Family’s Airbnb drug house nightmare as police raid holiday home and find hydroponic setup
THE Winkler family were enjoying a barbecue on vacation on the Gold Coast when 10 armed police officers smashed in the front door. A room they’d been told not to use was housing a cannabis farm.
TWO days after Christmas, Dieter Winkler and his family were preparing a barbecue at their holiday home on the Gold Coast when 10 armed police officers smashed in the front door.
The Sydney family of seven, who had rented the three-bedroom house at Burleigh Heads through Airbnb, were not even 24 hours into their stay when armed officers in bulletproof vests kicked the door down.
MORE: wild parties, drugs and orgies linked to popular Airbnb site
Mr Winkler, his partner Jacquie Young and their five children were ordered to sit in the lounge room where they were kept for five hours while police questioned them over a sophisticated marijuana setup found in one of the bedrooms, which the female owner had told the Winklers was “off-limits” because of an electricity fault.
“The cops didn’t know we were innocent, so it wasn’t a friendly reception,” Mr Winkler, 48, from Randwick, said yesterday.
He spent $1800 for 11 nights at the Burleigh home, and then had to find alternative accommodation, which left him another $2600 out of pocket.
Airbnb has refunded him the full amount of $4400.
“More than sixty million guests have stayed at an Airbnb property and while incidents like this are incredibly rare, we take them very seriously,” an Airbnb spokesman said.
“There is absolutely no place for this sort of activity on Airbnb and this property has been banned.
“We’ve been in contact with the guest in this situation and will continue to do everything we can to offer our support.”
SEX DRUGS AND DESTRUCTION
Leigh van den Broeke
AIRBNB horror stories from around the world expose the potential for hosts to take advantage of renters and guests to run riot.
In Lismore last year a woman who rented her flat out to another woman discovered she was using it as a makeshift brothel.
In 2014, a man was jailed for 11 years for raping two American women who rented his Barcelona flat through the Airbnb site.
In the US, freelance journalist Zak Stone’s father died while their family stayed at a residence in Texas. Mr Stone’s father, Louis, suffered brain damage when he used a swing hanging from a tree branch that snapped.
In Spain an Airbnb guest, aged 19, claimed he was locked in an apartment by the host, who made sexual advances to him.
And in Manhattan, comedian Ari Teman, 33, was named on a risky renter’s database after he listed his apartment on Airbnb, only for it to host a “XXX freak fest” orgy last year.
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