Unbelievable... zero documentation of WHY the home was sold at auction - and the “Sherrif’s lean” was filed way AFTER the media tried to find some kind of documentation, and those late-filed papers were back-dated.
No back taxes, no liens, no foreclosures, no noting to cause the home to be sold at auction at the courthouse. This appears to be one of the most blatant and brazen acts of corruption in a corrupt city in a long time... I sure hope someone goes to prison over this one.
Vickers is a tenant. Inconvenienced by this to be sure, but the real person that is screwed is his owner, the landlord, named Lankford.
It took a bit of reading to figure it out.
And, it looks like his lawyer was in on the scam. Weird.
There’s been cases where banks have foreclosed on houses they didnt’t even have the mortgage on.
Vickers, at that point, was still out of the home. Vickers’ landlord, Francine Lankford, had been living two hours away with her elderly mother in the months leading up to Vickers’ eviction.
Gammon took the case that day and started investigating.
“I've been doing this for 30 years and I approach every case with a healthy degree of skepticism. But I will be candid with you and tell you that this one stretched the limits of my credulity,” Gammon said.
Gammon found Lankford had a $20,000 home equity loan on the property, which meant there was an existing lien on the property when Abreo auctioned it off in September. Gammon also found a homestead exemption inside the loan records.
That homestead exemption meant the property couldn’t be auctioned off, Gammon said.
The sheriff’s deed filed on Oct. 1 showed the auction was the result of a civil case in another county between Lankford and Pacheco’s Fencing Company. That case ended in a $6,325 judgment against Lankford for work done on a property she owns in Lee County, which borders Bastrop County on the northeast.
The judgment states that Lankford and her attorney failed to answer the Pacheco lawsuit, and Lankford lost the case.
Lankford said her attorney never told her she needed to file an answer.
County records show Lankford’s attorney in that case was Rosanna Abreo, the wife of Bastrop County Constable Salvador Abreo.
Rosanna Abreo defended Lankford in the Pacheco Fencing case in 2017, when it was filed in Bastrop County. That Bastrop case was dismissed. Pacheco Fencing later refiled it in Lee County court, which rendered a default judgment against Lankford.
Rosanna Abreo is married to Salvador Abreo, the constable that oversaw the foreclosure and auctioning of Lankford’s property. Salvador Abreo was appointed to the constable post after the previous constable resigned, and Snowden was one of the officials on the selection committee that helped appoint him, according to media reports.
Well worth going to the article to read the whole thing.
Really looks almost as bad as the Waco persecutions.
One question is why a homestead exemption is in effect when the home is rented to a nonrelative.
Lol, there are so many holes in this story that no freeper would read it on the grounds it’s too long if I went through it point by point. But, I lived in Bastrop County 20 years and it IS a snake pit politically.
One thing that stands out is somewhere there’s a Title Policy
and in that Title Policy is a “rights of parties in possession” clause. Something going on here that’s smelly, among other things...……..assuming the tenant is telling the truth.
looks like the state of texas should initiate a criminal investigation ... looks to me like several people should be in prison ...
We used to have US Attorneys that would Prosecute Fraud like this done by Government Agents.
It looks to me like they all belong in PRISON!!
Is this for real? It's a scene out of The 'Burbs.
"I'll be back for Final Jeopardy."
What a story! Big time corruption in South Texas.
Leave it to a jackass named “Bubba” to try to pull this kind of evil off.
Hope they take all of his money in the lawsuit. Pure evil!
When I first started working for civil service, my coach was showing me how to search court house records.
He pointed out a lady who was looking through the records. He said she worked for a local attorney and spent much of her time searching for property he could steal.
Technically not steal but it amounted to the same thing.
These jerks should soon be bunking at the local penitentiary.
Cops want easy access to your home as a first priority, going after criminals is second.
I do not care whether there are good or bad cops, the job of going after law abiding citizen properties is their main reason of hire. It is not going after bad guys but filling coffers of the state.
Sounds totally crooked. I hope Ms. Lankford ends up eating Ms. Ortiz and her father alive.
Not surprised ... Bastrop city and county are a Progressive sh!tholes adjacent to Austin (Travis County).
I attended an auction for a drug plane many years ago in Corpus Christi, Texas. The plane was most legitimately seized and auctioned on the court house steps. The auction was a farce. No microphone or sound system and just low voices on the court house steps. I could not even hear what the auctioneer was saying and in about 1 minute the auction was closed and the plane sold for 5000 dollars.
I did not even get to bid as I could not hear the bids nor did the auctioneer repeat the bids in a manner that could be heard.
It was a Twin Commander worth many times more. The auction was a farce with a predetermined buyer. The engines alone on that aircraft would have been worth 15000 dollars in 1982. The air frame would have been of equal value or more.
In reality a 30 to 50 thousand dollar aircraft was sold for 5000 dollars. It had a hell of an instrument panel complete with a radar altimeter which is of great use flying across the Gulf of Mexico at low altitude. It was a very nice aircraft.
The fix was in.