Airbnb Guest Caught Stealing Rolex and Louis Vuitton From Manhattan Apartment

If you rent your apartment out on Airbnb, make sure your tenant doesn’t have a criminal record, or at the very least, hide your luxury valuables.

Thirty-two-year-old Victoria Doramus pled guilty to grand larceny in the third degree last week in exchange for probation. She must also pay $2,400 in restitution to the apartment’s owner and attend a mental health program. She’s due back in court March 15.

Doramus rented an Bowery apartment from Julie Maximova in October of last year and paid with two separate checks, both of which bounced. She was picked up by police on Nov. 29 according to court documents.

Prosecutors say she ransacked the apartment for anything of value, snatching Rolex and Cartier watches, Louis Vuitton luggage, handbags, and clothing. The watches, she sold to a pawnbroker, but they were later recovered. The rest she stashed in a SoHo storage unit. All the lost items have been returned.

At first Doramus told police that someone she met from Craigslist came to the apartment and mistakenly took a bag filled with Maximova’s belongings. “I was going to give it back,” she later told investigators. “I will pay her for the rent and return her stuff.”

Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Robert Stolz expressed surprise that so many valuable items would be left out in the open to someone renting their home through Airbnb. “This is someone who operates an Airbnb and leaves her Rolex and Cartier watches, her diamond necklace and her Louis Vuitton luggage there?” he asked the prosecutor.

This is also not Doramus’s first brush with the law. In November 2015 she was arrested for abusing company credit cards she had access to while an employee of Rubenstein Public Relations. In July of that year she spent $17,000 on Amazon, dry cleaning, and Southwest Airlines.

In that case, she made a plea agreement where she would do 10 days of community service and pay back American Express $3,791 in restitution.

“She’ll be on probation. She’ll be taking therapy. She’ll straighten out her life,” said her attorney, Barry Agulnick, in an interview with the New York Daily News. He went on to say that Doramus’s mental health had led to dependence on drugs.

Doramus has been released from Riker’s Island, where she’s stayed since the time of her arrest on $15,000 bail.

In a related vein, 10 days before being picked up by police for theft in the Maximova case, Doramus had tweeted a photo of jewelry.

“All I want for Thanksgiving” she wrote. In another she stands before a fireplace, her back to the camera, “All I want is everything” reads the caption.