How I Got Scammed Out of $100k+ by a "Magic" Interior Design Company in Orlando
It can happen to the best of us. And scammers come in all shapes and sizes.
Note: If you’re a paying subscriber, this post might look familiar! It’s been reposted due to a publishing error.
I’m about to tell you all the juicy details on how I got scammed out of over $100k by a shady, underqualified interior designer in Orlando (and what I’m doing about it).
But first… a little background.
I love vacation rentals.
A good vacation rental is THE vacation, in my opinion.
Why should all the fun be at the tourist attractions and restaurants? Why not make the accommodation fun, too, right? It just makes sense. I want to look forward to every part of the trip!
Plus, with how heavily saturated the vacation rental market is, it’s a challenge to stand out — and the best vacation rental owners do what the rest of vacation rental owners won’t.
We’ll get to that :)
Some of All of my fondest memories from childhood are from the handful of times we went on vacation.
We really didn’t go on vacation much. In fact, it wasn’t until I was in my late teens, early 20s that my mom and dad even wanted to go on vacation.
We went to Steinhatchee, Florida, which is a cute little coastal town where my late paternal grandmother use to live but now… it’s basically a fishing town with a drinking problem.
All the rentals we stayed in were… sub-par. Boring hotel rooms or old houses with nappy furniture and bedding, not much to do, and questionable cleanliness.
Here’s a photo I took of my sister, my grandma, and my dad watching TV in the living room of one of the rentals back in 2006. Watching re-runs of Reba, no doubt!
We made it work, but there was always a lot to be desired.
So when I had the opportunity to buy two old A-frame houses in a vintage holiday park back in 2020, I took it. Both houses cost about $220,000, but they needed some work.
I spent about $25,000 to spruce the both of them up and started renting them on Airbnb.
Fast forward to 2024, bookings had been consistent but low value ($200 for a weekend, minus the cleaning fee of $80 so I’d net $140, which was less than what local hotels were charging per night!), and there wasn’t really much to make them stand out.
They were drowning in a sea of mediocrity.
One of them, called Mermaid Haus, was lightly themed with mermaid/beach decor, and the other I called Retro Lounge, since it had vintage-inspired furniture and decor but… I didn’t want to stay in these houses!
And if you don’t want to stay in your own place, what does that say about the place, right?!
I also didn’t want to share to my network that I had these Airbnbs because there was some part of me that was embarrassed by them. They were just “meh.” Again, lost in a sea of mediocrity.
Priceless business advice: To really stand out in any industry, you need to be willing to do what the “average” person in that industry isn’t willing to do. Most people are fine filling their Airbnbs with cheap Walmart or IKEA furniture and polyester bedding. I was not fine with that!
So I hired a gal named Erica from a company called Magic Interiors who claimed she could gut renovate and remodel both of my houses in 2-3 months.
She’d done some light work at my primary residence the year before that turned out pretty good (albeit very expensive for what I got in the end), and we’d become friends, so I trusted her when she told me she could do it.
Despite never sending me a contract, she collected the first $50k and went to work demolishing the interiors of two perfectly mediocre but profitable rentals.
She never asked for my approval on any work before doing it. She spray painted every inch of Retro Lounge this god-awful aqua color. Even my smoke alarms were painted (and rendered unusable).
Spent money on dozens of things that were never invoiced, leaving no money left for what I’d actually paid for.
Long story short, one reason after another popped up as to why the houses couldn’t be done on time.
Her main guy Douglas allegedly “developed a drug problem and was stealing” — I later spoke with him on Zoom and she’d not only lied about the drugs and stealing, she had refused to paid him $23,000 for work he’d completed simply because she thought his prices were too high.
Even though she’d approved the estimates.
I can’t make this stuff up!
The biggest excuse was that she talked me into doing custom augmented reality video games for both houses, at a cost of $40,000 plus tax, but it would apparently take a long time before the company had availability to go out to the houses and “map” them. According to her, house-mapping needed to be done before anything else could be done to the house.
It’s very clear to me now that this was a huge lie. It was just her way of passing the buck/responsibility to an anonymous vendor to avoid taking responsibility for her own failures. Failures that cost me thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars.
It’s been almost two years since I paid her for those video games, and I still don’t have those games in my possession. I’m not even sure they exist at this point.
“It’ll be worth it” she said. I trusted her. Little did I know that these custom games would not move the needle at all in terms of rental revenue. They’re not a huge selling point. People are just as happy if they have access to a Nintendo Switch.
By September 2025, she’d told me multiple times the house would be done by a certain time, times which came and went.
Some verbatim text messages I received:
May 16, Erica texted, “We will have the Nintendo house done around the end of the month and the mermaid house shortly after”
June 3, Erica texted, “We’re almost done with 73! The loft bed is delayed 😒 but scheduled for the 16th. So we will be done done done on the 16 or 17”
July 1st, Erica texted, “We’re alllllmost done”
It’s obvious to me now that ALL OF THESE TEXTS WERE LIES.
Edward and I walked into the Nintendo house January 5 this year and were met with a mountain of empty Amazon boxes, all with dates on the labels from September and October. The house hadn’t been touched in months.
We asked Erica come over to get answers; she apparently thought she was coming over to hang out as friends and do some touch-up painting. She even said she thought we’d already started renting the place out!
We requested records of exactly how my $193,000+ was allocated/spent on both houses, since neither of them were done, and she assured me she’d get us that info, but to this day I still don’t have any information. All she gave me was more excuses (or ghosting).
I ended up having to hire my van builders, Bobby and Chris, to come down from North Carolina to finish the house. They had a great time on the project and did a fantastic, quality job.
More than two years after I took the listings down for renovation, I was finally able to re-list one of them last week.
The “Mario House” — officially named Mario’s Mini Mansion — is officially live (and accepting bookings directly, saving 15% off of Airbnb prices)!
After another $60,000+ on top of what I paid Erica… I’m finally back in business.
(I hired another theming company to do my other house, and they’re still hard at work. It will have an underwater/mermaid/shipwreck theme :))
Yes, I’ve absolutely hired an attorney.