I am not the original poster. This is a repost.

Originally posted by u/ThriftAllDay 3 years ago on r/legaladvice.

Thank you to u/ThriftAllDay for granting permission for the repost!

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Someone I've never met claims they own my house [Jun 10 2019]

https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/bz14od/someone_ive_never_met_claims_they_own_my_house/

Hi everyone, I wanted to get your opinion on something troubling. I'll try to be as detailed as I can be. We live in NYC if that helps.

We were just away on vacation for a week and came back home yesterday. When we returned, among the other junk mail, there was a letter from a law firm for a person whose name I'd never heard before, directed to our address. It said something along the lines of "We've received notice that a foreclosure action has been filed against you, please call us and we can represent you". It also listed the names of the two people involved in the lawsuit, as well as an incident number for the county clerk's office. This letter isn't an official letter, more of trying to drum up business for the law firm. We returned on Sunday, so were unable to get in touch with the county clerk until this morning.

This morning we called the county clerk's office and they said there is a Lis Pendens filed on our property, not a foreclosure. We said "How can this be possible, we've never missed a mortgage payment and have lived here for 6 years. We had a title search and checked for liens when we purchased the house, and we know the last 3 families to live here over the past 20 years, and it ain't these guys. We've never heard of either of the people involved in this lawsuit". The clerk couldn't really advise us, but gave us the name of the law firm who initiated the action, so we called them.

They told us that the person in the letter (who we have never met, spoken to, or had any dealings with whatsoever) is being sued because the law firms client was in dealings with him to buy foreclosures to flip, but now is out a lot of money due to some nefarious dealings on the part of the first guy. Apparently, this con artist was required by the law firm to provide deeds to any properties he owns, and among others he provided one for our address. How he got this, I don't know, I assume he made it in photoshop or something. He claims he owns our house and the one across the street, I have no idea if he actually owns the one across the street or not. We are still listed as the owners of our home in public records and we have the deed.

I cannot stress enough how much we do not know the man claiming to own our house. We have never met, spoken to, or had any dealings with him whatsoever. We had never even heard his name until yesterday. Our house has never been in foreclosure, while we've owned it and for any owners before that. We have an appointment for a consult with a lawyer on Wednesday, the one who helped us buy our house 6 years ago, coincidentally. But I have no idea what's going on or what this guy hopes to gain, how big of a deal this is or how complicated this will be to fix. Any guidance or advice anyone can offer in advance with our meeting with our lawyer would be very helpful. Thank you all.

Edit: Hey all. Thank you so much for all your guidance. Figures that the post I made about potentially getting screwed is the one that takes off.... Here's some more information based on everyone's comments.

The chance that this guy has a legitimate claim to our house is 0.000000000001%. Only a Sith deals in absolutes, so I don't want to say the chance is nil, but this guy is a known con man, being sued for conning somebody else. I looked his name up online and apparently he keeps creating new real estate companies to fleece people out of money, then escapes into the night. He's done it at least 3 times that I can find, based off dismal reviews of his real estate companies.

Unfortunately I can't speak to the people across the street because that was a flip that hasn't been sold yet. He may or may not actually own it, I have no idea.

At this point we are not personally involved in this lawsuit, our property is just associated with it. The con man hasn't made any attempts to acquire our property, he is just lying to the law firm suing him, saying he already bought it. Why, I don't know. The only thing I can think of is that he bought no properties with the money his business partner gave him, and is now desperately trying to cover his ass with falsified documents. Why did he not think that he would be found out? That's just the way malignant narcissists work I guess....

I definitely look into our title insurance standing. I'm a worry wart, so if it was offered to us, I would have taken it.

I'll definitely keep you all updated as we meet with our lawyer tomorrow and things progress. Thank you all so much, keep being awesome reddit. ❤

Relevant Comments:

• Commenter suggests OOP talk to the guy with the house across the street and get a lawyer together. OOP: Unfortunately no one lives there right now
• Commenter suggests the whole thing is a scam, especially if they called any phone number listed on the paper as being from the County Clicker's office. OOP: Hi, just a few clarifications - we didn't call the county clerk number from the letter, there wasn't a phone number for them in the letter, just an incident number for the action filed against our property. We also didn't call the law firm from the letter, we called the law firm listed in the clerk's office as having initiated the action. We haven't spoken to the law office that sent the letter.

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[UPDATE] Someone I've never met claims they own my house [June 12 2019]

https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/bzv7z4/update_someone_ive_never_met_claims_they_own_my/

Hi everyone –   I can’t thank you enough for all your advice on my last post: “Someone I’ve never met claims they own my house”.  This is the first update, and I’m hopeful there will just be one more after this, wrapping everything up so we can put this behind us.  This is what has happened since my last post:  

After the initial letter from the law firm saying they can represent us, we started getting phone calls from other firms, saying they’d been alerted to the Lis Pendens and could also represent us.  We were not super happy with this and asked how they got our cell number.  They said they subscribe to a service that alerts them when things like liens, foreclosures etc. are filed on a property. We hung up.  

