The woman discovers how property was stolen in identity theft of real estate fraud with international crime ring

A Luiziana woman is arranging to recover the title on a property that has been in her family for centuries.

The victim, Danita fighting, is a reinstatement of a clear property title, a few months after the fraudsters forced her to use an invited ID and sold the land for money for non -doubt investors.

It is a form of real estate fraud that is becoming increasingly common, and investigators believe that this case in Louisiana can be linked to an international crime ring.

Batiste, a health care manager in her 50s living in Texas, inherited the part of the resident in Lake Charles, La, from her mother in 2020 shortly before she died.

“This land has been to our family for generation after generation, 200 years and maybe further back,” says Batiste, who is of French descent Creole, says Realtor.com®.

The house on the property was destroyed at Hurricane Laura, and she planned to rebuild a house there and find tenants rented as a future Side source.

Until then, Batiste had little involvement with the draw, in addition to hiring someone to lower the grass twice a month and pay property taxes each year. But despite receiving offers, she pledged to never sell, seeing the property as an inheritance to be passed on to her children.

So, when she went online to pay taxes on the draw in December, she was shocked when she learned that the property was sold for $ 45,000 in front of the previous month and had a new corporate owner, Live Oak Insurance Co. based in Luiziana.

Astonished, Batiste called the Live Director General Andrew David Hankins, who had signed the work of transferring property and learned that he had no idea that the person who sold that lot was not a real battle.

“I’m Danita Batiste True,” she recalled saying to Hankins. “And he goes,”? Seed? “And I said, ‘I own that property. I didn’t sell it to you. I don’t know who did it but I didn’t.

Batiste and Hankins reported the case to the police. An official with the office of the Sheriff of the Calcasieu parish confirmed that the case was under investigation, but refused to comment further, citing the following investigation.

Fortunately, the second for Batte quickly flags the fraud, the $ 45,000 that the living oak pays for the parcel were quickly freezing and the charges turned back, according to a person known with the matter.

However, the title for the property has not yet returned to Batsite’s name, despite its repeated complaints about assistance to Lake Charles’s legal firm that presents a deceitful sale. The firm, studies & Lavergne, did not respond to an email seeking comment from Realtor.com.

Hankins also did not respond to a telephone message seeing an interview, which remained with a receptionist at Lake Charles’ funeral, where he is also a funeral and CEO director.

There is no suggestion to write by any of the parties in deceptive sales other than so unidentified criminals who imposed tides.

Still, the Batiste is frustrated that its forged signature, which was accompanied by a stolen notary stamp in Texas and two fake witnesses signatures, went through the betting process that is supposed to remove fraud in real estate transactions.

Making the issue particularly outrageous, the fraudsters do not even sign the work using its correct name. Instead, they signed it “Danita Leday”, the maiden name she has not used for decades.

Batiste hopes that sharing her history will warn others of deceiving the theft of identity and raising awareness of property owners and real estate professionals.

“What if I were in the process of building a house on that land?” She says. “I would all be kept because I don’t seem to possess me anymore.”

Investigators suspect the Luiziana case is associated with the international ring of fraudsters

A person acquainted with the investigation told Realtor.com that the fraudulent sale of Batiste land suits a pattern of fraud that occur across the country, and may have in an international crime ring.

Processes from the phonetic sale to Lake Charles were traced to a bank account connected to a Bronx, NY address.

This account was opened with a passport issued by Sierra Leone’s African nation, although investigators believe the passport was forged under a false identity.

The bank account in question is frozen, and investigators are trying to determine if it has been used in other similar real estate frauds that have occurred across the country.

“It’s going all over the country,” says Realtor.com source. “I think they have access to the Internet officer of the courts, and they are looking for individuals who own property but do not live on property, or who are not in the same city.”

As an overseas owner of a free property without unpaid mortgage, Batiste unfortunately fits the profile favored by the fraud ring.

How can home owners protect from similar fraud

Marx David Sterbcow, a real estate fraudulent Atttorney and managing partner of the New Orleans Law Law Group’s legal firm, tells Realtor.com that he has seen similar cases of fraud in recent years.

“Next to an industry problem, and there you have to be something done to help manage it,” he says. “When we started moving to remote closure and digital signatures, which put this on a rocket course for problems, for people across the United States.”

Sterbcow says no. 1 What the property owners can do to protect them from fraudulent sales is to buy a homeowner’s policy for securing the title, which covers legal fees to protect the title.

Owners of high -risk property to be targeted, including the elderly and owners living in another state, may also consider a commercial product “Blocking the title”, which can help warn the owner if Someone Treons Treons to make unauthorized changes to Title Property

Many circuits also offer free title monitoring, and homeowners can be registered in automatic notifications by Clen County if there is any update of registries on their property.

Sterbcow notes that, in many cases, the title or deceitful deeds may not be revealed by a homeowner in absentia for years, making the problem even more difficult to correct.

“She’s very, very lucky to find this so quickly,” he says the issue of Batiste. “I have seen many people over the years who have been absolutely destroyed, positively destroyed by some of these frauds, including some who are very sophisticated.”