Handyman Gives Squatters A Taste Of Their Own Medicine

In the immortal words of Michael Scott, "Well, well, well. How the turntables."

When squatters took over his mother's home, Flash Shelton did what any good son would do: He squatted right back.

"If they could take a house, then I could take a house," Shelton said.

Shelton, a Nevada handyman, said after his father died, his mother couldn't live in the home by herself. So they put the house up for rent.

A woman who claimed to be a prison guard asked to rent the home, but she didn't have any money or credit. Even though Shelton denied her request, she had all of her furniture and belongings delivered to the home anyway.

"She said that it was delivered by accident and she was getting rid of it," Shelton said.

But he soon found out that was a lie.

YouTube: United Handyman Association

Neighbors reported the house was full of people and the lights stayed on at night. Shelton tried to call the police on the squatters, but they were essentially no help.

"They basically said, 'You know, I’m sorry, but we can't enter the house, and it looks like they're living there. So you need to go through the courts,'" Shelton said.

But who wants to deal with the time and the costs of a legal battle?

"Even though you're at your house and you're paying the mortgage, at some point, squatters feel like they have more rights than you, so they don't have incentive to leave until a judge tells them to," he said. "And that could take months, six months, it could take years. I don't know. I didn't want to take that chance."

Shelton cooked up a plan to remove the squatters.

And he documented the whole thing on his YouTube channel.

Shelton wrote up a lease agreement between himself and his mother designating Shelton as the home's legal resident. Then he packed up the essentials (his guns and his dog) and headed for California.

Once everyone was out of the house, he used his key to let himself in. He began setting up security cameras when two women arrived.

"I'm really sorry about all this," one of the women said. "It's a nightmare and beyond."

Shelton told the women if they didn't have everything out by midnight, he'd have it hauled away. The squatters took until 3 p.m. to get out, but Shelton was kind enough to let it slide.

An eye for an eye. A tooth for a tooth. A squat for a squat.

"I think just the fact that I was there was enough," he said. "It was actually fun to do it. I won't lie about that. I'm glad it was successful."