the system allows it,” he said. “If you look at it as a whole, it’s a major scam.”

Tyler Lynch

In 2016, Tyler Lynch was a recent college graduate preparing for his first deployment with the Navy. 

Lynch decided to list his Jacksonville home for rent on Zillow. Before long, the Callahans contacted him to see the property. 

Lynch said they seemed like an “all-American couple” who asked questions about his collegiate football career and perhaps drinking a beer together at some point.

“They were the kind of people that you would expect a fun neighbor to be,” Lynch recalled. 

Shortly after Lynch deployed overseas, the Callahans moved into his home. Before long, they were late on the monthly rent. 

After Lynch sent a reminder about making a payment, he said Linda Callahan responded that her husband was in a horrible work accident and was on life support.

“I felt so bad about the situation, I sent flowers to the house,” Lynch said. 

More time passed and Lynch had still not received any rental payments. While dealing with limited cell service in a foreign country, Lynch finally managed to reach Russell Callahan on the phone.

During that conversation, Russell Callahan told him that he had not been in an accident. Instead, he blamed his wife for spending the rent money on other items and said the couple was getting a divorce.

Again, Lynch felt sympathy about the situation. But when more weeks passed with nothing but radio silence from the Callahans, reality hit.

“I have this house and I’m in a different country. I’m thinking, “What am I going to do?”” Lynch said. “I realized I made a horrible mistake.”

Lynch had to hire an attorney to assist with the eviction process during his deployment. He said the experience cost him about $10,000. 

Lynch, now a lieutenant commander with the Navy living in the Dallas area, was stunned when we contacted him eight years later about his landlord nightmare.

“The neighborly, welcoming people I first met, they’re just criminals,” he said. “They are cheating the system every way they can.”

Hayk Hovhannisyan

Hayk Hovhannisyan and his wife both lost their jobs at the beginning of 2018. Around the same time, the tenants at their Shrewsbury rental property also notified them that they were moving out. 

That’s why Hovhannisyan told us it was crucial to find new tenants and have the rental income to help support his two children.

During the open house, Linda Callahan seemed like the perfect prospective tenant.

“Suddenly, there’s this middle-aged, white, happy and trustworthy woman with all the paperwork in hand,” Hovhannisyan recalled. 

The Callahans were supposed to move in at the beginning of August, but asked if they could start their tenancy several days early. 

On the day they handed over the keys, Hovhannisyan said there were moving trucks at the property already loaded up with the Callahans’ possessions. In retrospect, he now realizes those trucks had come straight from the Callahans’ eviction at their previous rental property. 

Just like with other landlords, the first rental check bounced. Excuses followed about the IRS and the bank account being frozen.

Hovhannisyan eventually went to investigate at the bank branch. That’s when he learned the account from which the check was written had been closed for a long time. 

“These are professional con artists,” Hovyannisyan said. “I realized this is not some isolated thing. There are actually people who live like this.”

Like several other landlords we spoke with, Hovyannisyan believes he was targeted because he is an immigrant who is unfamiliar with the legal system and eviction process. 

He hired an attorney and discovered how long it can take to execute an eviction, even when the tenants are not paying a dime. 

On moving day, which landlords are required to pay under Massachusetts law, two trucks were not sufficient to load up all the Callahans’ items. Hovyannisyan had to call in a third truck to finish the job. 

When he entered the property for the first time after the eviction, he noticed the walls had been painted a different color. 

Hovyannisyan estimates the lost rent, moving expenses and attorney fees cost him about $13,000.

“Hopefully, they’ll end up in some nice jail,” he said. “Free housing. That’s what they’re looking for, yes? Free housing.”

Rory Mallaghan

The home on Jonathan Circle was the first property that Rory Mallaghan owned. When he and his wife moved to a new home in anticipation of having their first child, Mallaghan listed the property for rent on Zillow, hoping to find a tenant who would care for the home where he’d created so many memories. 

The Callahans showed up to get a tour of the property and Mallaghan remembers how they gave the impression they would really enjoy living in the space.

“Linda was so bubbly,” Mallaghan recalled. “Every nook of the house, she thought she could put certain things in certain places and everything would be fantastic.”

The couple said they were looking at several properties and already had a packet of paperwork available, including pay stubs, references and credit reports. 

The Callahans said they were helping with family in Shrewsbury and staying at a nearby hotel just to get some space. Mallaghan gave them a ride back to the hotel after the showing. 

Like other landlord encounters, a familiar series of events followed.

Upon returning from a work trip, Mallaghan discovered the Callahans’ rent checks had bounced. The couple first blamed a problem with the IRS, then described an issue withdrawing funds from a 401k account. 

“They always had an excuse of why the money wasn’t there and they were working on it,” Mallaghan said. “They just preyed on my forgiveness and compassion and were able to live there rent-free.”

When he finally ran out of patience, Mallaghan hired an attorney to start the eviction process. After eight months of receiving no rent, Mallaghan wrote an email to the Callahans, pleading with them not to delay any longer and leave the property. 

“We’ve come to terms we will never see that money. It was an expensive lesson,” he wrote. “We had plans to buy baby necessities. It’s a tough pill to swallow.”

Mallaghan was there when a constable showed up to execute the eviction and a moving company packed up possession. When he entered the home for the first time, everything was stripped from the walls, including the toilet paper holders.

He said the ordeal cost him about $20,000.

“They know what they’re doing,” Mallaghan said. “They are just taking people for a ride.”

Sitanshu Sinha and Shilpi Gupta

The home on Egret Circle in Shrewsbury was the first property Sitanshu Sinha and Shilpi Gupta purchased when they immigrated to the United States. The couple later decided to move to a larger home in town and rented the old property to several different tenants without incident. Then they listed it again in August 2023. 

Russell and Linda Callahan showed up to look at the home and said they were trying to get a loan to buy some land, so they had already assembled a credit report, background check and pay stubs for their bank. 

The documents they provided to Sinha and Gupta falsely listed the couple’s last name as “O’Callagham” to avoid detection. 

Before moving in, Linda Callahan said she thought the basement would be a perfect space to work on her art and craft projects, and asked if she could pay to have it carpeted. Sinha and Gupta thought it was a strange request from tenants and declined the offer. 

“That still sticks with me because of the way things turned out,” Gupta said. 

A couple of days after moving into the property, the checks bounced. The pattern of excuses followed, but Sinha said it did not seem like there was any urgency to get the payment situation resolved. 

The couple eventually realized they needed to get a lawyer because they started dipping into emergency savings to pay the mortgages on both properties. 

“It was very stressful on us financially,” Gupta said. 

At the eviction proceedings in housing court, Russell Callahan declined to answer questions from the judge. He would not even state his name under oath without legal representation, according to audio we obtained. 

“I don’t credit your testimony, sir,” the judge told Callahan. “I actually don’t credit anything you said. I find you to be evasive and not particularly forthcoming.”

When Sinha called a moving company to get an estimate, the employee asked for the names of the tenants being evicted. A couple minutes later, the employee said he could provide an exact quote because the moving company had already boxed up the Callahans’ possessions on multiple occasions. 

On the eve of the move, Linda Callahan made a final plea to stay in the house until after Christmas.

“I know you are very angry with us, and truthfully, we don’t blame you,” read a text message. “We falsified the documents because we wanted to rent from you. And with our history, we knew you wouldn’t consider us.”

After the Callahans moved out, Sinha and Gupta found nail holes and other damage everywhere throughout the house. There were light fixtures, curtain rods and speakers missing.

The couple estimates the financial nightmare cost them about $30,000 in savings. They had planned to invest that money in their two kids’ college savings plans. 

The home on Egret Circle is the last known address for the Callahans. No new eviction cases have surfaced since movers packed them up last December. 

“I’m still at a loss for words,” Sinha said. “How can something live like this for so long and get away with it?”

Nadia Amrani

Nadia Amrani moved out of her home on Locust Avenue in Worcester and rented a home in Shrewsbury so her three daughters could attend a better high school. The single mom planned to move back to Worcester after her daughters graduated, but needed to find a tenant to help pay the mortgage in the interim. 

When the Callahans came to look at the property, they had a packet of paperwork ready to go. They told Amrani they were thinking about buying a home and applying for a mortgage, so they’d already assembled the financial records for the bank.

“I thought they were just being proactive,” Amrani said. “Making things easier for me.”

The documents like credit reports and pay stubs all seemed legit, so Amrani offered the Callahans a rental agreement. She remembers Linda Callahan seeming relieved and in control once she handed her the keys. 

Amrani read us the text message she received from Linda Callahan once the lease was signed. Years later, the words take on an ominous tone. 

“Thank you so much for your decision on selecting my family,” the message said. “I understand the financial agreement to be met. We will respect your home as if it were our own. Enjoy your day. I know you just made ours great.”

Linda Callahan delayed providing a security deposit until closer to the move-in date, saying her mom was in the hospital having heart surgery. By the time the check bounced, the Callahans were already living in the home.

Amrani said the couple initially blamed problems with the IRS on the lack of funds. When weeks passed with no payment, Amrani went to the bank and discovered the account had been closed. 

“I started panicking,” Amrani said. “I couldn’t afford to pay the mortgage and the rent where I was living.”

Amrani hired an attorney and won an eviction at the end of 2019. She is thankful she got rid of the Callahans just before the COVID pandemic. That’s when the government implemented an eviction moratorium, and Amrani believes she would’ve lost her home. 

Once the rental payment problems surfaced, Amrani remembers looking up the Callahans in the housing court’s online system. She was stunned when she saw their extensive eviction history, a track record that was nowhere to be found in the documents they had provided in that first encounter.

“They need to pay for what they did,” she said. “Those people have been evicted over and over and over again. The system knows them. And nothing has been done.”

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At stake is Robert Kennedy’s taxpayer-funded benefit of roughly $5,000 per month. The key question: Was his wire fraud conviction directly related to his duties as a public servant?

