The Non-Financial Ledger: What Money Can’t Measure

Picture yourself broke, maybe a student, maybe between jobs, maybe fleeing an unsafe living situation. You are searching for a room. The cheapest rooms in any major American city are already nearly impossible to find. You have spent weeks on Craigslist, hitting dead end after dead end. Then you find Roomster. The app has thousands of reviews. Four stars, five stars. “No scammers, all users are real.” “Easy to communicate with owners.” “Best app for finding rooms.” You download it. You pay the subscription fee, $7.99 for a week. You start messaging people. Thirty-eight listers. Fifty listers. Sixty listers. One responds. Just one, and it is a scam.

That is not a hypothetical. That is what real users wrote in 1-star reviews that were systematically buried by Roomster’s purchased fake praise. One person described spending five days reaching out to 38 listings and receiving only one legitimate response. Another described reaching out to 50 to 60 listings and receiving nothing but identical scripted scam messages, all asking for a deposit and a first month’s rent, promising to mail the key because they were at a funeral, in another country, traveling. Another paid $7.95, then $24.95, then another $24.95 without ever finding a real room. They asked for refunds and were refused.

During the pandemic, the cruelty became sharper. Fraudsters on the platform used COVID-19 as their cover story. They could not show you the property, they said. The pandemic. Just send the deposit. They will mail you the key. These were not rogue bad actors that slipped through a system that tried to stop them. Roomster had no verification system. The complaint states the platform published listings immediately as long as a street address was recognized, without any determination of whether the listing was authentic, the address residential, or the lister a real person. The fraudsters had free rein by design, even if not by explicit intent.

Shriber and Zaks knew exactly who their customers were. They said so themselves. “A Roomster customer is an individual in the lowest end of the rental market, they generally have limited funds, and every dollar counts.” Shriber wrote that Roomster serves “the most affordable end of the real estate market” and that “for Roomster customers even more so… generally for financial reasons… every penny counts.” They wrote these things. They also paid for fake 5-star reviews. They also accepted millions of dollars from people who could not afford to lose it.

The damage here is not only financial. Finding stable housing is the foundation of being able to function. It determines whether you can hold a job. Whether your kids go to the same school. Whether you sleep safely. When a company sells you the promise of stability, takes your money, and delivers nothing but a platform crawling with predators, it does not just take your cash. It takes the time you spent searching. It takes the hope. It takes the energy you no longer have for the next attempt. And it delivers you, unprepared, back to the same desperate search, poorer than before.

Legal Receipts: Straight from the Court Documents

These are direct quotes from the federal complaint filed in the Southern District of New York, Case 1:22-cv-07389. These are not paraphrases.

Exhibit A — Paragraph 44 of the Complaint

“The Roomster Defendants have taken in excess of $27 million from consumers, many of whom can least afford to lose money. According to Defendant Zaks, ‘a Roomster customer is an individual in the lowest end of the rental market, they generally have limited funds, and every dollar counts.’ Similarly, according to Defendant Shriber, the Roomster Defendants ‘are servicing the most affordable end of the [r]eal estate market. Searching for housing is stressful in all price points, but for Roomster customers even more so . . . generally for financial reasons. For Roomster customers every penny counts.'”

• This passage proves both named executives personally understood and recorded in their own words that their customer base consisted of vulnerable, low-income people for whom every dollar was critical.
• This same understanding did not stop either executive from orchestrating a multi-year fake review campaign to attract those customers to a platform with unverified listings.
• The total harm figure of over $27 million is drawn directly from the complaint and attributed to these exact defendants.

Exhibit B — Paragraph 32, Internal Communications

“For over four years, the Roomster Defendants engaged in what Defendant Martinez referred to as ‘drip campaigns,’ which involve ‘the steady flow of reviews.’ The Roomster Defendants only paid for fake reviews that ‘stuck’ (i.e., those that passed app store algorithms and were visible to consumers). At various times, Defendant Martinez told Defendants Shriber and Zaks that fake reviews had to be ‘dripped’ at a ‘slower pace’ because many were not ‘sticking.'”

• This proves active, ongoing management of the fake review operation, not a one-time purchase. Shriber and Zaks were personally receiving updates on why reviews were failing to pass app store fraud detection algorithms.
• The term “stuck” means visible to consumers. Roomster was paying only for successfully deceptive reviews, not for any review that was filtered out before it could mislead the public.
• Four years of continuous operation, with named CEOs personally involved, eliminates any claim this was a rogue marketing vendor acting without oversight.

