Before purchasing our home on the Sudbury River, our family resided about a mile away on Mattison Drive. Today, I learned about an unbelievable real estate scam involving the sale of the last undeveloped lot in that neighborhood. The true owners of the land, purchased in 1991, live in South Carolina and have been paying property taxes ever since. They had hoped to return to Massachusetts one day or gift the property to one of their children. A scam artist posing as the owner contacted a local real estate agent by e-mail seeking a seller’s agent. The realtor failed to verify the fake seller’s identity and proceeded to list the property for sale. A New Hampshire-based real estate agent made an offer to purchase the land for $550,000, a little over half the going rate for comparable undeveloped land in Concord. His father-in-law is a developer and the pair saw an opportunity to build and sell a home in the highly desirable neighborhood for a nice profit. The deal was contingent on being able to secure the necessary Natural Resource Commission permits. The true owners of the property received registered mail from a contractor preparing work for presentation to the NRC, their first indication that something was amiss. They contacted the NRC and explained that they were not selling the property and that the request for a permit hearing should be denied. Apparently, the request was initially denied but weeks later was heard and approved. Closing moved forward, site work followed and a new house was framed. When the true owners inquired as to why they had not received their property tax bill, they were informed that the property had been sold.

I learned all of this by reading the lawsuit filed by the true owners. They are suing the buyer, the developer, the realtor, and both real estate lawyers for failing to notice any of the red flags suggesting this was a scam (forged signatures, fake forms of ID, improperly notarized documents, several misspelled names and locations, and request for half a million dollars in proceeds to be sent to a UPS store in Pennsylvania,)

I will be inquisitive to see how this plays out. All defendants named in the lawsuit had a profit motive for seeing the deal close, and it would appear that they saw only what they wanted to see.

UPDATE:

A few minutes of sleuthing turned up this posting by the selling agent thanking the “seller’s” real estate attorney for “all your hard work representing our clients, and ensuring we get to the closing table.”