Someone Tried to steal our house

In a previous post we discussed selling our house and moving into an RV. Well, the house selling process was a long, frustrating and crazy experience. We faced a number of unexpected and baffling circumstances that ultimately involved the police, lawyers, judges, and a postal inspector.

First, almost immediately after we listed our house for sale, some scammers had our mail forwarded to somewhere in Akron OH. I immediately went to the post office to report this and of course got very little help. I was told to call an 800 number that they gave me to report it to the postal inspector. Well, that number does not go to a postal inspector, it goes to the nationwide customer service call center. Under no circumstances will they connect you to a postal inspector. After numerous attempts, I contacted our local police detective to report the mail theft. He was able to contact the postal inspector who eventually did give me a call. I filed a report with him and as I expected, I never heard another word about it. The good news is that we didn’t lose anything of importance and our mail was restored pretty quickly.

Several months later, we had agreed to allow the local gardening club to include our home in their annual garden pond tour. To make room for parking for the 200 or so people that would come to see our pond, I decided to park my pickup truck next to our pole barn which is on another part of the property away from the house. After the garden tour was done, I went to get my truck and bring it back to the house but it wasn’t there. I quickly realized that it must have been stolen but that was hard to believe since it was located a half mile from a public road. I again called my friendly neighborhood detective who immediately came to the house to file a police report. Interesting, in the 20 minutes it took him to arrive, he had already seen my truck on two different traffic cams. (Kinda scary to learn how many cams they have and how quickly they can identify a vehicle). It took a couple of weeks but they ultimately found my truck outside of Cleveland OH after the thief ran out of gas. It turns out that the thief was a long time drug addict who apparently had been living in the woods near our home for several days.

As if all that wasn’t bad enough, it was about to get worse. In May 2022 we had a house showing for a prospective buyer. Because we owned a lot of property, I would typically be there for the showings so I could give the prospective buyers a tour of the property. These buyers were a couple in their mid 20’s who were not married. This seemed very odd as our house is fairly large and expensive and its not likely a couple of 25 year old should be able to afford it. However, our agent had prequalified them and had copies of bank statements showing they had more than enough cash to buy the house. They said the guy had recently sold his construction business and thats why they had the money. They made a full price offer that day and we accepted it.

Next was the house inspection. Rather than hire an independent inspector, the buy said that since he was in the home construction business, he would do the inspection himself. He spent maybe 45 minutes in the house and said everything was good, no repairs were needed. Great!

The buyers then said that some of the woman’s family was in town from Oregon and asked if it would be OK to bring them by to see the house before they left town. We said sure. They brought 8 people ranging from a 16 year old girl to an 80 year old man. All of them were very nice and we spend 2+ hours together showing them the house and property. They were all family members from her side of the family, no one from his family was there. After that, they said that would serve as the final walkthrough even though we were 2 or more weeks away from closing.

Also, during this time, the earnest money that they were supposed to pay didn’t arrive. They said that the money was being help up due to an IRS audit of the business sale. They said it should be released within a day. So we waited. The money didn’t arrive and this time they said it would just be easier to wire the full amount to the escrow company. Later that day we received a wire confirmation showing the money had been transferred.

All of this seemed very odd but since we had bank statements showing sufficient funds and the fact that they brought their relatives (they really were her relatives) it all seemed OK even though it was strange.

As closing approached, I started requesting copies of the closing documents so I could review them prior to closing. They were using their own lawyer for the documents. Both my agent and myself reached out to the lawyer to request the documents. All communications were via email and neither of us had a phone number. The reply was that the lawyer was in court and would call during a break. The call never came. That evening, we received an email saying that court went late and that the documents were about done and we should receive them the next day. Same story the next day, no documents and more excuses from the lawyer.

