ASHEVILLE, N.C. (828newsNOW) — Three days after Masieuh Dewayne Morgan, 19, was arrested on 25 felony counts, Asheville Police Department detective Aaron Buyanovsky spoke with 828newsNOW to shed light on the web of fraud that led to Morgan’s apprehension.

Morgan was charged for crimes including obtaining property under false pretenses, forgery and conspiracy. According to APD, Morgan was likely working with several accomplices. Additional charges are to follow as the investigation continues.

Read our coverage of the arrest here.

Apartment crime-plex

According to Buyanovsky, investigating the fraud case began in August 2025, when APD detectives were searching for a murder suspect.

“There was information that he was in an apartment in Arden, near South Asheville, and the apartment was actually leased by Masieuh Morgan, who became the target in this investigation,” Buyanovsky said.
”At the time, detectives saw that he had apparently falsified some of the details on his lease application and the rental agreement, and warned him that this was illegal and he shouldn’t do that. Apparently, he did not take that to heart, because he only continued from there.”

As Buyanovsky looked into how Morgan obtained the apartment, he spoke with other apartment complexes in the city, where he discovered Morgan had also leased apartments. All told, the 19-year-old fraudulently rented around a dozen apartments around Asheville.

“Several apartments downtown, West Asheville, South Asheville, and also outside the city limits off of Old Charlotte Highway,” Buyanovsky listed. “But, there’s new apartments every day, and as evidence develops, the indication is that these others could be victims as well.”

Morgan had several methods for illegally obtaining access to the apartments. Most involved an exploitation of online application portals to bypass due diligence checks. Morgan would use his suspected co-conspirators as fake references, allowing him to present falsified employment history and income as factual. In other cases, he would falsify social security numbers, or exploit housing support programs from local charities like Eblen and Asheville Buncombe Community Christian Ministry.

“The most glaring thing to me was the fact that he was ripping off charities. One of the apartments had told us that he was getting rental assistance from ABCCM. When I went to go speak with them, you know, these folks run a charity, and they want to help people. He took advantage of that,” Buyanovsky said. “He told them that he needed a place to live, because he’d be out in the street otherwise. That wasn’t true. He had a home that he could live at.”

According to the detective, evidence suggests that Morgan had a comfortable home situation and was not living at any of the apartments he rented.

“He lied to [ABCCM] and defrauded them of rental assistance, and then he turned around and, within the space of several weeks, went to another charity, Eblen, and ripped them off for thousands of dollars,” Buyanovsky said.

In addition to the apartments, Morgan had a similar method for obtaining cars, which he would advertise for sale on social media at unusually low rates.

“Co-conspirators, and in some cases, victims, would find that these promises of apartment access, cars, all these nice things, was actually a false bill of goods,” Buyanovsky said. “Once the fraud became evident, the cars would be repoed or the dealership would call for them to come back and return the vehicle, or they would find themselves facing eviction from apartments that they were promised.”

As Buyanovsky investigated the apartments, he found that most were “spartan” and empty. However, at a few, he discovered marijuana and drug paraphernalia, while one apartment contained several pounds of fentanyl and a pneumatic press for producing fentanyl pills. Another contained firearms and accessories. Morgan himself was charged with an additional felony for possession of a stolen firearm upon his arrest. Buyanovsky’s investigation traced the origin of that gun to Haywood County.

The scale of the operation and extent of the involvement from Morgan’s co-conspirators is still being determined, but there are indicators that it could have extended past state lines.

“While there is still additional follow up and evidence we’re seeking, there’s also a lot of analysis that is being done, and it’s tedious and it has to be,” said APD Detective Captain Joe Silberman.

Nonetheless, Buyanovsky, who previously served as a patrol officer before being brought onto the August investigation as a detective intern, has been lauded for his work untangling the case thus far.

“We were able to bring him up, make him a full detective, as this has gone on,” Silberman explained.

“I’m very proud of him and the work he’s done,” the detective captain added. “He had assistance from one of our detective sergeants in this, but just done an outstanding job, and it is, were I not to see the evidence with my own eyes, it’s just preposterous what this person has run around and done.”

This story is developing.