HOMEOWNERS are being evicted from their own homes through a surprising legal loophole.
Deed fraud has left many property owners without a home, or if they’re lucky, paying rent to live in a property they already purchased.
Shelia Gibson is fighting for her home after falling victim to deed fraud in GeorgiaCredit: Atlanta News First
Gibson came home one day, to a house she purchased in 2020, to find an eviction notice posted on her gateCredit: Getty
State Representative Gabe Okoy has since filed and helped pass legislation aimed at closing the loopholes allowing this type of fraud to happen so easily.Credit: Atlanta News First
“I just don’t understand how the whole thing can happen,” Shelia Gibson, a Georgia resident and victim of this type of fraud told local CBS affiliate WANF-TV.
“We sacrificed a lot to buy the house,” she said.
“It upsets me just to talk about it, I feel so violated.”
Gibson’s family bought their house for $480,000 in 2020, according to real estate records.
But after living in her home for two years, she came home to a notice posted on her gate.
It read, in part, that her home was “scheduled to be evicted immediately by the Fulton County Marshal’s Department.”
Police tried to evict Gibson two months prior to seeing that notice, but were “unable to to gain access to the property” because of a malfunction with the gate, according to court documents.
“Had it not been for that gate, we could have come home, and all our possessions would have been on the street,” Gibson said.
Under Georgia law, clerks are not allowed to ask for ID when someone files a house deed.
And as crazy as it sounds, they don’t have to prove they own the property that they’re trying to seek an eviction for.
The alleged fake landlord submitted all this paperwork without having to prove anything because state law does not explicitly require it when initially filing for evictions.
As long as the required documents are filled out, and handed in to the county clerk, under state law they must accept it.
This has led to hundreds of cases throughout the state of scammers filing false deeds under someone else’s identity, even going as far as taking out second mortgages in their names and destroying the real homeowner’s credit.
An investigation by Atlanta News First also uncovered a massive lack of oversight in the notarizing process of stamping the deeds, allowing this to happen.
This all happens behind the back of the real homeowner, who is clueless until it is too late.
“It’s a crisis,” Fulton County Clerk Ché Alexander said of this issue during a town hall meeting last month.
Alexander details that the scammers typically “e-file” the paperwork.
“It’s an electronic process so they can do it at their kitchen table,” she said.
“They send it to us, and we look to see if it’s in proper form.”
She also broke down how clerks in the state of Georgia are now allowed to investigate any eviction documents or interrogate anyone who’s filing them.
And in Gibson’s case, a man named Michael James Bourff is the one who filed their eviction with the Fulton County Clerk.
Bourff claimed he was the “agent” of the home and that Gibson and her family were past due on their rent by over $12,000, with no proof required on his part.
He also filed paperwork to “execute the writ of possession,” which means he was trying to take the property and force the deed to be legally signed over to him.
Bourff says since Gibson failed to file an answer in court to the initial eviction notice, he wants the property.
But Gibson claims she was neither served with that initial eviction paperwork, nor has she ever owed anyone rent on the property since she owns it.
Another property owner, Eric Clark, was a victim of deed fraud who had a second mortgage taken out under his name.
He is now fighting for his house in court, while he is forced to pay rent to the scammer who essentially stole his identity while they battle it out in front of a judge.
Georgia has since enacted legislation, House Bills 888 and 1292, set to go into effect in 2025, that would expand the powers of the county clerk’s office in these cases.
It would also require the clerks to obtain an ID and confirm their identity before approving anything.
“It’s just so crazy how someone could walk into an office, provide no identification and no one bothers to check on the computers to make sure this person actually owns the home,” Gibson said before the change.
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