Woman Shares Why She Lawyered Up to Fight Her Sorority's $6,000 'Scam'

A former sorority member has gone viral for her warning to other college women: "Do not join a sorority."

Taylor-Nicole Limas shared how her sorority at the University of Iowa tried to "scam" her in three TikTok videos posted on Thursday. The first video in her series has racked up 4.2 million views as of Friday morning.

"I've never felt so taken advantage of by people who claimed to be my 'sisters,'" Limas told Newsweek.

In her first video, Limas explained that she moved into her sorority house during her junior year. Since she had plans to study abroad in Spain for half of that year, the sorority leadership said she could sign a "half lease" for one semester.

"I signed a half lease at this chapter meeting," Limas said. "I literally advised the VP of finance, the VP of social chair and the f**king president."

To her horror, after arriving in Spain, Limas received notification of a $3,000 fee from her sorority.

"At my university, the sorority is allowed to bill your university bill," the former student said. "What this means is that if I don't pay my sorority charge, I'm not allowed to sign up for classes."

"Riddle me this," she fumed. "Sorority is an extracurricular. University—mandatory."

Limas added that she paid for her own university education through scholarships and loans, so she could not afford the unexpected due.

Assuming there had been a mistake, she reminded the sorority that she had signed a half lease. In response, she claimed, they said that she "never signed one" and "half leases don't exist."

"I now cannot sign up for classes because I cannot come up with $3,000 on the f**king spot," Limas said.

"How is it allowed that a sorority can bill your university f**king bill?" she demanded.

After an appeal process, the university's finance department agreed to put the payment on pause, but told Limas that she still owed the money. After returning to campus for her senior year, she was hit with another bill of close to $6,000, which accumulated late fees every month.

"This time, they're not gonna waive the fee," she said. "Now I'm going through a f**king panic. Now I'm f**king p**sed because school meant everything to me. I had to keep my GPA up in order to keep my scholarship, and the only way I was able to go to a university was with scholarships."

Limas decided to hire a lawyer. Her lawyer then sent an email to the sorority stating that she would not be paying the fees, citing her abundant evidence of wrongful charges.

Almost immediately, Limas received calls from the finance department and the president of the sorority to let her know that she no longer owed the fees.

"It was an incredibly emotionally traumatic experience that went on for about a year and a half," she told Newsweek. "They almost stopped me from graduating. It made me want to stand up for what's right so this doesn't happen to someone else."

In January 2021, Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson filed a lawsuit against the Alpha Omicron Pi sorority for allegedly unlawfully charging more than $6,000 in rent to University of Washington students who could not access or live in their sorority housing due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Another scandal last year saw the Alpha Delta Pi sorority disbanded at Methodist University in Fayetteville, North Carolina, after a white member used pictures of Black student football players in a presentation on features she considered "unattractive."