In January, Kennedy—whose career of more than 20 years with the Stoneham Police Department came to an abrupt end once the pattern of behavior was exposed—received a sentence of two years of probation with 90 days of home confinement.

About a year earlier, an NBC10 Boston investigation detailed how the detective sergeant had a pattern of not paying landlords the monthly rent stretching back two decades, including a property owned by an elderly couple in Woburn.

We reported how, in recent years, housing court records show Kennedy and his girlfriend racked up more than $50,000 in unpaid rent while being evicted from apartment complexes in Stoneham and Reading.

During that three-year period, salary records revealed Kennedy had earned more than a half-million dollars as a police officer.

After seeing our investigation, a couple contacted us and said Kennedy and his girlfriend had not paid a dime since moving into their property in late 2022.

During a subsequent interview, Aarti and Peter Goldstein described how the police officer’s security deposit and first month’s rent checks both bounced. They also showed us how Kennedy had allegedly used a family member’s Social Security number to obtain a clean credit report.

The Goldsteins would later provide that same testimony to a federal grand jury, according to the criminal indictment for wire fraud.

Even after being arrested by the FBI and indicted in federal court, Kennedy did not pay rent to the Goldsteins. We were there in June when the couple was finally able to evict him from the property.

At its most recent meeting, the Stoneham Retirement Board voted to move forward with pension forfeiture proceedings.

Once all the federal court documents are reviewed, the Board will hold a hearing to review evidence and ask questions. Kennedy can decide if he wants the hearing to be public or private.

Attorney Micheal Sacco was appointed as the Hearing Officer and he will draft a recommendation for the Board at the conclusion of the proceedings.

By state law, a public employee’s pension can only be forfeited if a criminal conviction was directly connected to the official position.

The interpretation of that law has been the source of some controversial pension forfeiture decisions in recent years.

We asked Kennedy’s attorney, Brad Bailey, about the implications of criminal conviction on his client’s pension following the sentencing hearing in January.

“There’s no relation whatsoever,” Bailey responded. “None of this was done in the course of his official duties. This is something that related to the facts and circumstances of his personal life.”

Have a tip for the NBC10 Boston Investigators? Email us at tips@nbcboston.com.

However, Goldstein said Kennedy immediately provided a business card of his detective position when he first viewed the Stoneham apartment to build trust.

“I think he used the position to his advantage,” Goldstein said. “It’s not just his identity as an officer. It’s his experience. He used it against us to delay his eviction, to gain our trust, everything.”

At the sentencing hearing, Judge Denise Casper also ordered Kennedy to pay more than $14,000 in restitution to the Goldstein family.

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Worcester Mar 6

Deadly Worcester double shooting highlights police concerns of heavy firepower

Mar 4

Medway home where 7 children were removed was scene of bloody fight between family members

The NBC10 Boston Investigators reported last week on the Worcester Police Department’s concern over tiny objects known as “switches,” “giggle switches” or “machine gun conversion” devices.

The Tuesday afternoon shooting near the intersection of Lisbon Street and Englewood Avenue killed Chasity Nunez and her daughter, Zella.

Dozens of rounds were fired in the incident. Worcester police say they have seen an uptick in shootings recently, and in some, they’ve seen an incredible amount of firepower.

Video of police investigating showed multiple shots hit the windshield and driver’s side window of the vehicle the victims were in. More than 30 evidence markers can be seen on the ground, marking the shell casings from the bullets that were fired.

Data obtained by the NBC10 Boston Investigators shows there were 98 shootings in Worcester in a two-year period where 10 or more shots were fired — a total of 1,322 rounds.

“They have so much ammo in these weapons that they go out there and fire,” Sgt. Steve Roche of the Worcester Police Department’s gang unit told NBC10 Boston. “We go now and we’re seeing some of these officers recovered 18, 20 rounds at a single scene. It’s nothing to go and get a minimum of 10 to 12, and we’re seeing that commonplace now.”

Police say they have seen a dangerous trend of gun switches being used, enabling a handgun to unleash about 20 bullets a second.

There has been no word that a switch was used in Tuesday’s shooting, which remains under investigation. No arrests have been made.

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As we reported on February 23, social workers removed seven children between the ages of 3 and 16 from a home on Holliston Street and police spent the day gathering evidence.

Medway Police Chief William Kingsbury told reporters that day he could not share specific details about the situation while it remained under investigation.

However, court records the NBC10 Investigators reviewed shed light on a tumultuous environment in the days leading up to the removal of the children.

According to a Medway police report, officers responded to the home on the night of February 16 and found the aftermath of a bloody encounter between Thomas Logan, 55, and his 27-year-old son, Matthew Logan.

Witnesses told police that Matthew Logan was watching television in the home with his girlfriend and 29-year-old brother when his father entered the room with a metal flashlight and tried to attack his son.

After Matthew Logan fought off his father, Thomas Logan allegedly returned from the kitchen holding two knives.

Witnesses told police Matthew Logan wrestled the knives away from his father and then started punching him repeatedly in the head. At one point, Thomas Logan’s wife tried to intervene and break up the fight, but was also struck in the face during the struggle, according to the report.

Police arrived at the chaotic scene, unsure of what was transpiring inside the home after the frantic 911 call placed by Matthew Logan’s girlfriend, who was holding the couple’s young child when officers got to the home.

If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline by calling 1-800-799-SAFE (7233), visiting www.thehotline.org or texting LOVEIS to 22522.

One officer reported scaling an elevated patio and arresting Matthew Logan. Another officer kicked in a door and found Thomas Logan bleeding extensively from the head.

Witnesses told police that Matthew Logan had a tattoo on his face of his deceased brother’s birthday, which seemed to spark the anger from Thomas Logan.

In a video posted on Facebook the day after the altercation, Matthew Logan corroborated that detail and described the fight with his father.

“My dad tried to assault me in front of my woman and my baby,” Matthew Logan said in the video. “He tried to assault me with a flashlight and I just decked the (expletive) out of him and he was instantly bleeding.”

According to the report, 12 people live at the home on Holliston Street and many of the children were sleeping in their rooms when the violent struggle erupted.

The father and son were each charged with felony counts of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon. Matthew Logan was wearing two large gold rings on his hand during the fight, which contributed to his father’s injuries, according to the report.

Matthew Logan was arraigned on February 20 and released on $540 bail with an order not to contact his parents. Thomas Logan was treated at the hospital after the fight and will be arraigned on March 28.

A source familiar with the case told NBC10 that the removal of children was not directly related to the fight on February 16, but instead allegations that surfaced during an investigation following that incident.

On February 26, Julie Logan sought a restraining order against her son, Matthew. In her affidavit, the mother wrote that her son struggled with several mental health disorders and had not been taking his prescribed medication.

Julie Logan also said her son had a history of drug and alcohol abuse, and his mental state had declined in recent weeks. The mother said she feared for her safety.

“My son recently assaulted my husband leaving him unconscious in a pool of blood,” Julie Logan wrote. “Given his diagnosis and the seriousness of it, there’s not a way of predicting his unstable behavior.”

NBC10 reached out to the parents, Thomas and Julie, to ask about the altercation or any perspective they could provide about the ongoing law enforcement investigation. They have not responded to messages left at the phone numbers listed in police reports. 

When reached by phone, Matthew Logan declined to comment.

In their summary of the fight on February 16, police officers indicated they were familiar with the family and had been to the address on multiple occasions for medical emergencies, noise complaints, and an assault on a family member.

According to calls for service to the home on Holliston Street, police have been to the home more than a dozen times since the family purchased it in 2016.

In one report from February 2019, Thomas Logan called police and said “he just saw five lights go over his house but could not hear any sounds.” An officer who responded to the house said Logan showed him a video taken on his cellphone.

In another report from May 2020, a caller told police that Thomas Logan was standing outside his house shouting obscenities at people. Records show that Logan also called police in June 2022 to report a neighbor who had taken a photo of his trash sitting out by the curb.

On Monday, Chief Kingsbury told NBC10 the situation remains under investigation and there were no new details he could share with the public.

A spokesperson for DCF said the agency could not comment because of state and federal privacy requirements.

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Worcester Mar 1

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A switch is about the size of a nickel, and it rapidly increase its rate of gunfire with just one pull of the trigger.

Worcester Police Gang Unit Sgt. Stephen Roche hasn’t seen anything like it in his decades of policing.

“When I first came on and we had a shooting, we’d go. There’d be one casing on the ground, maybe two. We go now and like we’re seeing some of these officers recovered eighteen or twenty rounds at a single scene,” said Roche.

He said the biggest concerns are how dangerous they are, how inaccurate they are and the amount of damage they can do with one pull of the trigger.

In Worcester, the number of shootings has increased across the city. One woman who didn’t want to be identified told the NBC10 Investigators, “I was sleeping and all of a sudden, we heard a big bang, and the bullet went through our window, ricocheted off our wall and into our bed.”

Right now, switches are one of the biggest worries. When one is attached to a gun, it becomes capable of firing about 1,200 rounds a minute. That’s 20 bullets a second.

Worcester Police Det. John Denio explained, “If you shoot a gun and you’re aiming, that’s difficult in itself but these become so powerful that you shoot them and it’s going up right away and those rounds are going up and continue to fly.”

ATF Boston Special Agent Matthew O’Shaughnessy showed us the potentially deadly power firsthand at the range.

He shot his semi-automatic Glock and hit dead center but when the conversion switched, it was challenging to keep his shots on target.

Jim Ferguson, special agent in charge of the ATF Boston, said the devices are status symbols in the gang world.

He also told us the number of cases in Massachusetts are increasing at an alarming rate with many of the devices being made with 3D printers.

“What used to take people a lot of time, effort and money and resources, 3D printers have changed that game and people can manufacture these on their kitchen counter,” said Ferguson.

Two Boston men were recently convicted after manufacturing 3D conversion devices and selling them for only about $140 a piece.

