My Neighbor Borrowed My Wi-Fi for a Month. Then I Found Out Why

Throwaway for obvious reasons.
I’m Lauren Mitchell, 30F, living in a quiet suburb outside Atlanta, Georgia. I own one side of a duplex, and about three months ago a new guy, Chris (mid-30s), rented the other side. He seemed normal—friendly wave hello, kept his yard tidy, no loud parties. We’d chat briefly over the fence sometimes.

One evening in early November he knocked on my door holding his phone, looking sheepish. Said he’d just moved in and was having major issues with the internet company—appointments kept getting rescheduled, technician no-shows, the usual runaround. He worked remotely doing freelance graphic design and desperately needed reliable Wi-Fi for a few days until it got sorted. Asked if he could borrow mine temporarily. I have unlimited data through my plan, and I work from home too, so I figured why not be a good neighbor? I gave him the password, told him no worries, just let me know when he’s off it.

A week went by. Internet felt fine. He texted a quick “thanks again, still waiting on them.” Cool.
Two weeks. Same story—“one more delay, should be tomorrow.” I started noticing slight lag in the evenings when streaming, but brushed it off.

By week four, my speeds were crawling, especially at night. I checked my ISP app and saw data usage had tripled—hundreds of gigabytes more than my normal monthly total. Then the emails started rolling in: DMCA copyright notices. One for a brand-new blockbuster movie, another for an entire season of a premium cable show, then more—games, albums, software. All timestamped to times when I knew I wasn’t downloading anything.

Panic set in. These go on your account record, and too many can get your service throttled or worse. I logged into my router admin page (I’m decently techy) and saw a bunch of unfamiliar devices connected: Chris-PC, Chris-Laptop, Chris-Phone2, even Chris-Server?? Traffic logs showed massive BitTorrent activity, almost exclusively from his MAC addresses.
I marched over and knocked. When he opened the door I held up my phone with the latest notice and asked what the hell was going on. He went white, invited me in, and just spilled everything.
Turns out he never actually scheduled internet service. He’d been laid off two months before moving in, was drowning in debt, and couldn’t pass the credit check to set up his own plan—or afford the deposit anyway. He figured he’d “temporarily” use mine until he got back on his feet, planning to job hunt during the day and download everything he wanted at night since my plan was unlimited. He admitted he got carried away building a huge offline media library because he couldn’t pay for any streaming services anymore.
He swore he didn’t realize torrenting would trigger notices tied to my IP. Offered to pay any overage fees (there weren’t any, thankfully) and begged me not to report him to the landlord. I told him the password was changed, devices blocked, and we’re done being neighbors beyond a nod. He looked crushed, but honestly, the lying for a month straight burned me more than the bandwidth.
Now it’s awkward every time we pass in the driveway. I feel bad he’s struggling, but trust is gone.