Scammers can take your land without you knowing. Scammers can sell your land without you knowing. One way of doing this is by forged documents and identity thefts.
Here is an article published on AARP which is very recent dear readers – it is dated 2nd August 2024.
It tells the story of Daniel Kenigsberg, who although is no longer living in his hometown of Fairfield, Connecticut, is still the owner of a plot of land that was essentially his childhood backyard. On returning from visiting a sick friend, he was shocked to find that a developer had cleared hundreds of trees and is halfway through building a luxury home on his property.
How could something like this happen, when the land was never up for sale? Daniel learns how a criminal with forged documents impersonated him and completed the sale without his knowledge. Investigations by his lawyer of trust transpired that a lawyer had done a power of attorney, on Daniel’s behalf, but not on Daniel’s behalf and sold his land to a builder and the builder was building a house thinking that Daniel had sold the land.
It transpired that a criminal had faked his identity, used a fraudulent passport and persuaded a real estate agent and a developer and many others in the process that the land was for sale, that he had a right to sell the land with a price which was well below market value, closed the sale, got the money and the developer got the necessary permits and uprooted all the trees on his land.
The fight for Daniel to get his land back kicked off. His lawyers had to first contest the title to his property, then stop the construction, then establish if it was really his land and that whatever was happening on it boiled down to trespassing.
Daniel notes how since 2009, ever since the land which was transferred fully onto his name when his brother passed away, the tax bill was on his name and how he has been living in the same address for years. Every June Daniel gets the tax bill from the town of Fairfield, paying property tax for the whole year at one go. He gets some calls once or twice a year or a letter asking him if he wants to sell his land so he concludes that everyone down in town hall knew who owned the property, his name and address. So, Daniel is baffled as to how all the people who were involved in the transactions of the sale of his land never did that but they went unnoticed.
Last Spring, Graceland, Elvis’s home, was put up for auction largely based on forged loan documents. This was stopped thanks to a last-minute lawsuit.
Fake documents have been used to buy and sell real property.
With the forged documents and identity thefts in Malta, will we start witnessing fraudsters stealing the property of the Maltese people?