Last September, five people were injured in a hail of gunfire on Ames Street in Dorchester. Fifteen-year-old Juliana Howard was critically injured, shot four times, once in the head. Her 11-year-old brother, Johan, was shot in the leg. Their father, John Howard, told us the way the gunshots rang out was scary and said it was described as “brrrrrt and done, rapid fire.”

He said the whole incident happened in a matter of seconds. Eight people were also injured in a shooting near Boston’s Caribbean Festival on Aug. 26, 2023, when violence broke out between two groups.

The Worcester Police Department’s ShotSpotter system that’s activated by gunfire calculated 98 shootings during the past two years, where 10 or more bullets were fired. A total of 1,322 rounds rang out throughout the city.

“These things shouldn’t be out there because every missed round is going somewhere,” said Roche.

A bullet riddled home on Pilgram Avenue was searched in connection with a shooting. According to court records, federal agents found switches stashed in a shoebox in a bedroom and another attached to a gun. More evidence of the troubling trend.

“Unfortunately, we’re likely going to see a significant rise in the injuries and death toll,” said Ferguson.

People have been charged with possession of a machine gun in some of the federal cases but at the state level, the switch must be physically attached to the gun to be criminally charged. The Senate’s gun safety bill would ban these devices in Massachusetts. 

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Some of those landlords are sharing their stories.

Mark Haskell 

In 2009, Mark Haskell and his family needed to move to a bigger home. Because the housing bubble had burst and the property on Shawnee Road in Worcester had lost value, he decided to rent the home instead of selling it. 

Haskell’s first tenant was a doctor who lived at the property with no problems.

The next time he listed it, the Callahans showed up. They came armed with a packet of pay stubs and credit reports. 

“They said all the right things,” Haskell said. “They were very relatable.”

In retrospect, Haskell said the only red flag was an urgency to get into the property as soon as possible, but he overlooked it at the time.

Upon returning from a business trip, Haskell received a call from the bank. The Callahans’ rental check had been written from a closed account. 

“There was a sinking feeling that something wasn’t right,” Haskell said. “I thought I had been scammed.”

Haskell said the couple made excuses about the money and tried to string him along as much as possible. After several months of paying both mortgages while supporting kids and juggling other bills, Haskell hired an attorney to begin the eviction process. 

The entire ordeal took about six months. On the eve of the eviction, there was still a last-minute plea from Russell Callahan about accessing funds from his work retirement account so he could stay in the property.

“We never meant for it to come to this point, believe me,” Haskell read from an email he received. “We very much enjoy living here. Please contact me at your earliest convenience to discuss. I want to work with you.”

After the eviction, Haskell said he received a call from a real estate agent who was listing a rental property. The Callahans had applied and the agent was checking with previous landlords. 

Haskell was able to help that property owner avoid the legal headache that he experienced. His judgment in housing court is for about $6,000, but he estimates his losses at closer to $10,000 with moving expenses and attorney fees.

Roughly 15 years later, Haskell shakes his head that the pattern continues. 

“I can’t believe they’re still up to this and the system allows it,” he said. “If you look at it as a whole, it’s a major scam.”

Tyler Lynch

In 2016, Tyler Lynch was a recent college graduate preparing for his first deployment with the Navy. 

Lynch decided to list his Jacksonville home for rent on Zillow. Before long, the Callahans contacted him to see the property. 

Lynch said they seemed like an “all-American couple” who asked questions about his collegiate football career and perhaps drinking a beer together at some point.

“They were the kind of people that you would expect a fun neighbor to be,” Lynch recalled. 

Shortly after Lynch deployed overseas, the Callahans moved into his home. Before long, they were late on the monthly rent. 

After Lynch sent a reminder about making a payment, he said Linda Callahan responded that her husband was in a horrible work accident and was on life support.

“I felt so bad about the situation, I sent flowers to the house,” Lynch said. 

More time passed and Lynch had still not received any rental payments. While dealing with limited cell service in a foreign country, Lynch finally managed to reach Russell Callahan on the phone.

During that conversation, Russell Callahan told him that he had not been in an accident. Instead, he blamed his wife for spending the rent money on other items and said the couple was getting a divorce.

Again, Lynch felt sympathy about the situation. But when more weeks passed with nothing but radio silence from the Callahans, reality hit.

“I have this house and I’m in a different country. I’m thinking, “What am I going to do?”” Lynch said. “I realized I made a horrible mistake.”

Lynch had to hire an attorney to assist with the eviction process during his deployment. He said the experience cost him about $10,000. 

Lynch, now a lieutenant commander with the Navy living in the Dallas area, was stunned when we contacted him eight years later about his landlord nightmare.

“The neighborly, welcoming people I first met, they’re just criminals,” he said. “They are cheating the system every way they can.”

Hayk Hovhannisyan

Hayk Hovhannisyan and his wife both lost their jobs at the beginning of 2018. Around the same time, the tenants at their Shrewsbury rental property also notified them that they were moving out. 

That’s why Hovhannisyan told us it was crucial to find new tenants and have the rental income to help support his two children.

During the open house, Linda Callahan seemed like the perfect prospective tenant.

“Suddenly, there’s this middle-aged, white, happy and trustworthy woman with all the paperwork in hand,” Hovhannisyan recalled. 

The Callahans were supposed to move in at the beginning of August, but asked if they could start their tenancy several days early. 

On the day they handed over the keys, Hovhannisyan said there were moving trucks at the property already loaded up with the Callahans’ possessions. In retrospect, he now realizes those trucks had come straight from the Callahans’ eviction at their previous rental property. 

Just like with other landlords, the first rental check bounced. Excuses followed about the IRS and the bank account being frozen.

Hovhannisyan eventually went to investigate at the bank branch. That’s when he learned the account from which the check was written had been closed for a long time. 

“These are professional con artists,” Hovyannisyan said. “I realized this is not some isolated thing. There are actually people who live like this.”

Like several other landlords we spoke with, Hovyannisyan believes he was targeted because he is an immigrant who is unfamiliar with the legal system and eviction process. 

He hired an attorney and discovered how long it can take to execute an eviction, even when the tenants are not paying a dime. 

On moving day, which landlords are required to pay under Massachusetts law, two trucks were not sufficient to load up all the Callahans’ items. Hovyannisyan had to call in a third truck to finish the job. 

When he entered the property for the first time after the eviction, he noticed the walls had been painted a different color. 

Hovyannisyan estimates the lost rent, moving expenses and attorney fees cost him about $13,000.

“Hopefully, they’ll end up in some nice jail,” he said. “Free housing. That’s what they’re looking for, yes? Free housing.”

Rory Mallaghan

The home on Jonathan Circle was the first property that Rory Mallaghan owned. When he and his wife moved to a new home in anticipation of having their first child, Mallaghan listed the property for rent on Zillow, hoping to find a tenant who would care for the home where he’d created so many memories. 

The Callahans showed up to get a tour of the property and Mallaghan remembers how they gave the impression they would really enjoy living in the space.

“Linda was so bubbly,” Mallaghan recalled. “Every nook of the house, she thought she could put certain things in certain places and everything would be fantastic.”

The couple said they were looking at several properties and already had a packet of paperwork available, including pay stubs, references and credit reports. 

The Callahans said they were helping with family in Shrewsbury and staying at a nearby hotel just to get some space. Mallaghan gave them a ride back to the hotel after the showing. 

Like other landlord encounters, a familiar series of events followed.

Upon returning from a work trip, Mallaghan discovered the Callahans’ rent checks had bounced. The couple first blamed a problem with the IRS, then described an issue withdrawing funds from a 401k account. 

“They always had an excuse of why the money wasn’t there and they were working on it,” Mallaghan said. “They just preyed on my forgiveness and compassion and were able to live there rent-free.”

When he finally ran out of patience, Mallaghan hired an attorney to start the eviction process. After eight months of receiving no rent, Mallaghan wrote an email to the Callahans, pleading with them not to delay any longer and leave the property. 

“We’ve come to terms we will never see that money. It was an expensive lesson,” he wrote. “We had plans to buy baby necessities. It’s a tough pill to swallow.”

Mallaghan was there when a constable showed up to execute the eviction and a moving company packed up possession. When he entered the home for the first time, everything was stripped from the walls, including the toilet paper holders.

He said the ordeal cost him about $20,000.

“They know what they’re doing,” Mallaghan said. “They are just taking people for a ride.”

Sitanshu Sinha and Shilpi Gupta

The home on Egret Circle in Shrewsbury was the first property Sitanshu Sinha and Shilpi Gupta purchased when they immigrated to the United States. The couple later decided to move to a larger home in town and rented the old property to several different tenants without incident. Then they listed it again in August 2023. 

Russell and Linda Callahan showed up to look at the home and said they were trying to get a loan to buy some land, so they had already assembled a credit report, background check and pay stubs for their bank. 

The documents they provided to Sinha and Gupta falsely listed the couple’s last name as “O’Callagham” to avoid detection. 

Before moving in, Linda Callahan said she thought the basement would be a perfect space to work on her art and craft projects, and asked if she could pay to have it carpeted. Sinha and Gupta thought it was a strange request from tenants and declined the offer. 

“That still sticks with me because of the way things turned out,” Gupta said. 

A couple of days after moving into the property, the checks bounced. The pattern of excuses followed, but Sinha said it did not seem like there was any urgency to get the payment situation resolved. 

The couple eventually realized they needed to get a lawyer because they started dipping into emergency savings to pay the mortgages on both properties. 

“It was very stressful on us financially,” Gupta said. 

At the eviction proceedings in housing court, Russell Callahan declined to answer questions from the judge. He would not even state his name under oath without legal representation, according to audio we obtained. 

“I don’t credit your testimony, sir,” the judge told Callahan. “I actually don’t credit anything you said. I find you to be evasive and not particularly forthcoming.”

