Multifamily Fraud-Fighting Startup Vero Closes Growth Equity Round

Vero, a screening and leasing platform for multifamily owners and renters, announced Tuesday that it closed a post-Series B funding round. The company also announced it has brought on a new leadership team.

The Manhattan-based startup declined to disclose the amount of the latest funding, which it said closed the week of April 28. The latest funding follows Vero’s $9 million Series B, which was led in part by venture capital firm Fifth Wall and closed in April 2023. Magnus Vik, co-president and chief operating officer of Fifth Wall, did say the recent round was “significantly more than the Series B in terms of the total.”

Sunriver Capital Partners co-led the round for the residential operating and leasing system. Rebuild Capital also participated.

Along with the new funding, Vero announced that Jamey Rosamond has been named the company’s new CEO, and Travis Gibson its new chief technology officer.

The new funding comes at a time when applicant fraud in multifamily is exploding, much of it now AI-generated. A recent TransUnion study found a 27 percent increase in rental fraud year-over-year with synthetic identity abuse rising sharply. Industry-wide, lease-related fraud is estimated to cost more than $10 billion annually, making it one of the most acute operational risks facing multifamily owners and operators. Vero claims to have flagged tens of thousands of fraudulent applicants across its platform.

“I think where Vero sits in the marketplace at the front end of all screening — and all the information that you get from, say, Apartments.com to lease signing — is a very pivotal piece,” said Rosamond. “And we view that as a pretty big growth sector in the next several years. It is going to be extremely important.”

Fraudsters looking to occupy properties are using AI to add to the complexity of identifying and weeding out such applicants, said Rosamond. Simple identification like pay stub verification no longer necessarily works as there are multiple ways to fraudulently produce such items.

“The marketplace is demanding a higher-tier solution,” Rosamond said. “I think there’s what you would call point solutions at the front end that might cover a thumbs up/thumbs down-type application flow. What the market is demanding is a product that can get the applicants in as quickly as possible, but also catch fraud on the other end. That’s a combination of what Vero will be from a flexibility of product standpoint.”

Vero’s customers include Camden Living, Gables Residential, IRT Living, Quarterra (a wholly owned subsidiary of Lennar), Roots Management Group and Venterra Realty.

In its current leadership transition, Lou Baugier, Vero’s founding CEO who led the company in its evolution from early-stage startup to partnership with several of the top 10 property management companies in the U.S., will continue to support the company as a senior adviser.

Vero’s new leadership brings extensive experience in propech, fintech and startup development. Formerly a co-founder and managing partner at Sunriver, Rosamond was also COO at RentPayment.com, leading the company through its acquisition by MRI Software.

Gibson was an early engineer at global card issuing company Marqeta, playing a pivotal role in scaling the company’s digital banking product suite through to an IPO. He later founded Proper, a Y Combinator-backed fintech startup, which Intuit acquired in March 2024.

“With a proven track record of building and scaling category-defining financial products, leading

high-performance engineering teams, and driving innovation across both startups and enterprise environments, Travis brings the vision and technical depth to accelerate Vero’s next wave of product growth,” Copley Broer, co-founder and managing partner at Sunriver, said in a statement. “This significant capital infusion — combined with a best-in-class leadership team and a robust pipeline — positions Vero to capitalize on its momentum and solidify its status as the category leader of choice for owner-operators.”

Philip Russo can be reached at prusso@commercialobserver.com.