detailed her alleged schemes.<\/a><\/p>\nProsecutors said Bergstedt stole $1,500 to $4,000 at a time from people who responded to her fake apartment listings. Once she received money to secure the apartment, Bergstedt would cut off communication and keep the money. When confronted, she often weaved elaborate excuses as to why she couldn\u2019t hand over the keys or refund the deposit, according to victims who spoke with the Post.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday in a Long Beach courtroom, Bergstedt, wearing her jail-issued shirt and pants, nodded along as Judge James D. Otto read the terms of her probation.<\/p>\n
She was ordered to pay restitution of $47,100 to 14 separate victims. The judge finished the hearing by wishing Bergstedt luck.<\/p>\n
One of Bergstedt\u2019s victims said he doubts the sentence will deter her from further scamming.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, at least they got her for 3 months,\u201d he said of the time she spent in jail.<\/p>\n
In a phone interview with the Post, he asked to remain anonymous for fear Bergstedt would retaliate against him now that she\u2019s free.<\/p>\n
Bergstedt, he said, was \u201cvery charismatic and charming in person\u201d when she gave him an in-person tour of an apartment.<\/p>\n
He sent her thousands of dollars through Zelle to secure the unit, but when he asked her how to pick up the keys, she told him she didn\u2019t have an answer because she had been busy planning her father\u2019s funeral.<\/p>\n
A few months later, he decided to drive by the property. There, he found a sign from the real landlord (Bergstedt had only pretended to own it) essentially saying, \u201cIf you signed a lease with Anne, you were lied to.\u201d<\/p>\n
The victim was able to move back in with his parents, but the experience was \u201ctraumatic\u201d and delayed him moving into his own place, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m a very kind person, and I try to see the best in people, and now I\u2019m very scared to do that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Long Beach woman accused of scamming renters out of nearly $48,000 in security deposits was released from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":70680,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[131,133,132],"class_list":{"0":"post-142589","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-long-beach","8":"tag-long-beach","9":"tag-long-beach-headlines","10":"tag-long-beach-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142589\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}