So, I have gotten a few questions about my videos and my site the most prevalent being “what’s the story behind all this?”
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Well my name is… actually my name really doesn’t matter. Not in the big picture of what I am trying to do anyways. Just know that I am a 32 year old man, I’m engaged to a wonderful woman and I am a father of a 13 year old boy, who is absolutely awesome. I am a professional in the IT Industry, specifically cyber security and data protection. I had my son when I was 19 years old, out of wedlock with someone I had no intention of having a relationship with. It was one of the best “mistakes” of my life. However, I had no college education, no money, no real future. I also had no real support from my family, financially or otherwise. Not that they wouldn’t do it, they couldn’t. They lacked the means to be able to help in any way really. We were poor, impoverished even at the time and taking on an additional mouth to feed wasn’t something that was feasible. Not to mention people had to work, to scrape by, they didn’t have time to take care of a baby while I went off and built a life. I was part of a single parent home, and my mother worked hard to keep herself afloat (barely) – not to mention I was technically a man at this point, I was 18 when I found out I was going to be a father. It was my responsibility and I took it on, the way that a man should.
So I went out and I got my first real job in the IT industry, how I went about it is another story for another time but I found my niche if it were. I was intelligent and ambitious and willing to work long hours to try to succeed so that I could take care of my future child. His mother wasn’t much help financially, emotionally, or much of anything really. She wanted a child but none of the responsibility. Not knowing my father, and knowing the path that this could go down, I swore to do the best by my son that I could. We weren’t married or together when he was born and we both led separate lives. She ultimately had no interest in being a real parent and she would eventually fade into black and not see our child anymore but again, another story for another time.
My career eventually brought me to a fork in the road. I was granted an amazing opportunity to join one of the largest Storage and Data Protection entities in the world. I was given the Holy Grail if you will, at 27, a 6 figure salary and the opportunity to work on cutting edge technology in a field that made me extremely happy. The only caveat being that I had to move about 2 hours south of where we currently were living (Albany, NY). My then girlfriend, now fiancé was extremely supportive and we decided it was a chance of lifetime. She would do the stay at home mom thing for a short interim after we moved and I would give this job my all, hopefully it would take off (IT HAS!) and we would be able to build a life together.
So we started looking for a place in the Hudson Valley.
We hunted online but it was 2 hours away (like I said, we lived in New York’s Capital District at the time) so it was difficult to gauge what was and wasn’t worth it. We didn’t know anyone in the area and didn’t know what we should be looking for in terms of ranges of rent, school districts for my son, good or bad neighborhoods, anything really.
Well the first place we went to look at we didn’t even wait for the landlord to show up it was a mess, stuff all over the lawn no curtains on the windows, cars on cinder-blocks. Just not something that we would want to be in or around on a consistent basis.
The second place this seemingly nice man showed us a townhouse.
It was fairly expensive, and it wasn’t all that fancy, but with the money I would be making we could swing it and he sweet talked us into it. Talked up the town and the neighbors and the school district. It was like a dream come true. He made it seem like the very high rent he was charging was normal for the area and we wouldn’t find anything better.
We had been looking but our options were limited without a realtor. We were on a time crunch because I had accepted the job already and we figured that we would sort it out on the back end after we moved if we had to. It would only be a year right? Worst case?
I had to borrow money from my family to even put the security deposit down, I was barely making 55k a year at my previous job and was raising a child by myself with no assistance so I had NOTHING saved. I felt horrible but it really was my big chance, I had to take it.
We moved in around March, and things were going well-ish. We noticed some oddities like no lightbulbs in any of the fixtures and the smoke alarms didn’t actually work – they would just chirp incessantly even though they were hardwired into the electrical. We do our best to keep to ourselves but end up having a father and son on one side of us that had knock down drag out fights all of the time – and the cops showing up and arresting one or the other for assault or domestic abuse or whatever you want to call it.