When Sinha called a moving company to get an estimate, the employee asked for the names of the tenants being evicted. A couple minutes later, the employee said he could provide an exact quote because the moving company had already boxed up the Callahans’ possessions on multiple occasions. 

On the eve of the move, Linda Callahan made a final plea to stay in the house until after Christmas.

“I know you are very angry with us, and truthfully, we don’t blame you,” read a text message. “We falsified the documents because we wanted to rent from you. And with our history, we knew you wouldn’t consider us.”

After the Callahans moved out, Sinha and Gupta found nail holes and other damage everywhere throughout the house. There were light fixtures, curtain rods and speakers missing.

The couple estimates the financial nightmare cost them about $30,000 in savings. They had planned to invest that money in their two kids’ college savings plans. 

The home on Egret Circle is the last known address for the Callahans. No new eviction cases have surfaced since movers packed them up last December. 

“I’m still at a loss for words,” Sinha said. “How can something live like this for so long and get away with it?”

Nadia Amrani

Nadia Amrani moved out of her home on Locust Avenue in Worcester and rented a home in Shrewsbury so her three daughters could attend a better high school. The single mom planned to move back to Worcester after her daughters graduated, but needed to find a tenant to help pay the mortgage in the interim. 

When the Callahans came to look at the property, they had a packet of paperwork ready to go. They told Amrani they were thinking about buying a home and applying for a mortgage, so they’d already assembled the financial records for the bank.

“I thought they were just being proactive,” Amrani said. “Making things easier for me.”

The documents like credit reports and pay stubs all seemed legit, so Amrani offered the Callahans a rental agreement. She remembers Linda Callahan seeming relieved and in control once she handed her the keys. 

Amrani read us the text message she received from Linda Callahan once the lease was signed. Years later, the words take on an ominous tone. 

“Thank you so much for your decision on selecting my family,” the message said. “I understand the financial agreement to be met. We will respect your home as if it were our own. Enjoy your day. I know you just made ours great.”

Linda Callahan delayed providing a security deposit until closer to the move-in date, saying her mom was in the hospital having heart surgery. By the time the check bounced, the Callahans were already living in the home.

Amrani said the couple initially blamed problems with the IRS on the lack of funds. When weeks passed with no payment, Amrani went to the bank and discovered the account had been closed. 

“I started panicking,” Amrani said. “I couldn’t afford to pay the mortgage and the rent where I was living.”

Amrani hired an attorney and won an eviction at the end of 2019. She is thankful she got rid of the Callahans just before the COVID pandemic. That’s when the government implemented an eviction moratorium, and Amrani believes she would’ve lost her home. 

Once the rental payment problems surfaced, Amrani remembers looking up the Callahans in the housing court’s online system. She was stunned when she saw their extensive eviction history, a track record that was nowhere to be found in the documents they had provided in that first encounter.

“They need to pay for what they did,” she said. “Those people have been evicted over and over and over again. The system knows them. And nothing has been done.”

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That conclusion comes after our “Small Town Secrets” story last July, which found the select board chair living with his wife at a home 20 miles away in Braintree.

When we confronted Anthony Kinahan about our findings, the selectman resigned from his position before our story even published.

State law requires that elected officials reside in the towns where they serve.

In the wake of our investigation, taxpayers called for a criminal probe into the voter fraud allegations, along with the stipend Kinahan received for his position on the West Bridgewater Select Board.

Seven months later, police in West Bridgewater have closed their investigation without interviewing anyone involved in the controversy, according to the report.

They also did not answer the question about where the former selectman lived when he ran for re-election in 2022, voted in town elections, or carried out his duties as an elected official.

“I do not feel this is a criminal matter,” Lt. Timothy Nixon wrote in the report he compiled. “Although the news piece depicts Mr. Kinahan coming and going from an address in Braintree, it does not effectively establish that at the time in question.”

We shared the police report with NBC10 Boston legal analyst and Massachusetts School of Law Dean Michael Coyne.

“I was disappointed,” Coyne said. “I don’t think it’s as thorough of an investigation as we would expect. You know, we’re not asking who stole the painting from the Isabella Steward Gardner Museum.”

The police investigation never pinpointed where Kinahan was actually living. According to a property search conducted for the investigation, there were several addresses that came back to “Anthony Kinahan,” while noting that the selectman’s father has the same name and also lives in town.

As we previously reported, Kinahan sold his West Bridgewater home months before running for re-election in April 2022.

The residency issue surfaced during a candidate forum that year.

“I’m waiting for the right home for me, and when I find it, I’ll buy it,” Kinahan said at the meeting. “In the meantime, I’m still residing in West Bridgewater. That’s all.”

On the ballot and on nomination paperwork filed with the town, Kinahan listed his address at a property owned by his cousin.

We never saw the selectman at that address, but we spotted the homeowner and her family running errands and doing yardwork.

NBC10 Boston visited the home on July 12 and asked if Kinahan lives at the property.

“Yes,” she responded, before asking for a business card and declining to answer other questions.

The undercover video we gathered over the course of several weeks in May and June appeared to tell a different story. We observed Kinahan carrying breakfast, taking out the recycling, and sending off his wife as she left for work.

Property records show Kinahan’s wife bought the Braintree home in July 2022, just weeks before the couple got married in Bermuda.

According to a copy of the marriage certificate we obtained, Kinahan listed his address in Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood, raising more questions about how long the elected official had potentially lived outside town limits.

After declining our interview request, we attempted to confront Kinahan outside the Braintree home, and later the same day outside his office in Taunton.

Within hours of that exchange, Kinahan announced his resignation from the Board of Selectmen, citing “personal reasons.”

Kinahan later sent a letter to the Board of Registrars, asking to be removed from the West Bridgewater registered voter list instead of attending a hearing to prove he still lived in town.

Retired Massachusetts state trooper and security analyst Todd McGhee wondered why the investigation was not referred to an outside agency to avoid a potential conflict of interest. Kinahan grew up in the community and in his elected position, would have voted on things like the police department budget.

“I think this is potentially an awkward investigation,” McGhee said. “Outside agencies are sometimes leveraged in order to remove that awkwardness. Was everyone interviewed that should’ve been interviewed?”

According to the report, Kinahan “politely declined” to speak with police, as did his cousin.

There is nothing in the report to indicate anyone else was interviewed about the residency issue.

Over the past two weeks, West Bridgewater Police Chief Victory Flaherty has not returned our phone calls or responded to our follow-up questions via email.

Kinahan also did not respond to our request for comment about the police investigation.

A spokesperson for Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy Cruz told us that West Bridgewater police never contacted prosecutors to weigh in on the findings or whether enough probable cause existed to move forward criminally.

“I see a lot of ‘maybes’ and ‘what-ifs,’ but I don’t see a definitive answer to the question that I think proper detective work should have been able to uncover,” Coyne said. “And the fact is, it all ended up as another small town secret.”

Ryan Kath can be reached at ryan.kath@nbcuni.com. You can follow him on Twitter, Instagram or connect on Facebook.

As the MBTA continues to put out fires across the aging infrastructure, the work comes with a bit of sticker shock along the way. The NBC10 Boston Investigators followed the money and found hundreds of millions of dollars in overtime, year after year.

Taxpayers doled out $510 million in overtime in 2022 and $553 million in 2023.

Stefan Wuensch, who co-chairs the MBTA Rider Oversight Committee, said there’s no lack of places where that money could be spent.

“The concern is always, ‘Would that money be better used to improve safety in a more tangible way? Could it be spent better? Could it be better used by low-income fares?’ Which is now on the table, thankfully,” said Wuensch.

While many riders struggle to afford public transit, some MBTA employees are cashing in.

The MBTA shelled out more than $3.5 million in overtime for 25 foreperson-wirepersons in two years. The top earner almost tripled his pay to $413,192 in 2022, thanks to almost $262,000 in overtime.

“Overtime is a key part of our toolbox,” General Manager Phillip Eng told the NBC10 Boston Investigators. “At the same time, the T can be more efficient.”

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Eng says to get the MBTA back up to speed, it needs more of these workers who oversee and maintain the power systemwide.

“Our system needs some TLC, and the power system is one that 76% of it is not in a state of good repair,” said Eng.

That age was on display last month, when a decades-old power cable caught fire, bringing Orange Line and Red line service to a halt. The MBTA believes the wire that failed was 40 years old or older.

The foreperson-wireperson positions are jobs where safety is key, but records obtained by the NBC10 Boston Investigators show some of those workers are clocking in long days, seven days a week.

During a two-week period in March, that highest earner worked 233.5 hours, including 154 in overtime — averaging almost 17 hours a day. Those hours, unless approved, are far beyond the 24 hours of OT allowed per week, according to the employee handbook.

It comes at a time when safety is in the spotlight, with the Federal Transit Administration demanding improvement.

“The FTA wants the safety to be systemic,” said Wuensch.

When asked why the overtime is needed and about safety concerns, Eng said, “We are managing it from the perspective of making sure that our employees are able to perform work safely, but we also know that moving forward, as we better schedule work and as we repair our system, we will better control overtime.”

Eng also emphasized that the foreperson-wirepersons perform critical work and said the MBTA is trying to figure out how many more it needs to hire. Until then, wellness checks are being done on employees working long hours to make sure everyone is safe.

The NBC10 Boston Investigators have been closely following the case, and produced a 30-minute documentary, “$3 Million Mistake.”

Carly Nunes, 24, had a choice when she discovered the ticket had been left behind. The decision she made resulted in multiple criminal charges of larceny and fraud.

In Brockton Superior Court on Friday, Nunes admitted there was enough evidence to find her guilty of one of those felony indictments – trying to file a false claim.

The three other charges against her were dismissed. Judge William Sullivan imposed a sentence of two years of probation with the requirement of continuing substance abuse treatment.

“Some people are faced with choices they have to make,” Sullivan told Nunes. “And you either have to make the right one or the wrong one. And this was the wrong one.”

