Airbnb host said guest stole artwork, hung new painting. The internet rushed to help.

Airbnb host said guest stole artwork, hung new painting - The Washington Post

Amy Corbett was in a Zoom meeting when she spotted something strange in her own background. The black-and-white painting of a map that normally hung above her couch was no longer there. Instead, it had been replaced with a painting of an airplane propeller she had never seen before.

Perplexed by the situation, Corbett scoured the apartment in search of the original map painting, but it was nowhere to be found. She sent her guest a message through the Airbnb platform, inquiring about what happened. He did not reply.

“I just couldn’t believe this,” said Corbett, a mom of two, who runs All Belong Co, a short-term property rental company, with her husband. “It was bizarre.”

She does not live in the apartment, but she and her family live nearby, and when it’s not rented, she sometimes uses it for Zoom meetings and other purposes.

Although the map painting wasn’t pricey or particularly sentimental, Corbett said, she still wanted to get to the bottom of what happened. She decided to post about it on TikTok. Even though she only had about 60 followers, Corbett hoped some people might offer useful clues.

To her surprise, the video quickly went viral, amassing thousands of comments from strangers, many of whom had their own theories about what happened. The guest was swiftly nicknamed “the Airbnb bandit.”

Corbett declined to identify the guest by his full name. The Washington Post could not locate him for comment.

“They probably broke it and replaced it,” one person wrote.

“Could be an HGTV undercover project,” another chimed in.

Dozens of people also wrote that they prefer the new painting over the original, and others accused Corbett of making up the story.

“Honestly, I feel like you should thank them,” someone wrote. “That awesome painting gives the room a pretty nice facelift.”

A few commenters claimed the same thing happened to them, and a bunch said the plane propeller painting had been stolen from another Airbnb. Still, despite the many hypotheses that poured in, none panned out.

More information was uncovered after Corbett checked her surveillance footage. An outdoor camera captured a man carrying the new painting — five minutes before checkout time, 11 a.m. — from his car and into the apartment. Then, wearing a different sweatshirt, he is seen carrying another large item (seemingly the same size as the map painting) under a blanket and into his car.

Corbett shared a TikTok video with the updates. People were eager to get to the bottom of it.

“I knew it was more than just me who wanted to know,” she said. “We all wanted to know.”

More comments kept coming: “I’m dying to hear a conclusion to the story,” one person wrote.

Corbett decided to debunk some of the theories that people came up with, including that the guest is a covert artist and created a customized painting specifically for the apartment.

“It’s a canvas painting. You can find it all over the web,” Corbett said in a TikTok video. It costs about $100.

To those who argued that the guest must have damaged the wall behind the painting, Corbett said: “No, it’s pristine.” In fact, apart from her missing art work, she said, he left the apartment in good condition.

She also explained that she contacted the guest’s previous Airbnb hosts and inquired about his behavior, surmising that perhaps he is swapping out the paintings at each place he stays. Although he did cause damage at one previous Airbnb, a host said, two hosts confirmed he did not steal or replace any artwork.

Considering she wasn’t getting answers from the guest, and she decided against reporting the situation to police, Corbett filed a claim with Airbnb. She sent in the documentation of the incident.

Although the guest never directly answered Corbett’s initial question about where her map painting went, he did eventually reply to her message, saying: “Why are you making a claim about your artwork?” They have had no further communication since.

Airbnb then mediated the situation. In the end, the guest paid her $25, Corbett said, and the company compensated her an additional $100 for the map painting that she bought about five years ago.

“Art is covered in our AirCover policy and this Host was supported through that process,” Airbnb wrote in a statement to The Washington Post. “We have removed this guest for violating our policies.”

Corbett was satisfied with the resolution, particularly because the guest was removed from Airbnb. But she wasn’t sure what to do with the propeller painting — she definitely did not want it on her wall.

“We needed to turn a negative story into a positive one,” she said. “We started getting ideas of how we could do that.”

Corbett has commissioned a local artist to paint a new piece for above the couch, depicting the view of the James River from the apartment.

“It’s such a cool upgrade to support a local artist instead of just a big box store,” Corbett said. “It’s going to be something nicer, something handmade.”

She also decided to host a raffle for the propeller painting, and after the winner was drawn on May 1, all proceeds were donated to Rush Homes, a nonprofit that addresses housing instability in Lynchburg. Raffle tickets were $2 each, and nearly $1,500 was collected from people across the country.

“We are small, so every dollar that comes to us is important and makes a big difference,” said Kate Goodman, the director of development and marketing at Rush Homes.

“Not only did people buy tickets, but a number of people made donations in excess of the ticket price,” said Goodman, adding that the funds will go toward the organization’s eviction prevention program. “It really is a big deal for us, and the visibility that it got for us in our local community will be valuable for sure.”

Although the full story behind the Airbnb artwork heist remains a mystery, Corbett said she is happy with the outcome.

“It blew me away that out of this, we were able to do something good for humanity,” she said.