When Peipei Ma, then a master’s student studying business administration, came back from school to her Lorenzo apartment she had leased just two weeks prior in July 2023, all of her belongings were gone.

Months later, on Oct. 31, 2023, she filed a lawsuit against Lorenzo claiming its cleaners threw away everything in her apartment — including travel documents, credit cards and other personal items. Her lawsuit alleges unlawful entry, negligence and improper disposition of property among other complaints.  

Ma was an international student who attended USC for one year and graduated with a master’s in business administration in 2024. Two years after the incident, Ma said her lawsuit’s progress has stalled.

“I found nothing in my apartment,” Ma said, recounting her experience. “It was too clean. I thought maybe I entered the wrong unit, so I closed the door, and I checked the number again, and I confirmed [it was] my room, and nothing was there.” 

The only things left in Ma’s apartment was the furniture that Lorenzo owned, she said. After finding out all of her belongings — her travel visa, passport, laptop, credit cards, jewelry, clothing and more — were not in the apartment, and conversing with friends, Ma said she went to Lorenzo employees to inform them about her situation. 

Ma alleges in her lawsuit that, in her conversation with Lorenzo employees, they admitted that Lorenzo had given a cleaning company access to enter her apartment and that the cleaning company threw away everything in the unit. Ma said Lorenzo did not give her notice 24 hours prior to cleaners entering the apartment. 

She said a Lorenzo manager offered her a $500 gift card at the time according to the lawsuit, but she didn’t feel like it made up for everything she lost. 

Lorenzo did not respond to multiple requests for comment from the Daily Trojan.

“At the time, I was thinking, ‘Okay, tomorrow, I needed to do a lot of class content,’” Ma said. “‘I don’t have the time. And where’s my clothes? Everything I own is in the backpack and clothes I’m wearing. Nothing else.” 

On the day of the incident, Ma said she walked down her apartment stairs with a group of friends to the dumpsters and found her clothes lying among the heaps of garbage in the dumpsters. She said she dove into the dumpster to gather two packages of her dirty clothes and went to bed.  

A few weeks later, Ma said a Lorenzo manager emailed her that they found her stuff, but the manager allegedly described the incident as if she was moving out. Ma said she got in touch with a lawyer shortly after receiving the email, as she believed Lorenzo was trying to mislead her. 

“I thought, ‘This doesn’t look right, because I never moved out,’” Ma said. “He’s trying to avoid taking responsibility. So, I said, ‘I didn’t move out. I didn’t lose my things, but if you find my stuff, please send it to me.’”

Ma said she did not receive her things after the email and found through the pretrial discovery process that her things were donated to a charity shop instead of returned to her. 

One of the many things Lorenzo cleaners allegedly took from Ma was her student visa, which could not be replaced and required a new application outside of the United States, unlike passports and credit cards. Ma said she left for Shanghai for a few weeks to reapply for her visa, worrying whether the application would be denied while missing out on networking events and class events as a business major. 

“What if I got rejected?” Ma said. “The Chinese and the U.S. relationship is not that good. I was worrying about losing my student status., Tthat’s my purpose of coming to the U.S.” 

Ma’s visa was approved, and she was able to come back to the U.S. in November 2023. 

Ma said she decided to sue Lorenzo because she had hoped non- USC housing would be an environment where other students could focus on studying and not worry about privacy. Ma said she talked to people in USC Housing and the Office of International Services who suggested she sue Lorenzo. 

Her lawsuit alleges that Lorenzo was negligent because it failed to reasonably investigate the theft, lied to USC security about the incident, refused to recover Ma’s items and refused to cooperate with the Los Angeles Police Department’s investigation into the theft. 

Ma also alleges Lorenzo violated a California civil code for not giving a 24 hour notice to enter her unit when it gave the cleaners permission to enter her apartment. 

Two years after the incident, Ma said she feels this situation has evolved beyond a legal issue. 

“They are not treating human beings like human beings,” Ma said. “They did something wrong, and I needed to work with a lawyer to let them admit they treated me badly and they made a mistake.”