A few years ago my mom’s co-worker was conned into transferring over the property into somebody else’s name for nothing. She was robbed of her house. I’ve been curious about what the heck happened, so at work my co-worker looked into sales transaction history of that particular property, and this is basically what happened:

First my mom’s friend gave away the house to this guy. On the document the selling price was listed as “undetermined.” Two months later he turns around and sells it to a lady for over $200,000. Then it gets stranger after this, because a couple of months later, there is another transaction, where the lady GIVES the house back to this guy. He then sells it off again to another person for an even larger amount. Two months later, the man GIVES the house back to this guy. All in all there are a total of four sales transactions (where this guy is the seller), followed by a transaction where the buyer gives the property back to this guy.

My mom’s friend definitely got robbed. As for the subsequent transactions, it appears to me that this guy was able to get these buyers to sign the contract to purchase the house and at the same time sign papers that would transfer the deed back to him. We didn’t investigate to deeply, but one of these papers had the exact same date as the as the day the house was sold. So one second these guys are buying a house, the next, they’re giving it back to this guy. I could be wrong about what’s happening here, but it sure looks suspicious as hell.

We could probably run a search in the LA County for properties owned by this guy, and take a look at the sales transaction history on these properties. I’m sure he didn’t limit himself to performing his scams on a single property.