Real Estate

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It is Real Estate Fraud Week at L.A. Land -- send your stories to lalandblog@yahoo.com. This one came to us from a friend of a friend, and it involves a brazen scam we’ll call ‘Let’s Rent Out That Abandoned House.’

Jessica bought a 1,400-square-foot Spanish fixer in Wilshire Vista in November and hasn’t moved in because she’s still working on architectural drawings and permits. Result: empty house, unmowed lawn.

Jessica, meantime is at her parent’s in Rancho Mirage on a Saturday night, searching Craig’s List for a new rental and sees a house for rent that she can afford -- coincidentally, it’s in the same neighborhood as her fixer.

‘It’s two bedrooms, one bath, and then I see the address and it’s MY ADDRESS!’ she tells L.A. Land. ‘I’m totally shocked! I told my parents, ‘I just saw my house on Craig’s List! I click on it and it describes my house to a T.There’s no contact information, but it says there’s going to be an open house on Sunday!’

Continue reading below to find out what happened. Trust us, it’s wild.

So Jessica’s mother tells her to call the real estate agent who sold her the house. She does, and he ‘flips out.’ Then Jessica’s dad weighs in: ‘I think you should call the cops.’ She does, on Sunday morning -- the day of the mysterious open house at her house. An officer agrees to drive by the house later that day.

Around 12:30 p.m. Sunday, Jessica’s real estate agent calls, reporting he is at the house and nothing is happening. He can’t stay -- he’s got an open house of his own to go to. All is well. But then, at 1:30 p.m., the agent calls Jessica back. ‘A neighbor had called him and told him, ‘The open house is happening right now! There’s a woman inside the house, she’s got signs outside, and she’s showing the house!’’

So Jessica, still in Rancho Mirage, calls the LAPD again with this update. Soon the agent calls her with another update: ‘Neighbors had been to the open house, and they told him the woman is taking cash deposits from people! Multiple cash deposits!’

So Jessica calls LAPD for the third time to relay the latest, as well as a new fear: maybe this is some kind of identity theft scam.

She waits by the phone for a while, and then gets a call from an LAPD officer. ‘He says, ‘I’m inside the house with the woman and she’s claiming she’s legit. She says she works for a realty company and she’s showing the house.’ Then the cop asks me, ‘How can you prove you’re the owner?’’

‘My Dad says, ‘You have the title! Tell him you have the title!’ So I say, ‘I have the title, I’ll fax it to you!’’

The police officer tells Jessica he’s going to have to call his supervisor and ask for guidance -- He’s never been in this situation before, and he’ll call her back.

‘He calls back a little while later and I ask him -- ‘Does she have a key to the house? Is she a Realtor? Does she have a license?’ He says the woman claims she’s working for a Realtor, but she isn’t a Realtor herself. At this point, the cop is starting to believe me.’

‘But they have no proof of breaking and entering. All they have is petty theft -- the cash she’s taken from people who think they’re putting down deposits. So they let her go.’

Here’s where it gets even better: ‘But after they let her go, they spoke to another neighbor who saw her climbing through a window, so they put out a warrant for her arrest.’

So that’s the scam: someone saw an abandoned house, listed it for rent on Craig’s List, put up some signs, climbed through a window and held an open house and started collecting deposits.

‘She didn’t even clean it up,’ Jessica says.

She has since had the locks changed, activated a security system and is getting the lawn maintained. She’s convinced the woman had a partner in crime.

‘This is probably a scam they run -- driving around looking for houses that look vacant,’ Jessica says.

How does she feel about the whole thing?

‘Initially it was pretty freaky. But once we had them caught in the act -- once I knew what was going on, I wasn’t that upset about it. And the good thing is, as a result, I’ve met several of my neighbors, who are really kind.’

Wow. Can anyone top that?
Photo Credit: istockphoto.com