CBS4 Exclusive: Home Stealing Scam Puts Hialeah Woman On Street
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HIALEAH (CBSMiami) – On a clear morning in April, Linda Cleland came back to her home in Hialeah and discovered her world flipped upside down.
"The main walkway all the way to the property line was everything I owned," Cleland told CBS4's Natalia Zea.
Linda was being evicted. A real estate investment company had bought her childhood home- and she was forced out.
"Very awful, just horrible," said Linda.
She picked up from the driveway, the few belongings she could carry, and walked to a bench at a nearby church.
"I pretty much walked around until 4 'o' clock in the morning. And I remember thinking 'this is not maybe smart, I'm out here by myself it's dark.' I didn't know what to do."
She didn't know then that the bench would become her new home for the next several months.
It was on this bench, that Juan Koop, an agent with Miami-Dade's Office of the Inspector General found Linda.
"At night, I go to my house and have dinner with my family. But she didn't. She was out on the streets," Koop told Zea.
Agent Koop tracked her down while looking for victims of a widespread document fraud scam he's investigating.
Koop says Linda's home, which her deceased parents gave her in their will, was stolen, when a criminal filed one simple quitclaim deed in the County Clerk's office. A scam he says is spreading across South Florida.
"They create a fraudulent or counterfeit quitclaim title conveying the property from the dead owner or a victim to a straw buyer," explained Koop.
Once the fraudulent transfer is recorded at the clerk's office, it becomes a seemingly legitimate document that is then passed on to the next unsuspecting victim, the person or company that buys the home.
The quitclaim deed someone filed pretending to be Linda, transferred the ownership of her home to her mother Louise, who has been deceased for more than a decade.
Louise then supposedly signed the property over to a defunct company, JSM Construction who then sold the home to legitimate buyer, real estate investment company Stark Equity in 2014.
"It's awful to think that you can be locked out of your own property because other people decided to steal it from you," Linda said of the unidentified home thief.
Linda says she tried to fight the eviction for months before she was forced out. Still the court granted Stark Equity the eviction order.
"I'm not a stupid person, but I felt stupid."
While feeling voiceless and powerless, Linda reminisced about the home where she was raised, including the towering pine tree in her front yard, that was a small potted tree, her mother bought from a grocery store for the holidays when she was 10.
Her lowest point was when she saw that tree from the church bench.
"I said that's my pine tree, and I was like...that's mine," said Linda, wiping away tears.
Agent Koop helped Linda find a free attorney and after spending seven months homeless...a different county judge finally believed her and gave her the right to move back into the home, while she fights to put the house back in her name.
"I'm thrilled...and that's not even a good enough word."
Now she wants her case to make changes across South Florida.
"Nobody should have to go through this, what I've gone through. Nobody."
This scam is so far-reaching that three powerhouses in Miami-Dade – the state attorney, the inspector general and the county clerk – are joining forces to overhaul the system.
The trio has for you on how to protect yourself, because any homeowner could become a victim of this scam.
CBS4's Natalia Zea will bring you that story on Thursday at 11 p.m.
