Newest Squatters Are Going Upscale Across the Valley

After the Northridge earthquake, squatters took over entire apartment buildings, turning them into dark sanctuaries of drug use, prostitution and violence.

Five years later, a new class of savvy squatters is keeping house in the San Fernando Valley.

Instead of slipping past a boarded-up window, they simply install new locks on their chosen abodes, often in upscale neighborhoods. There’s no need to light fires--they just dial up the utility company and switch on the electricity.

And they are tough to get out.

One woman, Candyce Lee Brown, illegally moved into a vacant home in Studio City, was evicted, then promptly moved into an empty house in Toluca Lake and transferred the utilities there.

In another case, a real estate agent named Lauri Lampkin and her family moved into a four-bedroom house in tony Woodland Hills without the owner’s knowledge. When the police showed up, she showed them a contract and a quitclaim deed--which authorities later determined were phony--and refused to budge.

Brown was eventually sentenced to six months in jail and Lampkin was given 160 hours of community service.

Some owners pay the interlopers hundreds of dollars just to get them out so the property can be sold. This so-called “cash for keys” practice avoids the trouble of trying to evict an uncooperative party, which could take months.

“Brazen is the word for it,” said Assistant City Atty. Richard Schmidt. “It’s stunning. This is not someone who sneaks in in the dead of night. This is someone who waltzes into an empty house, changes the locks and defies any effort to get them out.”

The city attorney’s office has prosecuted three trespassing cases in recent months against squatters in vacant Valley homes and plans to file charges in another case this week.

Anecdotal evidence suggests the problem is more widespread. One reason more squatters are not being collared may be that they are, in some cases, being handsomely paid to pack up and leave.

“What the squatter is trying to do is get cash for keys,” said Anngel Benoun, a real estate agent at Gibson & Associates Realtors in Sherman Oaks. Benoun represents lenders such as the Federal National Mortgage Assn., also known as Fannie Mae, and California Federal Bank, visiting more than 100 foreclosed properties a year to see if anyone is living in them.

“They know when I come to knock on their door that I’m going to offer them ‘relocation assistance’ to leave,” she said. “How do I know if they’re a legal tenant or an illegal tenant? And the seller’s goal is to get them out of the property.

“So we give them a check--anywhere from $500 to $2,500--if they move out within two weeks. And they could go from house to house to house collecting this.”

Benoun said she finds suspected squatters in up to 10% of the homes she visits. She has bumped into a few memorable squatters on more than one occasion, including Brown, whom she paid $1,700 last year to vacate a Van Nuys home, the subject of a foreclosure proceeding.

When Brown was arrested in October, investigators searched the house and found real estate listings and bills for an Internet service listing foreclosed properties.

City Atty. James Hahn, a candidate for mayor in 2001, said the crime “is becoming an increasing problem in the San Fernando Valley.” Deputy city attorneys in other parts of the city, including Hollywood, San Pedro and West Los Angeles, said they had not prosecuted such a case in recent memory.

A swindle is fairly easy to pull off, according to real estate agents and law enforcement officials. Would-be squatters need only peruse a newspaper listing recent foreclosures to find their next home. They can skip the Sunday open houses, forego the showdowns with rival renters filling out applications or buyers making offers--and best of all, it’s free.

“It’s something that pops up all the time,” said Det. Rene Lacasse, a fraud investigator in the Los Angeles Police Department’s financial crimes division. But although squatters once favored rundown neighborhoods, Lacasse said, “Lately they’ve been going into more affluent areas.”

When a bewildered owner finds an uninvited guest living in his or her home, police called to the scene are often faced with a tenant claiming to have legitimately rented the house. In some cases this may be true, Benoun and others say--the real con artist might be a third person who posed as the owner and rented the home out to an unwitting victim.

“Generally, there’s not a lot we can do initially,” said Sgt. Ray Davies of the LAPD’s North Hollywood Division. “Do we throw them out on the street? No.”

Three years ago, an Orange County businessman was sentenced to a year in jail for running such a scam. Relying on an old legal doctrine known as adverse possession--used in the 19th century to break up Spanish land grants and stake mining claims--he unsuccessfully claimed a right to rent out vacant homes without permission.

Some tenants’ advocates said disputes that may appear to be squatting cases may in fact involve tenants who are victims of fraud.

“From a tenants’ perspective, there are landlords who attempt to evict tenants illegally, so when a person comes in and says, ‘I’m the real owner here, not the guy you met before, and I want you out,’ sometimes the problem is on the landlord’s side,” said Neal Dudovitz, executive director of San Fernando Valley Neighborhood Legal Services, which represents tenants who are being evicted.

“Courts are the places to resolve those disputes,” he added. “It’s possible the tenant’s right.” Steve Glassman, manager of Coldwell Banker’s North Valley office, said one of his real estate agents discovered a man moving into a Woodland Hills home on the day its foreclosure was final. The agent drove by the house to do a spot check, and there was the enterprising squatter, carting in boxes. Police arrested the man, Curtis Miles Mak of San Franciso, for breaking and entering.

Mak has so far eluded punishment. After a criminal complaint was filed against him in September, he disappeared, and a warrant has been issued for his arrest. Investigators allege that Mak illegally lived in another Woodland Hills house for six months this year before moving into the home where he was discovered.

A couple caught illegally living in a Northridge home, Henry and Leah Butler, were required to perform 500 hours of community service and fined $500 earlier this year, said Deputy City Atty. David Knokey.

Often it is simply a lucky break that leads to an arrest, prosecutors said. In the Brown case, the squatter had bounced from home to home and was only apprehended after moving into a house whose owner kept a close eye on it because he was trying to sell it.

On a routine drive past his three-bedroom house in Toluca Lake, he noticed an unfamiliar potted plant sitting on the porch.

“I tried to open the door, and the key I had didn’t work,” said the owner, who did not want to be identified.

“I looked through the window and I saw furniture and everything. I was really upset.”

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Richard Schmidt, assistant city attorney