Now I’m getting worried. There had been alot of anomalies during this process but we had met the buyers face to face, they had a legitimate local address and had brought her actual relatives to the our (some of which lived nearby). That evening, I couldn’t sleep since I was trying to figure out what was going on. I finally got out of bed a 4 am and decided that I need to dig a little deeper into this. I had their address so I thought I’ll drive by their house and see if his truck in parked there (he had a very distinctive truck). We’ll, I drive by around 5 am and sure enough, there is his truck. I thought, maybe I’m just paranoid, no criminal would use their real name and address so they must be legit. But I still felt uneasy so I looked up their lawyers name on the Pennsylvania Bar Association website. There was only 1 lawyer in PA with that name and her office was in Pittsburgh. That sounded good but I thought, I’m up I might as well drive into Pittsburgh and discuss all this with her directly.

I walked into her office (its a small one lawyer shop) and introduced myself to the paralegals who were in the front room. There aren’t many Schlotterbecks in this world and if you had been working for several days on paperwork with our name on it, it should be immediatly obvious who I was. The blank stare on their face when I said my name told me everything I needed to know. This was a scam. They had never heard of me or the buyer and were not working on closing documents. I spent about an hour there telling them the story of what was happening and they were shocked that someone was impersonating them.

That was all the confirmation I needed to know that this guy was a crook. So I again called my new best friend the detective. I also called my lawyer and we sent them a nastygram telling them that were busted and I would be pursuing all legal remedies.

Interestingly, they kept sending emails saying that it was all a misunderstaning and that the paperwork would be done within a day. Not sure why they kept trying after it was clear they were busted.

The detective came by again to fill out another police report. He was fascinated by the story and said he’d never seen anything like this before. He started an investigation and told us to be patient, the investigation would take a long time to complete. He also warned us that Allegheny County is very pro-criminal and there was a good chance that they would refuse to file charges no matter how strong the evidence.

He was correct that the investigation would take a long time. It took about 9 months to complete as he had to subpeana Google and Verizon for phone and computer records. He said that this file was the largest file he had created in his career as a detective. Fortunately, the DA did decide to file charges and ultimately charged the guy with 4 felonies including forgery and theft by deciption.

Now, they had to find and arrest the guy. It turns out that after I busted him, he and his girlfriend moved to Florida and set up a home resoration business. They immediately started defrauding victims of Hurricane Ian. They stole down payments for house repairs and then fled Florida to go to Rhode Island where the girlfriend had gone to school. While in Rhode Island, the girlfriend filed domestic abuse charges against him. Fortunately, the guy was scheduled for a court hearing on the domestic abuse charges the day after our charges were filed and he was arrested when he arrived for his hearing. The Rhode Island DA agreed to let him be extradited back to PA to face the four felony charges. While he waited for extradition and his arraignment in PA, he spent 5 weeks in the Allegheny County jail before being released on bond. After a couple of delays, the trail was set for October 2oth. In the few days before the trial, the DA kept asking me if I would agree to a plea bargin. He wanted to offer a single misdemeanor charge and I thought that was too light given that he had forged bank statements and impersonated a lawyer. I said no, that I wouldn’t consider anything less than 1 felony guilty plea. Surprisingly, the day before the trial, he plead guilty to 3 of the 4 felony charges! He’s now a convicted felon, has two years of probation and has to pay $5000 in restitution in addition to the 5 weeks he already spent in jail. I think that was a very fair outcome.

The only thing left unresolved is “why”? There was no way he going to get any money from us or that he could end up with our house. Had he falsified the deed, we would still have gotten our house back but it would have been a long legal battle. Everyone is baffled as to why he went to such lengths to run a con that no one can figure our how he would have benefited. Its a mystery but I do have one theory that makes sense to me. I believe the target of the con was his girlfriends family, not us. After they had visited the house, I believe he was telling them the same story about selling his business but the money is on hold do to an IRS audit. I suspect he asked them to lend him the $50,000 down payment until the IRS released his money so that they wouldn’t miss out on buying our house. Thats the only motive that makes sense to me. Unfortunately, without a trial, we’ll never know.