Posted on 07/18/2012 4:23:58 AM PDT by beaversmom
In the wake of the foreclosure crisis, it wasn't uncommon to read reports of shuttered homes occupied by opportunistic squatters looking for a free place to crash.
But some squatters don't wait for the homeowners to move out first, CBS4's Rick Sallinger reports.
Troy Donovan and his family returned to their Denver, Colo. home after an extended trip to find the house occupied by another couple.
In their eight-month absence, a rogue realtor named Alfonso Carillo allegedly sold the property to a pair of unsuspecting buyers.
Carillo sold the home for $5,000 under the pretense of "adverse possession," an umbrella law for squatters rights that can be evoked if property owners fail to claim their land for a certain stretch of time. The law varies state by state, but requires 18 years of possession in Colorado.
The Donovans, who were forced to move into their relative's basement, went to court to evict the couple. A judge ruled on Thursday that the adverse possession clause did not apply and ordered the couple to leave within 48 hours.
“We get to get out of the basement, get a full home to live in,” Donovan's wife, Dayna, told CBS. “A home we created and worked very hard in as well.”
Abandoned homes are easy targets for schemes like these, and foreclosed properties are even more susceptible with no homeowners around to defend their turf. In the Donovans' case, they lucked out when neighbors became suspicious of the new owners and tipped them off.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
From this link in the comments section, as of three days ago, Troy Donovan said the people still hadn’t left:
Troy Donovan • 3 days ago
Troy Donovan here the actual owner, Yes we had a Judge rule in our favor and gave them 48 hrs to vacate. They aren’t budging. They are STILL living there and won’t move out!! They were aware that they were being scammed the second we got back to Colorado because we told them. That was 6 weeks ago. Let alone when we found out they were living there in March we sent Littleton PD over to our house and thats when they produced the phony documents and were allowed to stay there. They have had plenty of time to move. They are running this thing to the very very end. We now have to pay Arapahoe County Sherriffs to evict them, but we can’t do anything until Monday then we will get a date of when they will go there and physically remove them. So in short , NO WE DID NOT GET OUR HOME BACK IN 48 HRS. This is an outrage !!!
violation of a court order should have meant Sheriffs enforcing that court order immediately.
And what of the scammer real estate agent? Is he in a 4 X 6 cell now?
What I would do is simply break into my own house while calling the police to evict the trespassers. No court, no nothing.
First I would get a shotgun at the local Wal-Mart.
Once you have a acquired access to the interior of your own home, you, and they are all in the house. At that point they are simply trespassers. There is nobody to evict. You throw their crap into the yard and call the cops. End of story. They can then sue to get back in. Good luck with that.
Looks like Alfonso Carillo has been doing this for a while now. This story is from December 2011:
Denver Man Charged With Theft & Forgery in Real Estate Scam http://denver.bbb.org/article/denver-man-charged-with-theft-and-forgery-in-real-estate-scam-31172
Enforcing the law is a Hate Crime.
—And what of the scammer real estate agent? Is he in a 4 X 6 cell now?—
This was probably a Craigslist Scam. My wife and I came across it when we bought our home in KY but needed a place to rent in Seattle for a while. They offer a place unbelievably cheap and often are not even in the country.
In our case it was just rent. They just wanted someone to “watch their place” while they were out of the country for two years. In Nigeria, BTW. :-)
When we got their email response I told my wife that with CL you NEVER do business with someone that is not local. Turned out it was a scam that goes on all over Seattle and I’ve seen it here in central KY with the local on-line want ads when I was looking for a truck. In the age of the internet, you should never enter into a transaction with a person you can’t meet face to face with the exception of eBay or other organizations where anonymity is not an option.
Period.
How many people take an 8 month trip and never check on their home.
Obama and who else?
I believe he had a job out in Indiana.
All your house are belong to us
Nope. First it has to go back to the issuing judge and he has to charge the squatters with Contempt of Court charges and issue an arrest warrant.
Mr. Mercat rents our residential rental places through Craig’s List. So far its worked out well. He knows to be careful though. Most of our tenants are friends of former tenants - word of mouth.
We work away from our home and in the past have been gone for 1 1/2 years. We do usually try to have someone look in on it and take care of any problems for us, but still we aren’t there.
They are trespassing, Troy. The court says it is your home. So go inside and shoot them.
The question about current squatters is moot, as the bank will soon be foreclosing on the Donovan’s house as they have not made a mortgage payment in over a year.
Then again, I wouldn’t fault them for not making mortgage payments while the squatters were there. But it is a problem that the deed holders didn’t make payments for a few months before the current squatters moved in.
That doesn’t actually work in most states. Whether you are in the home or not, when the cops come, if the squatters have a document like a lease or mortgage, even if it’s not legitimate, that says they are residents of the property, the police won’t touch them. In many states, they don’t even need a document, all they have to do is say they live there, and an oral month-to-month lease is assumed.
I still don’t understand this story.
Can you buy real estate in Colorado, without title insurance?
Isn’t the deed chain of ownership incomplete?
How did this ‘realtor’ initially gain access to the house - bust the lock?
This whole thing stinks.
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