Surveillance footage from a Lakeville convenience store, previously called Savas, lays out the sequence of events.

Last January, a man named Paul Little bought a lottery ticket and a bag of chips.

Nunes, the store cashier, forgot to hand Little the ticket, and he left without noticing.

Days later, video captured Nunes attempting to claim the prize at the Lottery headquarters in Dorchester. Prosecutors say she was with two men – one another store employee, identified as 32–year-old Joseph Reddem. The ticket Nunes provided was torn and burned.

Employees became suspicious when they saw Nunes and Reddem arguing in the lobby and launched an investigation into the purchases. Reddem is accused of trying to extort Nunes for money from the jackpot.

Plymouth County prosecutor Alexander Zane said the Commonwealth recommended a prison sentence of one to two years to send a message about upholding the integrity of the state’s lottery system. But he acknowledged the temptation that Nunes faced.

“I truly don’t know if anybody put in the situation that this young woman was in at least wouldn’t have thought of doing what she tried to do,” Zane said. “The instinct to have potentially $3 million in her hands was truly a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

Nunes was eventually indicted by a grand jury and arrested on a warrant when she skipped her arraignment.

She’s been released and has been attending court-ordered substance abuse treatment.

On Friday, Nunes’ attorney, David Nagle, spoke about how his client’s life has changed since the indictment.

“She’s been sober since the day she was arrested. And the transformation in her demeanor, in her appearance and her attitude in thinking clearly is remarkable,” Nagle said. “Quite frankly, had she walked out of the lottery commission with the $3 million in her pocket, she might not be on this Earth today.”

After a lengthy investigation by Massachusetts State Police, Little learned he was actually the rightful winner and finally received the large check last June.

Reached by phone about the conclusion to the case, Little told NBC10 Boston that Nunes is young enough to learn from the mistake and pick a different direction in life.

“I wish her the best and pray good things come her way,” Little said.

Mark William Bracken, executive director of the Massachusetts State Lottery, also reacted to the outcome.

“The integrity of our games is critical to the Lottery’s mission of supporting cities and towns. This case is an example of the steps we will take to ensure that prizes are being claimed by the proper ticket owners. We appreciate the efforts of law enforcement in maintaining public trust in the Lottery by holding accountable those attempting to fraudulently claim prizes,” he said in a statement.

Reddem is facing charges for his alleged extortion attempt. He is scheduled to on trial in May.

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Some of those landlords are sharing their stories.

Mark Haskell 

In 2009, Mark Haskell and his family needed to move to a bigger home. Because the housing bubble had burst and the property on Shawnee Road in Worcester had lost value, he decided to rent the home instead of selling it. 

Haskell’s first tenant was a doctor who lived at the property with no problems.

The next time he listed it, the Callahans showed up. They came armed with a packet of pay stubs and credit reports. 

“They said all the right things,” Haskell said. “They were very relatable.”

In retrospect, Haskell said the only red flag was an urgency to get into the property as soon as possible, but he overlooked it at the time.

Upon returning from a business trip, Haskell received a call from the bank. The Callahans’ rental check had been written from a closed account. 

“There was a sinking feeling that something wasn’t right,” Haskell said. “I thought I had been scammed.”

Haskell said the couple made excuses about the money and tried to string him along as much as possible. After several months of paying both mortgages while supporting kids and juggling other bills, Haskell hired an attorney to begin the eviction process. 

The entire ordeal took about six months. On the eve of the eviction, there was still a last-minute plea from Russell Callahan about accessing funds from his work retirement account so he could stay in the property.

“We never meant for it to come to this point, believe me,” Haskell read from an email he received. “We very much enjoy living here. Please contact me at your earliest convenience to discuss. I want to work with you.”

After the eviction, Haskell said he received a call from a real estate agent who was listing a rental property. The Callahans had applied and the agent was checking with previous landlords. 

Haskell was able to help that property owner avoid the legal headache that he experienced. His judgment in housing court is for about $6,000, but he estimates his losses at closer to $10,000 with moving expenses and attorney fees.

Roughly 15 years later, Haskell shakes his head that the pattern continues. 

“I can’t believe they’re still up to this and the system allows it,” he said. “If you look at it as a whole, it’s a major scam.”

Tyler Lynch

In 2016, Tyler Lynch was a recent college graduate preparing for his first deployment with the Navy. 

Lynch decided to list his Jacksonville home for rent on Zillow. Before long, the Callahans contacted him to see the property. 

Lynch said they seemed like an “all-American couple” who asked questions about his collegiate football career and perhaps drinking a beer together at some point.

“They were the kind of people that you would expect a fun neighbor to be,” Lynch recalled. 

Shortly after Lynch deployed overseas, the Callahans moved into his home. Before long, they were late on the monthly rent. 

After Lynch sent a reminder about making a payment, he said Linda Callahan responded that her husband was in a horrible work accident and was on life support.

“I felt so bad about the situation, I sent flowers to the house,” Lynch said. 

More time passed and Lynch had still not received any rental payments. While dealing with limited cell service in a foreign country, Lynch finally managed to reach Russell Callahan on the phone.

During that conversation, Russell Callahan told him that he had not been in an accident. Instead, he blamed his wife for spending the rent money on other items and said the couple was getting a divorce.

Again, Lynch felt sympathy about the situation. But when more weeks passed with nothing but radio silence from the Callahans, reality hit.

“I have this house and I’m in a different country. I’m thinking, “What am I going to do?”” Lynch said. “I realized I made a horrible mistake.”

Lynch had to hire an attorney to assist with the eviction process during his deployment. He said the experience cost him about $10,000. 

Lynch, now a lieutenant commander with the Navy living in the Dallas area, was stunned when we contacted him eight years later about his landlord nightmare.

“The neighborly, welcoming people I first met, they’re just criminals,” he said. “They are cheating the system every way they can.”

Hayk Hovhannisyan

Hayk Hovhannisyan and his wife both lost their jobs at the beginning of 2018. Around the same time, the tenants at their Shrewsbury rental property also notified them that they were moving out. 

That’s why Hovhannisyan told us it was crucial to find new tenants and have the rental income to help support his two children.

During the open house, Linda Callahan seemed like the perfect prospective tenant.

“Suddenly, there’s this middle-aged, white, happy and trustworthy woman with all the paperwork in hand,” Hovhannisyan recalled. 

The Callahans were supposed to move in at the beginning of August, but asked if they could start their tenancy several days early. 

On the day they handed over the keys, Hovhannisyan said there were moving trucks at the property already loaded up with the Callahans’ possessions. In retrospect, he now realizes those trucks had come straight from the Callahans’ eviction at their previous rental property. 

Just like with other landlords, the first rental check bounced. Excuses followed about the IRS and the bank account being frozen.

Hovhannisyan eventually went to investigate at the bank branch. That’s when he learned the account from which the check was written had been closed for a long time. 

“These are professional con artists,” Hovyannisyan said. “I realized this is not some isolated thing. There are actually people who live like this.”

Like several other landlords we spoke with, Hovyannisyan believes he was targeted because he is an immigrant who is unfamiliar with the legal system and eviction process. 

He hired an attorney and discovered how long it can take to execute an eviction, even when the tenants are not paying a dime. 

On moving day, which landlords are required to pay under Massachusetts law, two trucks were not sufficient to load up all the Callahans’ items. Hovyannisyan had to call in a third truck to finish the job. 

When he entered the property for the first time after the eviction, he noticed the walls had been painted a different color. 

Hovyannisyan estimates the lost rent, moving expenses and attorney fees cost him about $13,000.

“Hopefully, they’ll end up in some nice jail,” he said. “Free housing. That’s what they’re looking for, yes? Free housing.”

Rory Mallaghan

The home on Jonathan Circle was the first property that Rory Mallaghan owned. When he and his wife moved to a new home in anticipation of having their first child, Mallaghan listed the property for rent on Zillow, hoping to find a tenant who would care for the home where he’d created so many memories. 

The Callahans showed up to get a tour of the property and Mallaghan remembers how they gave the impression they would really enjoy living in the space.

“Linda was so bubbly,” Mallaghan recalled. “Every nook of the house, she thought she could put certain things in certain places and everything would be fantastic.”

The couple said they were looking at several properties and already had a packet of paperwork available, including pay stubs, references and credit reports. 

The Callahans said they were helping with family in Shrewsbury and staying at a nearby hotel just to get some space. Mallaghan gave them a ride back to the hotel after the showing. 

Like other landlord encounters, a familiar series of events followed.

Upon returning from a work trip, Mallaghan discovered the Callahans’ rent checks had bounced. The couple first blamed a problem with the IRS, then described an issue withdrawing funds from a 401k account. 

“They always had an excuse of why the money wasn’t there and they were working on it,” Mallaghan said. “They just preyed on my forgiveness and compassion and were able to live there rent-free.”

When he finally ran out of patience, Mallaghan hired an attorney to start the eviction process. After eight months of receiving no rent, Mallaghan wrote an email to the Callahans, pleading with them not to delay any longer and leave the property. 

“We’ve come to terms we will never see that money. It was an expensive lesson,” he wrote. “We had plans to buy baby necessities. It’s a tough pill to swallow.”

Mallaghan was there when a constable showed up to execute the eviction and a moving company packed up possession. When he entered the home for the first time, everything was stripped from the walls, including the toilet paper holders.

He said the ordeal cost him about $20,000.

“They know what they’re doing,” Mallaghan said. “They are just taking people for a ride.”

Sitanshu Sinha and Shilpi Gupta

The home on Egret Circle in Shrewsbury was the first property Sitanshu Sinha and Shilpi Gupta purchased when they immigrated to the United States. The couple later decided to move to a larger home in town and rented the old property to several different tenants without incident. Then they listed it again in August 2023. 

Russell and Linda Callahan showed up to look at the home and said they were trying to get a loan to buy some land, so they had already assembled a credit report, background check and pay stubs for their bank. 

