Chicagoland Property Group’s scofflaw-family Walker is vomiting up about 1,000 fewer active spam ads at Craigslist following our posts on Joi Walker, Kellen Walker and Cassi (Walker) Norman. Joi Walker’s ads have tumbled from 654 to 67, Kellen’s from 564 to 436 and Cassi’s from 289 to 0.
We’ve previously noted that many scofflaw-family Walker ads sharply understated rents, advertised unavailable apartments, infringed copyrights, and advertised properties without the written authorization required by the Illinois Real Estate License Act (the “Act”). Cassi Norman’s 289 ads were placed at a time when, according to the IDFPR License Lookup database, she was not licensed to hold herself out as a licensed real estate broker. If the dates in the IDFPR database are accurate, Cassi’s behavior might involve the commission of Class A misdemeanors.
Joi Walker, Kellen Walker and Cassi Norman are based in Channahon, a small town 50 miles southwest of downtown Chicago. Based on their location and other publicly available information, it’s reasonable to infer that they don’t personally conduct the showings their ads invite renters to arrange, but refer those renters to other Chicagoland Property Group (“CPG”) agents.
The Act, 225 ILCS 454/10-35 (a), provides that “Licensees intending to sell or share consumer information gathered from or through the Internet or other electronic communication media shall disclose that intention to consumers in a timely and readily apparent manner.”
Scofflaw-family Walker ads contain no disclosure of an intent to sell or share renter information. Disclosure in the ads themselves can be considered the only way to satisfy the Act’s mandate of “timely and readily apparent” disclosure. If Joi, Kellen and Cassi in fact share or sell renter info with other agents, every single ad they place is in violation of the Act.
We’ll send a link to this post to Collin Walker, CPG’s managing broker who is charged by law with supervising advertising by CPG agents, requesting clarification. Collin Walker has not acknowledged or responded to prior invitations to comment on our posts, and we don’t expect a response to this one.
We’ll continue to monitor and document the online behavior of the scofflaw-family Walker and other scofflaw CPG leasing agents. At some point we’ll present our documentation to IDFPR and ask for a determination of whether Collin Walker’s license should be suspended or revoked.
Advice for renters
You can avoid all Chicagoland Property Group ads at Craigslist by typing the following in the search box: – “Chicagoland Property Group”.
Renters need to be aware that the only sure way to avoid the risk of falling victim to a scofflaw rental service leasing agent is to avoid all Chicago rental services and work directly with properties. YoChicago’s apartment reviews and lists make it easy for you to find an apartment in sought-after lakefront neighborhoods.
Rental service agents and brokers
Managing brokers at Chicago rental services need to be aware that we won’t be focusing all of our attention on Collin Walker / CPG. We’re documenting the abuses of agents in other firms and will be making their managing brokers aware of them, and monitoring their subsequent behavior. One firm fired its top-producing agent following a series of YoChicago posts. Many, many more need to be fired.
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