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http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Landlords-from-hell-deal-includes-prison-time-4610530.php#photo-4809127

Two San Francisco property owners dubbed "landlords from hell" for making their tenants' lives unbearable before fleeing to Italy and hiding out for two years have been convicted of a raft of crimes in the case and will do state prison time, authorities announced Wednesday.

Kip Macy, 38, and Nicole Macy, 37, pleaded guilty this week to residential burglary, attempted grand theft and stalking in connection with a bizarre two-year campaign to get five of their tenants to move out of their South of Market building, said District Attorney George Gascón.

Under a plea agreement, they are to be sentenced in August to four years and four months behind bars, Gascón said. Until then, they are in County Jail on $2 million bail each.

Authorities say the Macys tried to force their tenants out by making their property at 744-746 Clementina St. practically uninhabitable from 2005 to 2007. Among their actions were threatening the tenants, stealing their belongings, changing locks, cutting telephone lines and shutting off gas and power.

At one point, the Macys doused the victims' beds, clothes and electronics in ammonia, authorities said. They also directed workers to board over windows while the tenants were still inside, cut out sections of support beams under the building to make them vulnerable to collapsing, and sawed holes through the floors.

"This is obviously an extreme case of landlords just going out of the way to get some tenants out of the building," Gascón said. "There were some financial motivations there - they wanted to get the building cleared up and they wanted to resell the building, but that's not the way to do it.

"There are legal means to do that, and we want to make sure people understand that there will be severe consequences when you violate the law to this level."

One of the victims in the case, 50-year-old Ricardo Cartagena, on Wednesday described his ordeal with the couple as frightening and exasperating.

Cartagena was a live-in building manager for six months in 2006 at the height of the Macys' harassment, and said they repeatedly changed the main gate lock to keep tenants out of their homes.

"It was kind of a game," he said. "Every day, they changed the lock and I had to open it for the tenants."

Cartagena said that at one point, Kip Macy told him he had a gun and would shoot him if he saw him outside the building. Soon after that, he said, the Macys kicked in his door and threw his belongings, including many paintings he created himself, into the garbage.

When civil attorneys got involved in the overall case, Nicole Macy impersonated one of the victims with an e-mail and curtly fired his lawyer, prosecutors said. Then, still impersonating the victim by e-mail, she threatened to kidnap and dismember the children of one of her own attorneys.

"One day you are going to come home ... and find (your three children) missing," she e-mailed, according to the grand jury transcript. "Then each day a package will arrive with a piece of them. You are f- with the wrong person."

The Macys were charged in 2008 and released on $250,000 bail each, but then failed to show up for trial in 2010 and fled to Italy.

Italian authorities detained them in 2011, and they were taken into custody by the Bureau of Diplomatic Security for extradition, which they fought for a year before being extradited to San Francisco last month.

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