The documents they provided to Sinha and Gupta falsely listed the couple’s last name as “O’Callagham” to avoid detection. 

Before moving in, Linda Callahan said she thought the basement would be a perfect space to work on her art and craft projects, and asked if she could pay to have it carpeted. Sinha and Gupta thought it was a strange request from tenants and declined the offer. 

“That still sticks with me because of the way things turned out,” Gupta said. 

A couple of days after moving into the property, the checks bounced. The pattern of excuses followed, but Sinha said it did not seem like there was any urgency to get the payment situation resolved. 

The couple eventually realized they needed to get a lawyer because they started dipping into emergency savings to pay the mortgages on both properties. 

“It was very stressful on us financially,” Gupta said. 

At the eviction proceedings in housing court, Russell Callahan declined to answer questions from the judge. He would not even state his name under oath without legal representation, according to audio we obtained. 

“I don’t credit your testimony, sir,” the judge told Callahan. “I actually don’t credit anything you said. I find you to be evasive and not particularly forthcoming.”

When Sinha called a moving company to get an estimate, the employee asked for the names of the tenants being evicted. A couple minutes later, the employee said he could provide an exact quote because the moving company had already boxed up the Callahans’ possessions on multiple occasions. 

On the eve of the move, Linda Callahan made a final plea to stay in the house until after Christmas.

“I know you are very angry with us, and truthfully, we don’t blame you,” read a text message. “We falsified the documents because we wanted to rent from you. And with our history, we knew you wouldn’t consider us.”

After the Callahans moved out, Sinha and Gupta found nail holes and other damage everywhere throughout the house. There were light fixtures, curtain rods and speakers missing.

The couple estimates the financial nightmare cost them about $30,000 in savings. They had planned to invest that money in their two kids’ college savings plans. 

The home on Egret Circle is the last known address for the Callahans. No new eviction cases have surfaced since movers packed them up last December. 

“I’m still at a loss for words,” Sinha said. “How can something live like this for so long and get away with it?”

Nadia Amrani

Nadia Amrani moved out of her home on Locust Avenue in Worcester and rented a home in Shrewsbury so her three daughters could attend a better high school. The single mom planned to move back to Worcester after her daughters graduated, but needed to find a tenant to help pay the mortgage in the interim. 

When the Callahans came to look at the property, they had a packet of paperwork ready to go. They told Amrani they were thinking about buying a home and applying for a mortgage, so they’d already assembled the financial records for the bank.

“I thought they were just being proactive,” Amrani said. “Making things easier for me.”

The documents like credit reports and pay stubs all seemed legit, so Amrani offered the Callahans a rental agreement. She remembers Linda Callahan seeming relieved and in control once she handed her the keys. 

Amrani read us the text message she received from Linda Callahan once the lease was signed. Years later, the words take on an ominous tone. 

“Thank you so much for your decision on selecting my family,” the message said. “I understand the financial agreement to be met. We will respect your home as if it were our own. Enjoy your day. I know you just made ours great.”

Linda Callahan delayed providing a security deposit until closer to the move-in date, saying her mom was in the hospital having heart surgery. By the time the check bounced, the Callahans were already living in the home.

Amrani said the couple initially blamed problems with the IRS on the lack of funds. When weeks passed with no payment, Amrani went to the bank and discovered the account had been closed. 

“I started panicking,” Amrani said. “I couldn’t afford to pay the mortgage and the rent where I was living.”

Amrani hired an attorney and won an eviction at the end of 2019. She is thankful she got rid of the Callahans just before the COVID pandemic. That’s when the government implemented an eviction moratorium, and Amrani believes she would’ve lost her home. 

Once the rental payment problems surfaced, Amrani remembers looking up the Callahans in the housing court’s online system. She was stunned when she saw their extensive eviction history, a track record that was nowhere to be found in the documents they had provided in that first encounter.

“They need to pay for what they did,” she said. “Those people have been evicted over and over and over again. The system knows them. And nothing has been done.”

More from the NBC10 Investigators

To Catch a Contractor Jul 31

‘A civil matter': Does Mass. law need to change to hold bad contractors criminally accountable?

Scams Jul 29

How police got a Bitcoin ATM scam victim's money back

Some of those landlords are sharing their stories.

Mark Haskell 

In 2009, Mark Haskell and his family needed to move to a bigger home. Because the housing bubble had burst and the property on Shawnee Road in Worcester had lost value, he decided to rent the home instead of selling it. 

Haskell’s first tenant was a doctor who lived at the property with no problems.

The next time he listed it, the Callahans showed up. They came armed with a packet of pay stubs and credit reports. 

“They said all the right things,” Haskell said. “They were very relatable.”

In retrospect, Haskell said the only red flag was an urgency to get into the property as soon as possible, but he overlooked it at the time.

Upon returning from a business trip, Haskell received a call from the bank. The Callahans’ rental check had been written from a closed account. 

“There was a sinking feeling that something wasn’t right,” Haskell said. “I thought I had been scammed.”

Haskell said the couple made excuses about the money and tried to string him along as much as possible. After several months of paying both mortgages while supporting kids and juggling other bills, Haskell hired an attorney to begin the eviction process. 

The entire ordeal took about six months. On the eve of the eviction, there was still a last-minute plea from Russell Callahan about accessing funds from his work retirement account so he could stay in the property.

“We never meant for it to come to this point, believe me,” Haskell read from an email he received. “We very much enjoy living here. Please contact me at your earliest convenience to discuss. I want to work with you.”

After the eviction, Haskell said he received a call from a real estate agent who was listing a rental property. The Callahans had applied and the agent was checking with previous landlords. 

Haskell was able to help that property owner avoid the legal headache that he experienced. His judgment in housing court is for about $6,000, but he estimates his losses at closer to $10,000 with moving expenses and attorney fees.

Roughly 15 years later, Haskell shakes his head that the pattern continues. 

“I can’t believe they’re still up to this and the system allows it,” he said. “If you look at it as a whole, it’s a major scam.”

Tyler Lynch

In 2016, Tyler Lynch was a recent college graduate preparing for his first deployment with the Navy. 

Lynch decided to list his Jacksonville home for rent on Zillow. Before long, the Callahans contacted him to see the property. 

Lynch said they seemed like an “all-American couple” who asked questions about his collegiate football career and perhaps drinking a beer together at some point.

“They were the kind of people that you would expect a fun neighbor to be,” Lynch recalled. 

Shortly after Lynch deployed overseas, the Callahans moved into his home. Before long, they were late on the monthly rent. 

After Lynch sent a reminder about making a payment, he said Linda Callahan responded that her husband was in a horrible work accident and was on life support.

“I felt so bad about the situation, I sent flowers to the house,” Lynch said. 

More time passed and Lynch had still not received any rental payments. While dealing with limited cell service in a foreign country, Lynch finally managed to reach Russell Callahan on the phone.

During that conversation, Russell Callahan told him that he had not been in an accident. Instead, he blamed his wife for spending the rent money on other items and said the couple was getting a divorce.

Again, Lynch felt sympathy about the situation. But when more weeks passed with nothing but radio silence from the Callahans, reality hit.

“I have this house and I’m in a different country. I’m thinking, “What am I going to do?”” Lynch said. “I realized I made a horrible mistake.”

Lynch had to hire an attorney to assist with the eviction process during his deployment. He said the experience cost him about $10,000. 

Lynch, now a lieutenant commander with the Navy living in the Dallas area, was stunned when we contacted him eight years later about his landlord nightmare.

“The neighborly, welcoming people I first met, they’re just criminals,” he said. “They are cheating the system every way they can.”

Hayk Hovhannisyan

Hayk Hovhannisyan and his wife both lost their jobs at the beginning of 2018. Around the same time, the tenants at their Shrewsbury rental property also notified them that they were moving out. 

That’s why Hovhannisyan told us it was crucial to find new tenants and have the rental income to help support his two children.

During the open house, Linda Callahan seemed like the perfect prospective tenant.

“Suddenly, there’s this middle-aged, white, happy and trustworthy woman with all the paperwork in hand,” Hovhannisyan recalled. 

The Callahans were supposed to move in at the beginning of August, but asked if they could start their tenancy several days early. 

On the day they handed over the keys, Hovhannisyan said there were moving trucks at the property already loaded up with the Callahans’ possessions. In retrospect, he now realizes those trucks had come straight from the Callahans’ eviction at their previous rental property. 

Just like with other landlords, the first rental check bounced. Excuses followed about the IRS and the bank account being frozen.

Hovhannisyan eventually went to investigate at the bank branch. That’s when he learned the account from which the check was written had been closed for a long time. 

“These are professional con artists,” Hovyannisyan said. “I realized this is not some isolated thing. There are actually people who live like this.”

Like several other landlords we spoke with, Hovyannisyan believes he was targeted because he is an immigrant who is unfamiliar with the legal system and eviction process. 

He hired an attorney and discovered how long it can take to execute an eviction, even when the tenants are not paying a dime. 

On moving day, which landlords are required to pay under Massachusetts law, two trucks were not sufficient to load up all the Callahans’ items. Hovyannisyan had to call in a third truck to finish the job. 

When he entered the property for the first time after the eviction, he noticed the walls had been painted a different color. 

Hovyannisyan estimates the lost rent, moving expenses and attorney fees cost him about $13,000.

“Hopefully, they’ll end up in some nice jail,” he said. “Free housing. That’s what they’re looking for, yes? Free housing.”

Rory Mallaghan

The home on Jonathan Circle was the first property that Rory Mallaghan owned. When he and his wife moved to a new home in anticipation of having their first child, Mallaghan listed the property for rent on Zillow, hoping to find a tenant who would care for the home where he’d created so many memories. 

The Callahans showed up to get a tour of the property and Mallaghan remembers how they gave the impression they would really enjoy living in the space.

“Linda was so bubbly,” Mallaghan recalled. “Every nook of the house, she thought she could put certain things in certain places and everything would be fantastic.”

