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Man Fakes Ownership of House to Cheat Tenants

Posted on | August 31, 2010 | No Comments

The below article is a growing trend for Mason OH homes for sale, as well as surrounding areas:

A housing scam has cost some people a home and some others a shelter where they can live. A Cincinnati man is currently being investigated by the Mortgage Fraud Task Force made up of the FBI and the Cincinnati Police Department. The charges on him include record tampering in order to scam tenants and home buyers out of thousands of dollars by falsifying documents on Cincinnati OH homes for sale. There have been 11 counts of tempering with various records on the 43 old David Halsell. According to authorities David Halsell used to drive around the neighborhoods looking for houses which were foreclosed or abandoned. He would then turn in conveyance papers at the Auditor’s office of Hamilton County which were supposedly fake.

These conveyance papers would supposedly have been signed by the owner of the property transferring it to Halsell. (This is called conveyance where property is legally transferred to the buyer from the seller.) He would then show these papers to the tenants and convince them that they owed him money. This was an easy scam to pull off as the unsuspecting tenants would look at the documents and then pay him the money that he said they owed him. The bigger scam was when he would sell a property that he didn’t own to unsuspecting buyers. Even the organization Price Hill Will, fell victim to this scam according to its executive director Ken Smith.

According to the executive director David would just go up and down neighborhoods looking for houses that seemed abandoned. He would then keep an eye on them and when after months would finally feel confident that no one cares about the house anyway would assume ownership of the property. In fact at one point Price Hill Will won a bid in an auction for a house for which David had turned in phony documents. Finally there were title issues at the time of closing the deal. According to the executive director, there should be a better system in the auditor’s office to catch such scams.

Another woman who was living in one such property claimed by David was worried that she would have to move out until the original owner assured her that she didn’t have to. She expressed happiness at the fact that the police have finally caught up with him so that he cannot take advantage anymore of those unsuspecting people who were desperate for a place to live.

Craig’s List is another front for fake papers and West Chester OH homes for sale scams. Some people offer Dayton OH homes for sale (or the like) for rent, and say they’re doing business overseas for a year or more. The scam will often ask that you mail a large security deposit overseas to secure the lease and get the keys. All you’re doing is mailing money away, so please be careful, and remember:

If it sounds too good to be true, chances are it is.