One star for a landlord who faked a text to frame me for theft

One star, would be zero if I could. This review is for a landlord who thinks he can frame a brown tenant with a fake AI text message and get away with it in Victoria, 2024.

Let me be specific. Graham—you know who you are—owns a four-bedroom share house in Reservoir where I’ve lived for eighteen months. On the morning of October 14, I left for work at 7:30 AM. I didn’t return until 6:45 PM. That is a fact my employer’s time-stamped entry log can prove. Yet at 9:15 PM that same night, Graham sent me a formal eviction notice via email, attaching a screenshot of a text message that supposedly showed me confessing to stealing $800 from the shared rent envelope left on the kitchen counter.

The text read: “Sorry Graham, I took the envelope. I needed it for my mum’s medical bills. I’ll pay it back next week.” That was not my text. I have never sent a message like that. The timestamp on the screenshot was 2:32 PM—when I was in a meeting with three colleagues who will swear I was nowhere near my phone.

I called my best friend Chloe immediately. She was supposed to be my alibi witness because we’d had a coffee break together at 11 AM, and she saw me leave my phone on the table while I went to the bathroom. Chloe didn’t answer. She’s been ghosting me ever since. I have no idea why, but I suspect Graham got to her first.

Then Auntie Priya—my uncle’s wife, who lives two doors down—called me at midnight. She said she’d overheard Graham on the phone in his backyard, laughing about how he’d “set up the Indian girl” because he wanted to renovate the house and jack up the rent for a white tenant. She recorded part of the conversation on her phone. The audio is grainy but clear enough: Graham says, “Yeah, I just used one of those deepfake text apps. She’ll be out by end of month.”

I filed a formal dispute with VCAT the next morning. I submitted Auntie Priya’s recording, my employer’s time-stamped logs, and a formal request for forensic analysis of the text message. I also notified Consumer Affairs Victoria.

At the VCAT hearing last week, the forensic analyst confirmed the text was generated by an AI deepfake tool with a 99.7% probability. The tribunal ordered Graham to withdraw the eviction, pay my VCAT filing fee of $65.70, and reimburse my lost wages for the day of the hearing. He did not apologise. He did not look me in the eye.

Here is what I want you, prospective tenant, to do: If you are renting from Graham Chen in Reservoir, take a photo of every envelope you leave on the counter. Record every conversation. And if he sends you a screenshot of a text you never sent, do not pack your bags. Call VCAT. Call the police. And stay. Because he is the only one who should be evicted—from this industry.