Also two doors down there was a drug dealer who had his customers showing up all of the time.
Obviously this wasn’t the quaint little neighborhood we thought it was.
Well finally after a few months a local village police officer moved into one of the townhouses and the drug dealer moved on for obvious reasons, having a cop around was bad for business. Eventually the landlord evicted the family that couldn’t stop engaging in fisticuffs and life went on. We got lucky, because if the town cop had decided NOT to rent that townhouse, the drug dealer would have never been asked to leave. Why would he have been? The landlord only cares about money.
Well the once seemingly nice man turned out to be an arrogant chauvinistic tool who would prowl around the property in his truck trying to catch anyone doing something they “shouldn’t be” (See: Living their Life), and just generally being a nosy busy body with too much time on his hands.
That year Winter came around as it tends to do and he would refuse to plow regularly or to salt the sidewalks and I took a tumble a time or two; but I kept my mouth shut and kept shoveling and salting on my own. I didn’t want to make waves. I would grumble and be pissed but I would deal with it. When he did finally plow, he would plow all of the cars back in that had been dug out, rather than asking anyone to move.
A back breaking-ly annoying move that irked not only me but every other tenant that was there. We endured two winters of the same type of behavior – and I’m sure he still does it the existing tenants, god bless their souls.
Well folks, by this time we already had one year in, winter was over and with spring came renewed vigor. We thought,”why not? it really wasn’t all that bad…”. My how quickly our memories fade.
Well, we renewed our lease for the second year, knowing full well there would not be a third. Especially since he was trying to raise our rent the next time around, in a property that was already overpriced. We had decided that it was time to move on, but weren’t quite ready yet. We would stick it out. We had learned the area fairly well and knew that we could find something nicer, and cheaper and be out from under this megalomaniacs thumb. We just had to plan appropriately.
I know, people normally dislike their landlords, people always gripe about this or that, but this guy was a real piece of work.
Get this.
“Water” was built into the lease, we paid 35 dollars a month extra for “water and sewage” right? Every so often though he would hit us with some random bill stating that we owed extra because we used too much water.
WAIT WHAT? Too much water? That you are already charging me for? Yes.
And like a dunce, I paid it. Again I didn’t want to make waves.
I just wanted to live my life and build my career and take care of my family. I didn’t want to argue over a 75 dollar water bill, that I knew I didn’t have to pay, but really didn’t know HOW to protest.
Its funny, I remember one time we had sewage backing up out of a drain in our basement and I call the landlord for help, and the guy goes, “NOT MY PROBLEM, READ YOUR LEASE ITS ON YOU, BETTER FIX IT BUDDY”.
So I did, I got a plumber to come out and take care of it – on my dime. Why am I renting if I have to pay for repairs?
Anyways, we had a couple of months left on our lease and this, this folks is where we screwed up. This is where we made a mistake and we paid dearly for it. We decided to take in a dog. Don’t get me wrong, I love this dog, shes my baby, I wouldn’t give her up for the world, but we violated our lease by doing it. I mean look at that mug though:
How could you not love her to death?
Well we did wrong, and we knew it and when the landlord found out about it he said we had to get rid of the dog or we had to leave. He said it was against his insurance policy to have a Rottweiler and I do believe that is probably true. One of the only things he might actually have been on the up and up about.
In all honesty we were hoping to just skirt out the last couple of months and move on. We were 100% in the wrong in getting the dog and I was ready to give up my security and let it go at that.
Well, “that’s fine” I said, “Ill forfeit my security and we will leave”. We weren’t going to get rid of the dog. We were attached and she was attached, and the situation in which we got her was something that couldn’t reverse.
Well the landlord says, “I do have a house for rent and it’s about the same price and it’s a nice piece of property. Maybe you guys want to rent it? You can have the dog there and it won’t be an issue”.
