Hello-
So let me break down my situation for you. Basically my roommate signed a lease for our apartment (a lease that may or may not allow for subletting I'm not actually sure at this point all I know is from the copy he gave me of his lease the section that forbids subletting is crossed out and he claims that he is allowed to sublet). Then he found my boyfriend and I, as well as another roommate to sublease the other two bedrooms in this apartment. He specifically told us the price of each bedroom (different sizes so the apartment was priced accordingly) and told us the total amount of rent each month (which equaled the three bedroom rents combined). He had confirmed numerous times how much the entire apartment was renting for.
Well, low and behold we found out that he was lying and has actually been paying somewhere around $700 a month while my other roommate pays $1750 a month and my boyfriend and I pay $1650 a month (which means he completely lied when he said the entire apartment was renting for $5400 and that he was paying $2000 a month). Clearly we all want out of this situation but he claims that he assigned the bedrooms rent as he saw them fit and since we signed a sublease contract with him we are stuck in the lease. Is this true? Isn't this illegal? He's basically making money off of an apartment that he doesn't even own which has to be some sort of fraud. We were very naive coming into this sutation and now are stuck in a terrible situation. We cannot work this out on our own and I need some sort of advice on what to do next. He also has 2 months of security deposit ($3300) so that is what is stopping me from just moving out today. Any advice?