The couple said they were looking at several properties and already had a packet of paperwork available, including pay stubs, references and credit reports. 

The Callahans said they were helping with family in Shrewsbury and staying at a nearby hotel just to get some space. Mallaghan gave them a ride back to the hotel after the showing. 

Like other landlord encounters, a familiar series of events followed.

Upon returning from a work trip, Mallaghan discovered the Callahans’ rent checks had bounced. The couple first blamed a problem with the IRS, then described an issue withdrawing funds from a 401k account. 

“They always had an excuse of why the money wasn’t there and they were working on it,” Mallaghan said. “They just preyed on my forgiveness and compassion and were able to live there rent-free.”

When he finally ran out of patience, Mallaghan hired an attorney to start the eviction process. After eight months of receiving no rent, Mallaghan wrote an email to the Callahans, pleading with them not to delay any longer and leave the property. 

“We’ve come to terms we will never see that money. It was an expensive lesson,” he wrote. “We had plans to buy baby necessities. It’s a tough pill to swallow.”

Mallaghan was there when a constable showed up to execute the eviction and a moving company packed up possession. When he entered the home for the first time, everything was stripped from the walls, including the toilet paper holders.

He said the ordeal cost him about $20,000.

“They know what they’re doing,” Mallaghan said. “They are just taking people for a ride.”

Sitanshu Sinha and Shilpi Gupta

The home on Egret Circle in Shrewsbury was the first property Sitanshu Sinha and Shilpi Gupta purchased when they immigrated to the United States. The couple later decided to move to a larger home in town and rented the old property to several different tenants without incident. Then they listed it again in August 2023. 

Russell and Linda Callahan showed up to look at the home and said they were trying to get a loan to buy some land, so they had already assembled a credit report, background check and pay stubs for their bank. 

The documents they provided to Sinha and Gupta falsely listed the couple’s last name as “O’Callagham” to avoid detection. 

Before moving in, Linda Callahan said she thought the basement would be a perfect space to work on her art and craft projects, and asked if she could pay to have it carpeted. Sinha and Gupta thought it was a strange request from tenants and declined the offer. 

“That still sticks with me because of the way things turned out,” Gupta said. 

A couple of days after moving into the property, the checks bounced. The pattern of excuses followed, but Sinha said it did not seem like there was any urgency to get the payment situation resolved. 

The couple eventually realized they needed to get a lawyer because they started dipping into emergency savings to pay the mortgages on both properties. 

“It was very stressful on us financially,” Gupta said. 

At the eviction proceedings in housing court, Russell Callahan declined to answer questions from the judge. He would not even state his name under oath without legal representation, according to audio we obtained. 

“I don’t credit your testimony, sir,” the judge told Callahan. “I actually don’t credit anything you said. I find you to be evasive and not particularly forthcoming.”

When Sinha called a moving company to get an estimate, the employee asked for the names of the tenants being evicted. A couple minutes later, the employee said he could provide an exact quote because the moving company had already boxed up the Callahans’ possessions on multiple occasions. 

On the eve of the move, Linda Callahan made a final plea to stay in the house until after Christmas.

“I know you are very angry with us, and truthfully, we don’t blame you,” read a text message. “We falsified the documents because we wanted to rent from you. And with our history, we knew you wouldn’t consider us.”

After the Callahans moved out, Sinha and Gupta found nail holes and other damage everywhere throughout the house. There were light fixtures, curtain rods and speakers missing.

The couple estimates the financial nightmare cost them about $30,000 in savings. They had planned to invest that money in their two kids’ college savings plans. 

The home on Egret Circle is the last known address for the Callahans. No new eviction cases have surfaced since movers packed them up last December. 

“I’m still at a loss for words,” Sinha said. “How can something live like this for so long and get away with it?”

Nadia Amrani

Nadia Amrani moved out of her home on Locust Avenue in Worcester and rented a home in Shrewsbury so her three daughters could attend a better high school. The single mom planned to move back to Worcester after her daughters graduated, but needed to find a tenant to help pay the mortgage in the interim. 

When the Callahans came to look at the property, they had a packet of paperwork ready to go. They told Amrani they were thinking about buying a home and applying for a mortgage, so they’d already assembled the financial records for the bank.

“I thought they were just being proactive,” Amrani said. “Making things easier for me.”

The documents like credit reports and pay stubs all seemed legit, so Amrani offered the Callahans a rental agreement. She remembers Linda Callahan seeming relieved and in control once she handed her the keys. 

Amrani read us the text message she received from Linda Callahan once the lease was signed. Years later, the words take on an ominous tone. 

“Thank you so much for your decision on selecting my family,” the message said. “I understand the financial agreement to be met. We will respect your home as if it were our own. Enjoy your day. I know you just made ours great.”

Linda Callahan delayed providing a security deposit until closer to the move-in date, saying her mom was in the hospital having heart surgery. By the time the check bounced, the Callahans were already living in the home.

Amrani said the couple initially blamed problems with the IRS on the lack of funds. When weeks passed with no payment, Amrani went to the bank and discovered the account had been closed. 

“I started panicking,” Amrani said. “I couldn’t afford to pay the mortgage and the rent where I was living.”

Amrani hired an attorney and won an eviction at the end of 2019. She is thankful she got rid of the Callahans just before the COVID pandemic. That’s when the government implemented an eviction moratorium, and Amrani believes she would’ve lost her home. 

Once the rental payment problems surfaced, Amrani remembers looking up the Callahans in the housing court’s online system. She was stunned when she saw their extensive eviction history, a track record that was nowhere to be found in the documents they had provided in that first encounter.

“They need to pay for what they did,” she said. “Those people have been evicted over and over and over again. The system knows them. And nothing has been done.”

More from the NBC10 Investigators

To Catch a Contractor Jul 31

‘A civil matter': Does Mass. law need to change to hold bad contractors criminally accountable?

Scams Jul 29

How police got a Bitcoin ATM scam victim's money back

Here’s a look back at some of those cases.

“Troopergate” scandal

The series of scandals started in 2017, when two troopers say they were pressured to remove embarrassing details about the arrest of a judge’s daughter. The scandal known as “Troopergate” lead to the abrupt retirement of the agency’s colonel and a lengthy ethics investigation.

But that was just the beginning. Since then, a long list of officers have appeared in courtrooms as defendants accused of betraying the public trust.

Overtime fraud

The widest-reaching scandal was an overtime fraud scheme that implicated nearly 50 state troopers.

The details involved officers submitting for overtime pay they never worked along the Mass Pike.

Troop E was disbanded after the scheme came to light in 2018.

The scandal cost a number of troopers their jobs, led to a wave of retirements, and resulted in convictions inside federal and state courtrooms and restitution to taxpayers.

Embezzlement and kickbacks

The former president of the State Police union was sentenced to prison last May for accepting kickbacks and spending union money on his personal expenses.

Dana Pullman was a trooper for more than 30 years until his resignation in 2018.

Instead of representing the interests of 1,500 members, prosecutors say Pullman embezzled union funds to pay for expensive meals and take trips to Florida with his girlfriend.

Bear crawl backlash

And in 2022 the NBC10 Investigators were the first to tell you about injuries suffered by recruits when they performed bear crawls on hot pavement at the Massachusetts State Police Academy.

The unauthorized exercises resulted in at least 20 trainees being treated by medical staff and caused a leadership shakeup at the academy.

The scandals are causing a trickle-down effect on the Commonwealth’s largest law enforcement agency.

Dropout drama

Last November the NBC10 investigators reported that recruits are dropping out of the academy at a record rate when the State Police are already having a tough time attracting officers and addressing ongoing staffing challenges.

Reform efforts

The high-profile cases have led to reform measures.

Today, State Police said body cameras are now required for all commercial driver’s license exams. After the overtime scheme, the agency added location-tracking to department cruisers and shifted to electronic tickets instead of paper citations that could be offered.

In a statement, a department spokesperson said the misconduct is a stark contrast to the values, character and integrity exhibited by the overwhelming majority of troopers every day.

More coverage of the CDL scheme

Massachusetts Jan 30

Massachusetts state troopers accused of taking bribes for commercial drivers licenses

Some of those landlords are sharing their stories.

Mark Haskell 

In 2009, Mark Haskell and his family needed to move to a bigger home. Because the housing bubble had burst and the property on Shawnee Road in Worcester had lost value, he decided to rent the home instead of selling it. 

Haskell’s first tenant was a doctor who lived at the property with no problems.

The next time he listed it, the Callahans showed up. They came armed with a packet of pay stubs and credit reports. 

“They said all the right things,” Haskell said. “They were very relatable.”

In retrospect, Haskell said the only red flag was an urgency to get into the property as soon as possible, but he overlooked it at the time.

Upon returning from a business trip, Haskell received a call from the bank. The Callahans’ rental check had been written from a closed account. 

“There was a sinking feeling that something wasn’t right,” Haskell said. “I thought I had been scammed.”

Haskell said the couple made excuses about the money and tried to string him along as much as possible. After several months of paying both mortgages while supporting kids and juggling other bills, Haskell hired an attorney to begin the eviction process. 

The entire ordeal took about six months. On the eve of the eviction, there was still a last-minute plea from Russell Callahan about accessing funds from his work retirement account so he could stay in the property.

“We never meant for it to come to this point, believe me,” Haskell read from an email he received. “We very much enjoy living here. Please contact me at your earliest convenience to discuss. I want to work with you.”

After the eviction, Haskell said he received a call from a real estate agent who was listing a rental property. The Callahans had applied and the agent was checking with previous landlords. 

Haskell was able to help that property owner avoid the legal headache that he experienced. His judgment in housing court is for about $6,000, but he estimates his losses at closer to $10,000 with moving expenses and attorney fees.

Roughly 15 years later, Haskell shakes his head that the pattern continues. 