Well we mull it over and weigh our options and think that “ok, another year in a standalone house, it won’t be so bad”. We take a look at it and its his standard M.O. again. No light-bulbs in any of the fixtures and there are no Venetian blinds on any of the windows, and the layout is kind of funky, you can tell it hasn’t been cleaned but whatever let’s just do it.
What’s one more year with this righteous a-hole, right?
When it comes time to sign the lease it’s now $100 dollars more a month than originally agreed upon, plus an extra $50 dollars a month for the dog and it’s a TWO YEAR LEASE.
Also, no, you can’t use your full security from the old place, you are forfeiting half a month’s rent for having a pet “per your lease” so now he is going to need even more security. He wants half a month’s rent (to cover the half we lost for having the dog in the old place) and first month’s rent, plus a security deposit.
Meanwhile we haven’t even begun to look for another place, and we have to be out of the old one. He had us over a barrel, grabbing our ankles, so we signed.
Biggest mistake of my life.
Nothing in this place worked right, the freezer didn’t work, nor the refrigerator so he had someone come and repair it, twice, rather than just replacing it. One of the burners on the stove didn’t work, the floors were uneven in every room. It had a double oven, which would have been awesome except the thing never got above 375 degrees. There were leaks in the ceiling, and wasps in the attic. 
Oh and one last thing, HERE’S A GIANT COCKROACH INFESTATION.
Great house.
It was disgusting and broken down and overpriced and we had signed our lives away, AGAIN.
But what can you do? So, I pay for the exterminator to come in and repeatedly spray, and we have to live in that filth while the pesticides do their job, and I take care of the problem instead of him, like always.
This part, again is my fault, we should have had the strength to say no – to battle it out and find another place but we were scared and he took advantage of that. The first year was hard, but we made it through we paid on time but by the summer (we had moved in, in October) it was apparent that it was going to be difficult to do this for another year. We just couldn’t afford it. It was almost impossible even.
So we asked for him to let us out of the lease. We asked him to try to rent it to someone else or to sell the house or something but if not to at least let US out of the lease because we really can’t afford it. I was late with rent twice and both times paid the late fees, and I told him it would be late from now on because we had to start paying our other bills on time, our credit was dropping and fast. I was also in the hospital around this time and had large medical bills that were piling up.
So this guy, he tells me, “don’t worry about the late fees”, and also “I’ll take care of the lawn, my guys will come do it and we will try to sell the house. It will go very fast, you will see. You guys won’t be here much longer just stick it out with me.”
And like a fool I believed him.
After all that he had put me and my family through I bought into it. Thinking that this spineless sack of gruel might actually be able to keep his word. All I can say is, mistakes were made.
Time crept on and I ended up working on a contract with a US defense contractor (still at my same company, the one we moved for, we are a vendor that deals with many different companies) that winter and it took me halfway around the world to the Middle East. I was helping to make the world a safer place, it felt good but it was hard. All the while my Fiancé and my son were struggling to make it work at home and I was busting my ass in the desert just trying to make ends meet.
They showed the house, 3-4 times a week and my fiancé, as amazing as she is, would keep it in pristine condition, taking the dogs and my son out every time someone needed to get into it.
Unfortunately though, people saw the house for what it was and not to mention the landlord had it WAY overpriced – nobody wanted to buy it, and for good reason.
It was a turd.
Well I came back from the Middle East, and it was summertime again, and I asked if we could be let out of our lease again, and was denied, again. So I continued to make sure he got his rent as soon as I could. By the end of the summer my company ended up paying me a very large stock dividend, after a merger, that allowed us to begin recovering financially. It was a long struggle to get to that point, but we had made it.
We were able to pay out the rest of the lease on time, and find a new place at the beginning of October and the nightmare seemed to be coming to an end. We had kept the place tip top, he had gotten rent every month and it would seem we could both move on, right?
WRONG.
