Lauren Southern Oct 11, 2017

The home-sharing service Airbnb has “ghosted” or deleted the account of Las Vegas spree-shooter Steven Paddock, rented entire houses from around the desert city in the days before the Oct. 1 shooting, according to a source inside the company.

The insider verified their access by sharing with Big League Politics personal and usage information from the site about other individuals that were not available in the public domain.

Inside the company’s ghost report menu, there is no option for spree-shooting massacre, so whoever ghosted the account chose: “Physical Assault” as the reason for closing the account.

As Airbnb does not have any sort of option for “massacre” when ghosting accounts, Paddocks account was terminated under the reason of “physical assault.”

Before the account was ghosted, the insider said they read correspondence from Airbnb partners, who wrote to the company that Paddock not only insisted on having an entire house to himself, but also appeared to never have stepped foot on any of the properties.

One host reported to the company: “It’s like he never even stayed here.”

Each host reported that they did not see Paddock at their property, and one host lamented that they were changing the sheets simply out procedure, because they were never touched.

Another odd detail was that although the police reported that Paddock used the service on three different occasions, the shooter also rented a fourth property which overlapped another. He had two rentals from Sept. 17 through Sept. 22, and Sept. 19 through Sept. 22 which means that for those nights he had control of two homes.

The fourth reservation – one in Las Vegas that they said overlapped with another reservation in the same city.

It is strange that two different locations to be booked at the same time and in the same city for only one person—but even stranger that the police failed to mention this fourth reservation, they said.

Paddocks last IP activity was Sept. 21, despite having an Airbnb house booked for Sept. 24 through 28, for which he had already received a review, they said.

There are other irregularities, the insider said.

Paddock’s account was first created in late August and in the first two weeks the account was continually put in and out of “airlock,” the insider said.

“Airlock” is the internal lingo for an account that has been flagged for lack of proper identification or other shortfalls that would lead the company to flag the account, the source said. When a customer is airlocked their participation at the site is suspended until the issue is resolved with a customer service representative, who journals the conversation for the company’s records.

This process was developed to filter out fake identities and to address any out of the ordinary behavior or negative reports from Airbnb renting partners, they said.

In the case of Paddock, however, the source said his account was regularly airlocked, then released and then airlocked and released regularly, but even before the account was ghosted, there was no customer service journal of interaction between Paddock and Airbnb employees.

This is very unusual and the insider said they know of no other instance when this happened.

Paddock somehow managed to pass authentication without an explanation on the account, the source said.

Even more unusual is that Airbnb requires two forms of identification, but the only ID on file for Paddock was a grainy photo of his driver’s license, which he also used as his profile image.