“I can’t believe they’re still up to this and the system allows it,” he said. “If you look at it as a whole, it’s a major scam.”

Tyler Lynch

In 2016, Tyler Lynch was a recent college graduate preparing for his first deployment with the Navy. 

Lynch decided to list his Jacksonville home for rent on Zillow. Before long, the Callahans contacted him to see the property. 

Lynch said they seemed like an “all-American couple” who asked questions about his collegiate football career and perhaps drinking a beer together at some point.

“They were the kind of people that you would expect a fun neighbor to be,” Lynch recalled. 

Shortly after Lynch deployed overseas, the Callahans moved into his home. Before long, they were late on the monthly rent. 

After Lynch sent a reminder about making a payment, he said Linda Callahan responded that her husband was in a horrible work accident and was on life support.

“I felt so bad about the situation, I sent flowers to the house,” Lynch said. 

More time passed and Lynch had still not received any rental payments. While dealing with limited cell service in a foreign country, Lynch finally managed to reach Russell Callahan on the phone.

During that conversation, Russell Callahan told him that he had not been in an accident. Instead, he blamed his wife for spending the rent money on other items and said the couple was getting a divorce.

Again, Lynch felt sympathy about the situation. But when more weeks passed with nothing but radio silence from the Callahans, reality hit.

“I have this house and I’m in a different country. I’m thinking, “What am I going to do?”” Lynch said. “I realized I made a horrible mistake.”

Lynch had to hire an attorney to assist with the eviction process during his deployment. He said the experience cost him about $10,000. 

Lynch, now a lieutenant commander with the Navy living in the Dallas area, was stunned when we contacted him eight years later about his landlord nightmare.

“The neighborly, welcoming people I first met, they’re just criminals,” he said. “They are cheating the system every way they can.”

Hayk Hovhannisyan

Hayk Hovhannisyan and his wife both lost their jobs at the beginning of 2018. Around the same time, the tenants at their Shrewsbury rental property also notified them that they were moving out. 

That’s why Hovhannisyan told us it was crucial to find new tenants and have the rental income to help support his two children.

During the open house, Linda Callahan seemed like the perfect prospective tenant.

“Suddenly, there’s this middle-aged, white, happy and trustworthy woman with all the paperwork in hand,” Hovhannisyan recalled. 

The Callahans were supposed to move in at the beginning of August, but asked if they could start their tenancy several days early. 

On the day they handed over the keys, Hovhannisyan said there were moving trucks at the property already loaded up with the Callahans’ possessions. In retrospect, he now realizes those trucks had come straight from the Callahans’ eviction at their previous rental property. 

Just like with other landlords, the first rental check bounced. Excuses followed about the IRS and the bank account being frozen.

Hovhannisyan eventually went to investigate at the bank branch. That’s when he learned the account from which the check was written had been closed for a long time. 

“These are professional con artists,” Hovyannisyan said. “I realized this is not some isolated thing. There are actually people who live like this.”

Like several other landlords we spoke with, Hovyannisyan believes he was targeted because he is an immigrant who is unfamiliar with the legal system and eviction process. 

He hired an attorney and discovered how long it can take to execute an eviction, even when the tenants are not paying a dime. 

On moving day, which landlords are required to pay under Massachusetts law, two trucks were not sufficient to load up all the Callahans’ items. Hovyannisyan had to call in a third truck to finish the job. 

When he entered the property for the first time after the eviction, he noticed the walls had been painted a different color. 

Hovyannisyan estimates the lost rent, moving expenses and attorney fees cost him about $13,000.

“Hopefully, they’ll end up in some nice jail,” he said. “Free housing. That’s what they’re looking for, yes? Free housing.”

Rory Mallaghan

The home on Jonathan Circle was the first property that Rory Mallaghan owned. When he and his wife moved to a new home in anticipation of having their first child, Mallaghan listed the property for rent on Zillow, hoping to find a tenant who would care for the home where he’d created so many memories. 

The Callahans showed up to get a tour of the property and Mallaghan remembers how they gave the impression they would really enjoy living in the space.

“Linda was so bubbly,” Mallaghan recalled. “Every nook of the house, she thought she could put certain things in certain places and everything would be fantastic.”

The couple said they were looking at several properties and already had a packet of paperwork available, including pay stubs, references and credit reports. 

The Callahans said they were helping with family in Shrewsbury and staying at a nearby hotel just to get some space. Mallaghan gave them a ride back to the hotel after the showing. 

Like other landlord encounters, a familiar series of events followed.

Upon returning from a work trip, Mallaghan discovered the Callahans’ rent checks had bounced. The couple first blamed a problem with the IRS, then described an issue withdrawing funds from a 401k account. 

“They always had an excuse of why the money wasn’t there and they were working on it,” Mallaghan said. “They just preyed on my forgiveness and compassion and were able to live there rent-free.”

When he finally ran out of patience, Mallaghan hired an attorney to start the eviction process. After eight months of receiving no rent, Mallaghan wrote an email to the Callahans, pleading with them not to delay any longer and leave the property. 

“We’ve come to terms we will never see that money. It was an expensive lesson,” he wrote. “We had plans to buy baby necessities. It’s a tough pill to swallow.”

Mallaghan was there when a constable showed up to execute the eviction and a moving company packed up possession. When he entered the home for the first time, everything was stripped from the walls, including the toilet paper holders.

He said the ordeal cost him about $20,000.

“They know what they’re doing,” Mallaghan said. “They are just taking people for a ride.”

Sitanshu Sinha and Shilpi Gupta

The home on Egret Circle in Shrewsbury was the first property Sitanshu Sinha and Shilpi Gupta purchased when they immigrated to the United States. The couple later decided to move to a larger home in town and rented the old property to several different tenants without incident. Then they listed it again in August 2023. 

Russell and Linda Callahan showed up to look at the home and said they were trying to get a loan to buy some land, so they had already assembled a credit report, background check and pay stubs for their bank. 

The documents they provided to Sinha and Gupta falsely listed the couple’s last name as “O’Callagham” to avoid detection. 

Before moving in, Linda Callahan said she thought the basement would be a perfect space to work on her art and craft projects, and asked if she could pay to have it carpeted. Sinha and Gupta thought it was a strange request from tenants and declined the offer. 

“That still sticks with me because of the way things turned out,” Gupta said. 

A couple of days after moving into the property, the checks bounced. The pattern of excuses followed, but Sinha said it did not seem like there was any urgency to get the payment situation resolved. 

The couple eventually realized they needed to get a lawyer because they started dipping into emergency savings to pay the mortgages on both properties. 

“It was very stressful on us financially,” Gupta said. 

At the eviction proceedings in housing court, Russell Callahan declined to answer questions from the judge. He would not even state his name under oath without legal representation, according to audio we obtained. 

“I don’t credit your testimony, sir,” the judge told Callahan. “I actually don’t credit anything you said. I find you to be evasive and not particularly forthcoming.”

When Sinha called a moving company to get an estimate, the employee asked for the names of the tenants being evicted. A couple minutes later, the employee said he could provide an exact quote because the moving company had already boxed up the Callahans’ possessions on multiple occasions. 

On the eve of the move, Linda Callahan made a final plea to stay in the house until after Christmas.

“I know you are very angry with us, and truthfully, we don’t blame you,” read a text message. “We falsified the documents because we wanted to rent from you. And with our history, we knew you wouldn’t consider us.”

After the Callahans moved out, Sinha and Gupta found nail holes and other damage everywhere throughout the house. There were light fixtures, curtain rods and speakers missing.

The couple estimates the financial nightmare cost them about $30,000 in savings. They had planned to invest that money in their two kids’ college savings plans. 

The home on Egret Circle is the last known address for the Callahans. No new eviction cases have surfaced since movers packed them up last December. 

“I’m still at a loss for words,” Sinha said. “How can something live like this for so long and get away with it?”

Nadia Amrani

Nadia Amrani moved out of her home on Locust Avenue in Worcester and rented a home in Shrewsbury so her three daughters could attend a better high school. The single mom planned to move back to Worcester after her daughters graduated, but needed to find a tenant to help pay the mortgage in the interim. 

When the Callahans came to look at the property, they had a packet of paperwork ready to go. They told Amrani they were thinking about buying a home and applying for a mortgage, so they’d already assembled the financial records for the bank.

“I thought they were just being proactive,” Amrani said. “Making things easier for me.”

The documents like credit reports and pay stubs all seemed legit, so Amrani offered the Callahans a rental agreement. She remembers Linda Callahan seeming relieved and in control once she handed her the keys. 

Amrani read us the text message she received from Linda Callahan once the lease was signed. Years later, the words take on an ominous tone. 

“Thank you so much for your decision on selecting my family,” the message said. “I understand the financial agreement to be met. We will respect your home as if it were our own. Enjoy your day. I know you just made ours great.”

Linda Callahan delayed providing a security deposit until closer to the move-in date, saying her mom was in the hospital having heart surgery. By the time the check bounced, the Callahans were already living in the home.

Amrani said the couple initially blamed problems with the IRS on the lack of funds. When weeks passed with no payment, Amrani went to the bank and discovered the account had been closed. 

“I started panicking,” Amrani said. “I couldn’t afford to pay the mortgage and the rent where I was living.”

Amrani hired an attorney and won an eviction at the end of 2019. She is thankful she got rid of the Callahans just before the COVID pandemic. That’s when the government implemented an eviction moratorium, and Amrani believes she would’ve lost her home. 

Once the rental payment problems surfaced, Amrani remembers looking up the Callahans in the housing court’s online system. She was stunned when she saw their extensive eviction history, a track record that was nowhere to be found in the documents they had provided in that first encounter.

“They need to pay for what they did,” she said. “Those people have been evicted over and over and over again. The system knows them. And nothing has been done.”

More from the NBC10 Investigators

To Catch a Contractor Jul 31

‘A civil matter': Does Mass. law need to change to hold bad contractors criminally accountable?

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