Police say rent checks were intercepted at a Georgia apartment complex, leaving tenants facing eviction

Kayla Sherrod's mother paid the rent months ahead, from December through May. In April, caring for a newborn, Sherrod was evicted from her East Point, Georgia apartment anyway, because the complex said it never got the money.

East Point police say it did get taken, just not by the office. Three people are charged with intercepting more than $65,000 in rent checks and money orders from at least 60 tenants at the Fulton Pointe Apartments, and investigators believe the scheme hit other complexes too.

This is the rare rental fraud a careful renter can still walk into, because you did everything right and the theft happened after the money left your hands. That means the defense is entirely in how you pay and what you hold onto.

Why paper payments create the gap

A check or money order handed to a leasing office, dropped in a rent box, or mailed has a window where it's out of your control and not yet recorded. Someone with access, an employee, a manager, anyone handling the mail, can take it in that window, and then the tenant's ledger just shows unpaid. By the time an eviction notice arrives, the paper trail proving you paid is scattered across cashed checks and receipts you probably didn't keep.

Sherrod saw the pattern spread through the building. "The people downstairs, they ended up getting put out first. Then the people across the hall got put out," she said. Neighbor after neighbor, all reportedly paying, all being told they hadn't, and nobody could explain it.

How to make your rent payment theft-proof

The fix is a payment method that records itself, plus a habit of keeping proof, and neither takes much effort.

Pay traceably. An online portal, a bank bill-pay, or an electronic transfer creates a timestamped record on both ends that no one at the office can quietly intercept, and if your building only takes checks or money orders, that's a reason for extra care rather than less.

Keep every receipt. Money orders come with a stub and a tracking number you can use to confirm whether it was cashed and by whom, so photograph that stub before you hand it over. For checks, save the cashed-check image from your bank, which shows who endorsed it.

Watch your bank, not just your calendar. Confirm each rent payment actually cleared a few days after you make it, because a check that hasn't been cashed two weeks in is the early warning you get long before an eviction notice.

Get it in writing that you paid. Ask for a receipt every month, and if a portal shows a balance you don't recognize, dispute it in writing immediately and keep the thread. A dated record that you flagged the discrepancy matters if it ends up in court.

If it happens anyway

An eviction filed against a tenant who actually paid is a defense, not a foregone loss, and the proof is what wins it, because you can't argue it on your word alone. Bank records showing the payments cleared, cashed-check images, and money-order tracking numbers are exactly what a judge needs, which is the whole reason to keep them before you ever need them. Our guide to what happens if you can't pay rent covers the eviction timeline, and it's worth knowing where the deadlines fall.

Report the theft to the police, not just the landlord, since intercepting checks and money orders is a crime, and a report creates the record that a fraud, rather than your nonpayment, is what happened. In the East Point case the charges came only after tenants pushed.

The broader point is that rental fraud runs in both directions. We've covered renters losing deposits to fake listings and landlords fooled by faked pay stubs. This is the version where an honest tenant and an honest landlord both get robbed by someone in between, and a traceable payment is what protects you from it.

Sources

• WSB-TV (September 2026), for the charges, the $65,000 figure, and the tenant interview

• RentDataNow East Point rent data, anchored to the Zillow Observed Rent Index, June 2026