Airbnb for days refused refund to woman whose Harlem host was charged with sex crime

Airbnb for days refused to refund a woman who says she fled a Harlem apartment rental after realizing the host was charged with sex crimes — but the company finally reversed course just hours after Gothamist contacted it about her case.

Winston Nguyen, who is facing charges that he solicited sexually explicit images from teenagers while working as a math teacher for St. Ann’s School in Brooklyn, has been removed from Airbnb’s platform, a company spokesperson said on Tuesday evening by email. The woman, Natasha Harrington, will be provided a full refund, according to the spokesperson.

The email didn’t address why Airbnb's background checks failed to flag Nguyen, a former "Jeopardy!" champion whose arrest earlier this year was well-publicized. The company warns in its online guidance that a renter can’t rely on those background checks alone, because they may not reveal “comprehensive or recent criminal record activity” due to gaps or lags in reporting in available records.

Harrington was initially told the situation didn’t violate Airbnb’s refund policy, leaving it up to the host to decide on any refund, even after she sent the company links to articles about the charges Nguyen faced.

The company’s online description of its refund and rebooking policy covers “reservation issues” where a host doesn’t meet their own obligations, but doesn’t address safety concerns about a host. It does state that a space can be eligible for a refund if it “contain(s) safety or health hazards.” A company spokesperson did not say why Harrington's complaint wouldn't have initially warranted a refund.

A troubling discovery

Harrington said when she first arrived at the Airbnb on Oct. 1, the space was “gorgeous” and the host was “charismatic.” She was in between apartment leases and booked the room for the month through Airbnb while she looked for a long-term lease. The city has broadly restricted short-term rentals but allows them in cases where the customer shares a space with the host, as Harrington said was the case for her rental.

It was only once Harrington settled into her room that another renter knocked on her door and advised her to Google their host, she said. Airbnb hadn’t provided her with his last name, so Harrington said she typed in his first name and the apartment’s address into Google; she found article after article about Nguyen’s most recent arrest in July.

According to the Brooklyn district attorney’s office, Nguyen pretended to be a teenager on social media on 11 occasions, trying to entice teen students to send him “images of nudity and sexual performances.” The children, five girls and one boy, were all between the ages of 13 and 15, according to prosecutors, and the approaches occurred between October 2022 and May 2024.

Harrington also found reports from 2017, when Nguyen was arrested and charged in Manhattan with allegedly stealing more than $300,000 from an elderly couple while working as a home aide.

Nguyen eventually pleaded guilty to the Manhattan charges in 2018. He has pleaded not guilty to the Brooklyn charges and is due in court on Oct. 17.

Harrington said she recognized the pictures of Nguyen in the news articles as the man who had just greeted her moments earlier at the rental.

“I was really scared,” said Harrington, who works as a preschool teacher in Manhattan. “I texted my sister and my partner to let them know that I was in a really freaky situation, but I wasn't even ready at that point to talk about it, to tell them what was going on.”

She said she went to sleep feeling uneasy, and left with all her things in the morning by jumping out through the window of the first-floor apartment after she had trouble with the front-door lock. (She clarified in a detailed post on Reddit that she's not sure anything was wrong with the lock itself and said she might have just fumbled with it.) She said she had plans to be out of town starting that night, so she left most of her things at her storage facility and went to work.

Nguyen did not return a phone call to a listed number. His attorney, Frank Rothman, also did not return a message seeking comment,

Struggles with Airbnb

Harrington said she struggled for days last week to convince Airbnb’s support service to cancel the booking and refund her its $1,600 cost. Screenshots she provided to Gothamist show that an online support service repeatedly asked her to explain the situation before connecting her to a person, and she said the experience was similar over the phone.

“It was extremely frustrating and it felt like even the live people I was talking to weren't really receptive to doing anything about the situation,” said Harrington. “Everyone kept asking me, ‘Well, have you talked to the host?’ — which of course I didn't talk to him.”

Even after she sent Airbnb links to articles about Nguyen’s charges, the customer support agents didn’t budge, saying the situation “does not qualify under our refund policy,” so any refund decision would rest with the host, the screenshots show.

“As much as I'd love to shorten your stay and process the refund for you, since the host has not given me the authorization to process any refund, I won't be able to proceed,” one message read. “My goal is to make sure that you get the best experience without compromising the policies we have in place. I understand that it's a bit disheartening at this point, however, we are bound to abide by certain regulations.”

Harrington recounted her experience on Reddit having run out of options with Airbnb. Commenters advised her to reach out to local media, and after telling Airbnb her plans to do so, Airbnb support told her they “take these reports seriously and are currently investigating.”

“Because I didn't have any negotiating power, they didn't have to help me out at all,” she said." “It was just not even helping me out, they didn't have to repair the harm that they had done in this situation."

Hours after Gothamist reached out to Airbnb on Tuesday, Harrington said the company had initiated a refund. A company spokesperson, who declined to speak on the record, told Gothamist by email that Nguyen was removed from the platform in line with company policies without elaborating further.

Harrington said she hopes Airbnb doesn’t allow similar situations to happen to other people who use the platform.

“I would like them to have a policy in place that in similar situations in the future, people don't have to be threatening Airbnb after spending hours dealing with the situation over several days in order to have their situation resolved,” she said. “It's completely unfair to leave it just up to the host, whether they want to refund someone or not when they're the problem.”

Harrington said she was approved this week for a long-term lease for an apartment she could move into soon. She said the news came “as a huge relief.”