I knew he was going to say I owed him late fees, because he’s not very inventive, and rather simple minded. He has no imagination, no modicum of intelligence. I choreographed his moves for him and asked him flat out if he was going to give us our security deposit back, months before we parted ways, even referencing the waived late fees. He danced around keeping the security for the last two months rent. It was a hefty sum of $3700.00. I knew at that point that he was never going to cough it up. I was even willing to play his game and let him keep half a month’s rent for the dogs, again. But nope, this satch bag, as dim witted as he is just couldn’t walk away with some of my money he wanted to keep all of it.
What a:
Mind you, the house had actually sold at the very end of August beginning of September. Two months prior to our lease ending and he was just collecting our rent as gravy on top of the profit he made off of it. He bought the house as a short sale for 125k, sold it for 179k; which is good for him but why screw us over even harder when he knew it was sold?! Not to mention we left it in BETTER SHAPE THAN WHEN WE MOVED IN.
So at the end of it all what’s this guy do? Do you think he has the balls to speak to me face to face? To even tell me that hes going to screw me one last time over the phone? Nope.
He blocks my phone number and mails me a letter demanding 24k in compounded late fees. He says if I sign it we can just part ways, we owe each other nothing. He claims damage to the property, when he REFUSED to walk through it with me days before we were supposed to be out. Damage that doesn’t exist but I had no way to rebuff because he wouldn’t meet me.
And when I had asked him to meet me, what do you think he said?
“OH IM OUT OF TOWN.”
That is, until I passed him on Main Street moments later; and when I ask him about it? He claims he had to come home for an emergency and he calls me an asshole for calling him out on it. What a coincidence though right? Fancy seeing you there, Satch-Bag, minutes after you tell me you’re out of town.
Well, regardless, we had vacated and cleaned the place weeks before we were supposed to and like I said he wouldn’t do a walk through with us. It’s all part of his little game, to screw people over, and nickle and dime them with no recourse.
So I have finally had enough.
I went and filed a civil suit against Vincent Satriano and Pathway Place Management LLC for the full amount of my security. I haven’t gone to court yet, it’s coming up on December 7th but when I do I have text messages and screen shots of him waiving the late fees. I have screen grabs of him telling me not to worry about the lawn care. I also have him openly stating that he doesn’t see a reason why I shouldn’t get my security back if there’s no damage to the property. So I know I’ll get my security back.
But that’s not enough.
Not now.
He’s pushed me too hard, so I’ve made fliers openly calling him a con man and a liar, which he is; telling people they won’t get their security deposits back which they probably won’t. I went and I stapled them on telephone poles all around the small town that we lived in. He went and he ripped them down, because he doesn’t want the truth to get out. I went back and stapled them up again, and what’s he do?
He asks his friend in this small town, who’s a village cop, to arrest me. Which they do, and they rough me up and mock me and try to get me to stop. I don’t stop though, I go back the next day and post more fliers and put them in an even larger radius around town. I make my “big fish, small pond” video. I yell louder.
So whats this “man” do? He calls the state troopers and now they ask me to stop doing it. They ask me to forego my first amendment right and let this jerk operate with impunity because he is saying its harassment. So I have to stop posting those fliers for now, but when I win my civil judgement it won’t be harassment it will just be me telling the truth; and Ill be able to post all the fliers I want about that.
So that’s the story, that’s what’s going on, that’s what this website is about. It’s just my story but he has done this to so many others, a few that I know and many that I don’t. So I hope you were able to read through this, and I hope you see what I am trying to do here. That I’m trying to stick up for the little guy, the middle class, the people that are too weak or scared to stand up for themselves.
And it’s funny to me really, because this moron, this Satch-Bag, he doesn’t even realize that the civil case is just the start. That he’s sparked a fire in me, and I’m hoping to spark a fire in others. It may not be Satch-Bag, it’s probably some other slum lord in your life, but I hope this inspires you just a little bit to stand up for yourselves. We don’t have to be the silent majority.
This is just the beginning…