We looked at all our documents from the closing and confirmed that we do indeed have homeowner’s title insurance (yay!).  Our deed is a “Bargain and Sale” deed, for those wondering. We also pulled all deed/mortgages and other documents for our property going back to 1972 online.  The last action was when we bought our house – no documents have been filed since.  I signed up on ACRIS to be alerted to any changes made to the property documents (thank you for the redditor who suggested that).  I also emailed the DA for my county, and their economic crimes bureau head emailed me back to ask for my cell number to follow up with me.  I gave it to him, but he hasn’t called yet, so maybe that will be in the next (and hopefully final) update.

My husband met with our lawyer this morning, and I asked him to speak about all the things that you all suggested in the last post. Prior to the meeting, our lawyer had reached out to the firm who filed the Lis Pendens, and actually got a copy of the court transcript where the con man said he owns our property.  According to the transcript, he claims he bought it in 2016.  Our lawyer called their law firm and basically said “Where is the deed?”  They supposedly hemmed and hawed about it, so we’re starting to think they don’t have it, and never did!  They may just be going off the words of a sleezeball who’s like “Yeah, I totally own that place.  I even have a deed for it.  No, you can’t see it.”  It’s possible that based off this alone, they filed against our property.   

In addition, it’s not like this guy is saying he bought our house last week and the paperwork just hasn’t been filed yet, he claims he bought it 3 YEARS AGO and there is STILL no paperwork filed to attest to this fact. (I was able to pull up all records for our home going back nearly 50 years, in about 15 minutes online).  Our lawyer does not like the way this other firm is handling this, and basically said to them “You have no grounds for this.  Take it off.”  

The attorney handling this case at that law firm is out of the office today and tomorrow,  but will be calling our lawyer back on Friday.  I am hopeful that it will just be a matter of “Take the Lis Pendens off.” And “Ok”.  I’ll update again after the call between the lawyers. I told my husband the number 1 question is “Where. Is. The. Deed?”  When we initially spoke with them, they clearly said they had it in hand, which is part of the reason I was freaking out. I honestly just want to be done with this, so getting back at the suing law firm for gross negligence (or whatever term fits the issue) is of no interest to me at the moment.  If they give us a hard time about removing the Lis Pendens, then we’ll see.  

So far my takeaway from this that I would share with anyone going through something similar is that law firms are made up of people.  And just like people can be good and smart and kind (like all of you!) they can also be dumb, shifty and lazy, and not bother to do their due diligence even though that’s like 50% of why they exist in the first place (but I’m not bitter……).  

Thank you all so much for your help, I'll update again as things progress and hopefully conclude.

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[UPDATE] Someone I've never met claims they own my house [Aug 23rd 2019]

https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/culsaf/update_someone_ive_never_met_claims_they_own_my/

So it has been a while since my previous update, and I wish I could tell you all that it's because we were involved in a super exciting court battle ("No, YOU'RE out of order!") but the truth is much more annoying and banal, as life tends to be.

As we left it in the last post a couple months ago, our lawyer called the law firm who submitted the action against our property and said "You have no grounds for this, take it off." The paralegal he spoke to said the lawyer handling the case was out that day but would contact our lawyer soon.

They did not. For WEEKS. Despite everyone bugging them, they were very disinterested in resolving the issue. Color me shocked.

In the meantime, we're getting junk mail from law firms and mortgage management companies at least every 2-3 days, saying they can help us with this issue we don't have. The notices start to be addressed to us personally instead of the this other random guy who said he owned our house. This displeases us. I start keeping a little pile of these letters next to the stairs with copies of our mortgage payments notices from the bank, just in case.

This goes on for a while, long enough for my initial (!!!!!!!) anxiety to fade into more of an "Eh." situation. Until yesterday.

Our lawyer finally got a response to his email from July, where he outlines everything and attached a preponderance of evidence showing we continue to own our house, and their response is, and I quote : "We will remove the action." Period. No Good Afternoon, no Sincerely. We will remove the action. A shart of an email after weeks of worry.

So with a whimper, we got what we wanted. Obviously we will continue to monitor everything until they actually do what they said they will, but it is a load off my mind. I wish I had something more exciting to tell you, but it seems in the legal world, exciting = bad.

Thank you all for your concern, your advice, and your upvotes. I hope that if any of you face a similar situation, that reading this can help you figure out how to resolve it.

❤

From u/ThriftAllDay when I asked if anything further happened

As far as updates go, in the end nothing happened beyond the annoying letters and my agita. Our lawyer said that even if the other law firm doesn't drop it, if you wait long enough a lis pendens just expires if there's no further action on it, so we left it alone. We still do get the occasional letter from a law office directed to this guy about his "property" but they're few and far between and basically spam mail.

The con guy in question may or may not own the property across the street from us, which has been languishing on the market for years, possibly because it's an asset tied up in court cases against him from a former partner, but that's unconfirmed and a whole other headache that I just can't concern myself with. So beyond being a pain in the butt, it was fine, thankfully.

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Reminder: I am not the original poster. This is a repost.

Originally posted by u/ThriftAllDay 3 years ago on r/legaladvice.