Exhibit C — Paragraph 34-35, Direct Orders from CEO Shriber

“Defendant Shriber instructed Defendant Martinez to produce ‘lots of 5 star IOS app reviews’ and stated that he ‘would like to be #1’ for people searching for roommates.” And: “Defendant Shriber stated ‘I need to get to the top of “rooms for rent”. [W]hat can be done?’ Defendant Martinez responded, ‘We can blast 100-200 reviews for that keyword to get some movement.'”

• This is Roomster’s CEO personally directing a fake review vendor to flood keyword search results with fabricated ratings for the purpose of dominating app store rankings.
• The phrase “blast 100-200 reviews for that keyword” confirms these were coordinated, keyword-targeted campaigns, not isolated purchases. Search ranking manipulation was the explicit goal.
• Shriber’s personal involvement in these specific instructions destroys any defense that he was unaware of the nature of the arrangement.

Exhibit D — Paragraph 38, Conduct After Notice of FTC Investigation

“Even after receiving notice of the FTC’s investigation, the Roomster Defendants continued to instruct that reviews post in random amounts in order to appear natural, at one point emailing Defendant Martinez: ‘Just as a reminder, please make sure it’s always a random number of reviews, so it looks more natural.'”

• This is direct evidence of continued obstruction-adjacent conduct after the company became aware it was under federal investigation. The campaign did not stop; they adjusted it to look less suspicious.
• The phrase “so it looks more natural” is an explicit admission of intent to deceive, communicated in writing, by the defendants to their vendor.
• The FTC complaint cites this continued conduct as direct evidence that the Roomster Defendants are “about to violate” the law and that injunctive relief is necessary.

Exhibit E — Paragraph 25-26, The Verification System That Did Not Exist

“In reality, the Roomster Defendants do not verify listings or ensure that their listings are real or authentic. The Roomster Defendants post listings on their Roomster platform immediately upon request, as long as the street address associated with the listing is recognized by the platform… For example, an undercover investigation shows that the Roomster Defendants immediately accepted and published a fake listing with a U.S. Postal Office commercial facility address. The fake listing also contained fictitious rental specifications that included an apartment at less than half the price and twice the square footage as those in the represented market. That listing has remained active for several months.”

• The undercover test proves the “verified listings” claim was entirely fabricated. A listing for a post office with implausibly cheap rent and double the standard square footage was accepted and published with no review.
• The listing remained active for months without Roomster contacting the poster, confirming the absence of any post-publication monitoring as well as pre-publication review.
• This directly contradicts Roomster’s published marketing language: “millions of verified listings” and a “safe community with real members worldwide.”

The Anatomy of a Four-Year Scheme

The complaint documents misconduct spanning at least four years. The timeline below maps the key documented events from the scheme’s start to the federal lawsuit.

Societal Impact Mapping

Public Health

Housing instability is not a financial inconvenience. It is a documented public health crisis, and Roomster operated at its most vulnerable pressure point.

• The complaint explicitly identifies Roomster’s target customers as students, lower-income individuals, and people “desperate for safe, low-cost housing in markets where such housing is extremely hard to find.” These populations already face disproportionate rates of housing insecurity, which is directly linked to adverse physical and mental health outcomes including chronic stress, sleep deprivation, and reduced immune function.
• During the pandemic, the platform became a vehicle for COVID-exploitation fraud. Scammers used the pandemic to prevent in-person property viewings, demanding deposits and first-month rent upfront with promises to mail keys. This exploited a period of maximum vulnerability, when people were already displaced, unemployed, or fleeing unsafe shared-living situations caused by lockdown conditions.
• Consumers who paid subscription fees and then lost additional hundreds or thousands of dollars to fraudsters on the platform were left financially worse off during a period of widespread economic catastrophe. The compounding loss, subscription fee plus scam payment, directly reduced a household’s capacity to secure alternative housing, pay for food, or access medical care.
• The psychological toll of being deceived while in crisis, spending days or weeks messaging fake listings, being scammed after trusting a platform with thousands of positive reviews, cannot be reduced to a dollar figure. One real user review described five days of sustained effort contacting 38 listers and receiving exactly one legitimate response. That is five days of hope followed by nothing.

Economic Inequality

Roomster did not accidentally target poor people. Its own executives put their awareness of their customers’ economic precarity in writing, and then built a business on monetizing that precarity with a fraudulent product.

