Today we will be talking about a major real estate fraud case. I’ve titled this “Is he wacky or just exercising his rights.” This case involves the fraudulent filing of a deed and mortgage, called a deed of trust, in the county deed records in an effort to basically steal a couple’s home from them, or at least extort money from them in obtaining a release of the false claims. The home was in the country and sat on a few acres of land, so the value of the place was several hundred thousand dollars. When the couple decided to sell and downsize, they found these fraudulent instruments through the title company and it cost them several thousand dollars to get their title cleared so they could sell the land. Because of how the documents were recorded it was a fairly easy investigation to identify who did it, the defendant.
