Handy ‘Independent’ Employees Moonlight as Identity Thieves

This might be a cautionary tale for anyone that thinks it’s safe to let Handy cleaning employees wander around your house without you home.

Lets take pictures of all their important documents.

Video can be seen here.

Coming from reddit, user /u/marklyon writes:

I was in a meeting while they were cleaning – I’d planned to be at the apartment, but there was a crisis at the office so I ended up leaving a key instead of cancelling. My one previous experience with Handy was wonderful – the person who came did a great job and was on time.

When it was close to time for this person (it was supposed to be one person) to finish, I logged onto my camera to see how it was going. The camera was looking at the ceiling. I backed it up and saw what happened, then called 911 and hopped in a car to get home.

When the police arrived, the cleaners were gone. I had a hard time getting the video pulled up for the cops, so they didn’t see it and since nothing was stolen they couldn’t do much. I tried to call Handy to get the person’s information and found that their 800 number tells you to go to their website or app and then hangs up.

I got no response to posting on the app, but got a call shortly after posting on Twitter. I then got another call from someone who was going to reach out to the police and get back in touch with me about progress there. I also got an email from their “Director of Customer Experience” offering LifeLock and changing the locks to my apartment, along with reimbursement for anything stolen.

At the moment, we’re trying to sort through the apartment and determine what was taken. It’s all paperwork and it’s hard to be sure. In the bedroom, they had my passports, checks and even some immigration paperwork with our SSNs.

Having weekly cleaners was my Christmas gift to my wife this year. Turned out to be a really bad idea. She gets so stressed knowing the house isn’t perfectly clean, though, that she can’t relax and do fun things on the weekend until we spend hours cleaning and scrubbing. I thought this would give her more time to do stuff she wants to do. Now she feels afraid in our own house.