• The complaint states Roomster collected over $27 million from consumers. The platform’s own executives characterized their user base as people for whom “every dollar counts” and “every penny counts.” This is not a demographic that can absorb $7.99 subscription fees paid for nothing, let alone additional scam losses of hundreds or thousands of dollars.
• Fake positive reviews function as economic fraud multiplied at scale. Over 20,000 purchased fake reviews, distributed across app stores in more than 20 countries, reached millions of people. Each deceptive review was a tool for extracting payment from someone who could not afford to be misled. The FTC Act violation here is also a mechanism of upward wealth transfer: from the poorest renters to a New York tech company and its founders.
• The affiliate model Roomster used to spread fake listings on Craigslist and other platforms amplified the reach of the deception beyond the app itself. Consumers who found Roomster through a fake Craigslist listing had already been funneled into a predatory sales funnel before they ever opened the app. By the time they paid the subscription fee, they had already been lied to twice.
• The civil penalty demands from six states, ranging from $2,500 per violation in California to $50,000 per violation in Illinois, suggest the potential total liability is enormous. But penalties paid to state governments do not automatically become restitution in the hands of the individuals harmed. The complaint does demand consumer restitution, but the path from lawsuit to money-back-in-pocket is long and uncertain for people who may have been harmed years ago.
• Low-income renters in high-cost cities, where Roomster operated, were already priced out of the standard rental market. The affordable housing shortage that made Roomster’s premise attractive is itself a product of decades of policy failures and real estate speculation. Roomster did not create that shortage. It located that shortage, found the people most desperate within it, and charged them for a service it did not actually provide.

The Cost of a Life: What $27 Million Means

What Now? Who to Contact and How to Fight Back

The complaint names specific individuals and asks for specific remedies. Here is who is responsible, who is watching, and what you can do.

The Named Defendants

• John Shriber, Co-Founder and CEO of Roomster Corp., 285 W Broadway, Suite 410, New York, NY 10013. The complaint holds him personally liable.
• Roman Zaks, Co-Founder and CTO of Roomster Corp., same address. The complaint holds him personally liable.
• Jonathan Martinez, doing business as AppWinn, residing in California. Named for providing fake reviews to Roomster and for providing “the same or similar services for other businesses.”

Regulatory Watchlist

• Federal Trade Commission (FTC): Lead federal plaintiff. File consumer complaints at reportfraud.ftc.gov or call 1-877-382-4357. The FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection specifically tracks deceptive advertising and fake reviews.
• New York Attorney General (Letitia James): File a consumer complaint at ag.ny.gov/complaint. New York AG has jurisdiction and is a named plaintiff in this case.
• California Attorney General (Rob Bonta): File at oag.ca.gov/contact/consumer-complaint-against-business-or-company.
• Colorado Attorney General (Philip J. Weiser): File at coag.gov/office-services/citizens-and-consumers/file-consumer-complaint.
• Florida Attorney General (Ashley Moody): File at myfloridalegal.com/consumer-protection.
• Illinois Attorney General (Kwame Raoul): File at illinoisattorneygeneral.gov/consumers/filecomplaint.html.
• Massachusetts Attorney General (Maura Healey): File at mass.gov/how-to/file-a-consumer-complaint.
• App Store Operators (Apple App Store, Google Play): Both platforms prohibit fake reviews in their terms of service. Report suspicious review patterns directly through their respective developer policy violation reporting tools.

Grassroots Resistance and Mutual Aid

• If you paid Roomster for a subscription and found the listings were fake or you were directed to scammers, document everything: bank statements, emails, screenshots, dates. You may be eligible for restitution if the court orders it. File a complaint with the FTC and your state AG now, even if the case is already in litigation. Your complaint becomes part of the evidentiary record.
• Connect with local tenant unions and housing justice organizations in your city. Organizations like City Life/Vida Urbana (Boston), Los Angeles Tenants Union, Chicago Democratic Socialists of America Housing Committee, and NYC-DSA Housing Working Group organize collective action around housing fraud, predatory landlords, and digital exploitation of renters.
• Talk to your neighbors. Affordable housing scams depend on isolation. If you know someone who has been burned by a fake rental listing or a platform like Roomster, help them file a complaint. Every complaint strengthens the enforcement record against these companies.
• Demand that app stores implement stronger pre-publication review screening and ban repeat fake-review vendors. Email Apple and Google directly. Both platforms’ terms of service were violated here; their enforcement failed. User pressure has moved both companies on policy before.
• Support the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) rulemaking on digital marketplace fraud and push your congressional representatives to strengthen FTC authority to impose civil monetary penalties at the federal level, not just through state AG partnerships.