A cadre of cleaners was apparently recruited through Facebook. According to the suit, the ring used multiple misleading identities to dodge Airbnb’s rules, text tourists and book apartments to budget-minded travelers.

Interviews and documents offer a glimpse at how the New York scheme worked. In July, Palma de Mallorca became the first city in Spain to ban Airbnb. Los Angeles, Amsterdam, Paris and Vancouver, British Columbia, have all passed laws restricting Airbnb rentals. Airbnb condemned the exploitation of its platform, but the scheme showed how the home-sharing site has given opportunists a new kind of hustle.Īirbnb has clashed with other cities. The crackdown on the empire last month was a milestone in the escalating battle between Airbnb and New York City - the company’s largest market in the country. The plot was geared toward getting around city regulations that are intended to keep blocks of apartments from being turned into makeshift hotels that avoid lodging taxes and oversight. The building, on Greenwich Street, was part of a larger enterprise that made more than $20 million in revenue by unlawfully renting 130 Manhattan apartments to almost 76,000 guests through Airbnb, city officials said.

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