YES! Caught my landlord trying to screw us over red handed! (and the plot thickens)

Alright.. so lately this whole year has had quite the peculiar storyline unfold that's felt like something out of a TV show or movie.. I'm also curious about how I should/could react so I'd love some suggestions.. Anyways..

I'll precursor the story with: Me and my roommate, Caleb, had just moved to NW Austin last Sept. And the moment we signed the lease to our duplex, our landlord has been a heartless b*tch from the word 'Go'. We've never met her, and she's always been very cold, short and something about her was shady.

Any experience I've had with previous landlords has been smooth. They've been very accommodating, punctual and easy to get a hold of incase of emergencies. Our first week here, some pipes blew up under the sink and flooded the bathroom. I try to call Miriam (the landlord) and she FLIPS out as soon as she answers, yells at me to never ever call her again - only contact thru email no ifs,ands or buts (remember this)

The year in a nutshell has been hellish with her as landlord. She's CONSTANTLY moody. You can even sense the rudeness/b****iness pouring from her emails. She's been shoving random repair/damage/fees/late bills our way all year without a clear source of why or where these bills were coming from. But they've all been like a random $50 or $75 added to our rent here and there.

So three weeks ago:
(our washer/dryer has its own little room in the garage which is back-to-back with our neighbors washroom, remember its a duplex) I walk in to do some laundry and I notice a bucket full of broken dry wall and plaster. Assuming it was Caleb's doing I shrugged it off and kept going. Next, We get an email from Miriam claiming that we owe her $380 in damage/repair fees. "WTF?"
Immediately emailing Miriam about it, she straight up pulls this out of her ass.

She claimed that we went in the washroom, knocked out the wall to repair bad pipes (charge: unauthorized repair), repaired them wrong (charge: unnecessary tampering) and due to "our" wrong repair, the pipes broke and flooded the walls of our neighbors washroom (charge: water damage/repair). We haven't the slightest clue what to do with pipes other than smoking and we haven't the slightest clue about tearing down walls other than drunking-ly punching holes. Point being, we don't have the capacity to pull off such a feat.

In telling her so and how we hadn't touched anything nor planned on paying the charges. She emails us back claiming that she was able to "find" the repair man/company that "we" called to fix it and that she had his spoken and written consent that he was an eye witness and all the proof needed that we agreed to having him fix the wall/pipes. Also claimed that Omar (our neighbor) was present and witnessed the same thing. We just kept responding with "We refuse to pay any charge until you send us the papers that we signed to comply with the repair" Then she response in very b****y manner how she was being nice to us about the charges and that there were several other charges she decided not to add to the list that would double the fee and if we refused to pay she'd just add back those charges. We just kept replying with "Have your lawyer send the papers we allegedly signed to our attorneys"


A week passes and next thing I know.. I'm in my room.. and I can over hear Caleb on the phone as he's walking towards my room and he ends the phone convo with "Alright, sounds good Miriam" Caleb turns the corner with "That was Miriam! She just called me and told me that everything is taken care of and we don't have to pay the charges anymore.."

....The plot thickens

This trick has been on our asses about some phantom charges making it seem impossible to get around. And now they're gone?? Just like that?? But what reallllllyyyyy put my red flag up is the fact she CALLED Caleb. I smelled something in the air (I had cooked fish that night) and so I told caleb to fill me in..

So that night Caleb had emailed her back something along the lines of: "Hey Miriam, haven't heard back from you in a week and wondering if you're still expecting us to pay those charges"

Five minutes later Caleb gets an email back from Miriam.. only by accident. You see: Miriam forwarded the emails to Omar, our neighbor, only she accidently forwarded them to US AS WELL.. THIS STUPID TRICK SLIPPED!!!!

(Caleb has all of the emails but it went similar to this)

"Dear Omar,
The guys next door are throwing you under the bus claiming that you're to blame for everything and that you authorized all repairs and did the damages. No worries though, I just need you to copy and paste what I've written for you below as a response to this email.."
and then she quoted how Omar should respond..
"Hey Miriam. I hate to hear that they are still placing the blame on me. blah blah blah blah" and wrote for him all of the 'legal things' to say to loophole us back in front of the firing squad

I could NOT believe it. And Caleb didn't even catch on at first that she didn't mean to send us that. He just read how she said we were blaming Omar and Caleb responded with: "Hey Miriam, we never once said it was Omar's fault. We're just saying we had nothing to do with it" and 30 seconds IMMEDIATELY after he sent that to Miriam, Miriam was blowing up Calebs phone being all nice and sweet saying stuff like "You know what, Caleb?? Yall have been such great tenants and on time with all of your payments.. why make a big fuss out of all of this and bring tensions higher??? Let's just drop the charges and move on!"


HER ASS GOT CAUGHT

So I'm curious as to how I should/could go forward with action on this.. I've told a few friends and a lot of them think that there's a lawsuit somewhere in this. I'm clueless about law outside of the typical so I'd love to see how I could go about this. I'd usually say '**** it' and keep doing me, but I have a feeling we aren't the only ones she's tried/trying to F over and she's just an evil person in general. I wouldn't mind being the one to unleash her karma.. If you need any other info on the situation to determine what's there just ask...

But it doesn't even end there..
The plot thickens more as we found out that not only does OMAR our neighbor work for Miriam but we dug deep enough to find out that the repair man that came into our garage and fixed/broke the pipes also worked for Miriam. And I should add that after living here half a year, we have plenty reason and speculation to believe Omar is also running a heavy coke selling operation out of his place. I'll fill in more details on that later as I'm tired of typing just as you're prob tired of reading

 

The Abridged Version of the story:

- Landlord is a bonified b****
- Has hit us with random phantom fees and charges all year
- Drops $380 fee out of no where we've been fighting for 3 weeks
- Claims we unauthorized repair for pipes which was botched and burst flooding out the walls, hence the mysterious $380
- Landlord continues to lie claiming witnesses saw that we caused the repair and damage
- Refused to send papers that we allegedly signed
- A week passes with no response so we email her about the charges a final time
- She forwards the email to our neighbor, Omar, with a message only she accidentally forwarded US the email as well
- Email stated that we were blaming Omar and she went on to write out Omar's "response" that would further incriminate us telling him to copy and paste it to her as a response
- So her BS was found out
- Roommate calls her out
- We immediately get a call from her saying how this has all been overblown and that we all should just drop this whole ordeal along with the charges and act like it never happen

Plot thickened more as we find out our neighbor actually works for her and the only other "eye witness" works for her as well and it gets even more crazier as our neighbor may have a coke operation he's running and my theory is the landlord is corrupt and knows of the coke dealing.

My theory is our landlord has herself in a situation where she is Gus and her Pollo Loco is the landlord business