Posted on 07/31/2023 12:42:26 AM PDT by xxqqzz
For the last two years, the online land records page in the town of Fairfield has offered a “fraud alert” service. Anyone can sign up to see legal filings on their property. It’s part of the careful new world – but no one could anticipate the situation that’s unfolding on Sky Top Terrace, near Sacred Heart University.
Dr. Daniel Kenigsberg grew up in a house his parents bought on the semicircular street in 1953, when he was a 1-year-old. After medical school in New York and residency in Maryland, he and his wife raised their two children on Long Island, across the Sound from Fairfield.
Kenigsberg never lost his fondness for the town. For decades, he held on to a vacant parcel of just under a half-acre next door to his childhood home. His father had bought that land, also in 1953, directly from Eleazar Parmly Jr. -- the family that settled the area in 1716.
(Excerpt) Read more at ctinsider.com ...
Not according to his lawsuit.
“There are a bunch of red flags that should have put him on notice,” Nolin said of Monelli, including, Nolin said, that the power of attorney was signed before a notary in the U.S. Consulate in South Africa, “which doesn’t make sense.”
This is almost like a document notarized by a Nigerian prince. Seems to me the developer who "bought" the land should have known something was off.
BTTT
So the legit owner wants the illegally built $1.5 million dollar house torn down and have the property restored to a wooded vacant lot. Then in the future give the lot to one of his kids so that they can have the lot cleared and build a house??
This story is likely a good example of it being a good idea to visit the place, even if it is just a vacant lot, every one or two years just to check up on the place and see that nothing suspicious is going on. I am the owner of our old family farmstead (100 acres) in Grey County, ON and I do this sort of thing just to check up on the property. I also rent the land out to a nearby farmer. Really shows that there are some real lowlifes and scammers who are not above trying even something like this.
Very interesting but not a once in a lifetime event. I actually knew that to have happened before.
The farm 2 over from us was about 90 acres where I grew up in S Indiana. A very nice woman from Louisville was sick of city life and bought about a 1/4 acre little plot in the woods next to a gravel road from a “title company”. She moved in a little trailer, a cistern, small septic, even ran electric from a utility pole and set up a nice quiet little place.
Turned out there was 1 little problem…the owner of the 90 acre farm never sold her any land!!!
The so called title company was a scam business. I think what (it’s been a while—maybe late 80s) they would do is look at old country road maps and find places where the road was moved a bit for improvements and “buy” those slivers of land. That plot she had was near a very sharp turn and I think years before they had moved the road a several dozen yards to improve it.
The guy wanted her out and she refused so it went to court and the owner won. The Judge ruled when a road is moved the land doesn’t just become vacant it goes to the owner of the land around it—as I understand. So she had to haul everything out.
To this day I feel very sorry for her as she wasn’t rich, nor did she do anything wrong—she thought it was a valid sale. I’m also still a bit angry and mystified at the owners for not knowing she was building the place until it was done as they lived there. Maybe they were gone on vacation? They could have saved her a lot of grief if they would have noticed (I admit they are well within their rights). We sure knew about it, it took weeks for the plot to be graded, septic and water ran etc. We just figured the owner sold it and never thought to ask. LOL but yeah even almost a mile away we were aware, how do you live in a house 1/3 of a mile away and not know someone is building on your property????
I never did hear if the title company was brought to Justice.
I don’t know all the details but I think if I was the owner I might have leased her the property for her as long as she lived there in return for her keeping an eye on the place for me.
That’s actually not a bad idea. Then the property would revert to family ownership when she died or decided to move.
Our County offers that alert and I have the farm signed up. The bad thing is that the County Mayor has the same name but different middle initial and he manages a lot of property. I get a notice each time. Still, it’s an alert.
And nobody bothered to contact the owner.
And besdies, when power of attorney is given to someone IIRC, BOTH parites have to sign and have it notarized.
Finders keepers?
Nope, because nobody *found* anything. They stole it, deliberately and maliciously.
The power of attorney thing proves that it was deliberate malfeasance and outright theft.
Title theft...
Seems reasonable to me.
I hate when that happens...
I am familiar with a somewhat similar case involving a client of mine. If that case offers any guidance for this one, the law firm that processed this “power of attorney” document might end up in a position where they file a malpractice insurance claim to avoid criminal exposure. In other words, they will take the position: “We aren’t criminals. We’re just stupid.”
These little things happen, and we came close to being a victim ourselves.
Our farmer neighbors were in nursing homes with their estate ran by their daughter. We wanted to buy 10 acres adjacent to our land, and made the deal with that daughter.
The problem started with her attorney not being able to get the land description right. After the second failure by the attorney, I went to the county and had them write down the proper land description of the 10 acres. The third try by the attorney was then correct, we put a cashiers check in the mail to the daughter.
The new title said we were buying the land from her parents, which we believed accurate. We took the deed to the court house to register it and was told the parents did not own the property. We went to the bank that issued the check and had payment stopped.
We would have lost close to $11,000.
It gets better. Another neighbor to these people told the daughter their fence line was on his property. So the daughter paid him $2,000 to move the fence. This other neighbor was a notorious land thief who acquired land by moving fence lines. So the daughter paid this guy two grand for stealing her parents property the parents never owned.
Read later.
His land, his choice.
Years ago someone called a radio talk show with a similar issue.
He drove by some land he’d inherited but wasn’t using to find a builder doing the last work on a house.
They built it on the wrong plot.
The host asked if he could just trade land but this land had a creek which he wanted.
The host then asked if he had any plans to build. The caller said that he did eventually.
The host suggested that he offer the builder a super deeply discounted price, like materials only to make the problem go away.
My BIL owns a piece of land in rural Virginia that’s been in his family for 100 years. He used to go there as a kid. He’s told us several times that he wants to go visit it and check it out, but he never makes the time or effort to ever do that. I know it’s pretty far from him (he lives in the Tampa, FL area).
We keep encouraging him to go. I’m afraid he will find out that someone’s been squatting there for years. I think it’s going to be a big mess, but without him going in person, he’s taking the word of others that everything is just fine. I don’t trust people that I don’t know well. I hope it works out for him.
He put it up for sale , once, turned down offers - perfectly reasonable behavior — and then the steal started probably almost as soon as the listing expired.
There is federal wire fraud and int’l fraud, this guy needs to find an alphabet he trusts and turn up the heat. Typical dr doesnt know property, they ALL treat them like passive investments.
But this is ridiculous. If he doesnt trust an alphabet, he’s got enough to hire a PI in SaF and bag this “price”, if nothing else to put that scumbag on radar and do not fly/no entry.
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