A lot of you already know that I had some serious issues this past winter while selling my house in Florida.  Unbeknownst to me, the woman who contracted to buy the house was attempting to commit mortgage fraud.  Although I realized (just in time) that something fishy was going on, and was able to stop it from happening,  I wasn't able to piece together what really happened until all the details came out in the indictment.  Apparently Alicia, the buyer/scammer sung like a little birdy once she was busted. 

She signed a real estate contract with me for $650,000.  We were to close on Dec 27, and per the contract, I had to be moved out of the house by Christmas day.  Everything seemed to be going along as planned.  The deposit money was put in escrow, and the normal 30 days passed.  I moved out of the house and had the utilities taken out of my name.  On December 27, we were supposed to close on the deal, but the mortgage company said it would delay closing until the following week.  Since I had to be in Iowa working that next week, I went to my lawyer's office to sign over Power of Attorney so that he could sign for me at closing and I wouldn't have to be there.

As I was signing the papers at the attorney's office, his fax machine started up and by coincidence, the loan papers from my buyer's mortgage company were coming in, in preparation for closing the next week.  I looked at the faxed papers and became very confused.  First, the amount wasn't $650,000, it was $740,000.  Second, the name of the buyer wasn't Alicia Nunes, it was someone else's name, and 3rd (uh oh) I saw my signature, forged, on a secondary contract.

I told my lawyer that my signature was forged and asked him to look at the secondary contract.  We realized that she had used a 'right to assign' clause in the original contract to assign the mortgage over to a 3rd party, for $90000.00 more than what we agreed upon.  A 'right to assign' is actually legal.  If you can find a house at a low price and want to make a profit on it by flipping it, that's perfectly within the boundaries of the law.  Most people do this with two transactions, they close on the house with the seller, then they close on the house with the next buyer.  To be able to legally flip a house in Florida, in one transaction instead of two, you need the original owner's signature.  This is the one they forged.

If forgery wasn't enough to tip me off, the other thing was that I knew I had priced the house at the top of its market at $650k.  I had the house officially appraised myself before putting it up for sale, and also sought the advice of a realtor who did a separate market analysis/comp for me.  The house wasn't worth $740k, yet they had an appraisal that said otherwise.  At this point, I didn't know who the third party buyer was, but I called off closing and we phoned the original 'buyer'.  She was calm, smooth and collected, and tried to make us out to be idiots because we didn't understand (in her words) a complex real-estate deal.  I told her that no real estate deal is complex enough to need a forged signature.  She admitted nothing at the time.

I realized soon after that my lawyer was completely ineffective.  I told him that he needed to write a letter to the escrow agent citing 'breach of contract' and get the deposit money signed over to me.  He did that, but never followed up on it.  6 weeks had passed and I heard nothing.  I called the escrow agent myself and he had some excuse about playing 'phone tag' with my lawyer... for 6 weeks?  I got him on the first try.  The end result however, was that after I explained to the escrow agent what had happened, he felt stuck in the middle - because Alicia had also sent a letter trying to get the deposit money released back to her, saying that I had flaked out and cancelled the deal.  He was not going to release the deposit money to either party until it got worked out in court or both parties agreed as to whom it should be released.

I started doing my own investigation.  I called the mortgage company that had sent the papers and found out who did the appraisal (because I figured it was bogus).  It was a real company that created it, but I couldn't prove yet that anything was faked.  I asked for a phone number for the 3rd party buyer, but they wouldn't give me that information, even though I told them they were committing some kind of fraud.  When I had gathered enough information to kind of piece together a logical theory, (she and the 3rd party were going to take the additional $90000 from the mortgage company, walk away and default on the loan).  I called the Broward County and Florida State Fraud Divisions to see what I could do.  A detective was assigned to the case.

More time passed and I heard little from the detective.  At this point, I had already been completely moved out of the Florida house, and my furniture was already in a Phoenix warehouse.  I wasn't able to live in the empty house in Florida.  The money I was going to get from the sale of the Florida house was planned to put on any new house I would find in Arizona, so I couldn't buy one there yet either.  I was 'homeless' for about 3 months (luckily I had a work apartment, of all places, in Iowa where I was working).  I had no idea how long it would take to get everything worked out.  I was totally stressed out, living in Iowa, trying to deal with the mess in Florida, and looking at homes that I couldn't buy in Arizona.

Meanwhile, I had put the Florida house up for sale again, and got a new buyer.  We were ready to close on the house when I got a message from their mortgage company that I couldn't sell my house until I officially ended the other contract with the first buyer (even though the secondary contract was invalid because of the forgery, the original contract between the first buyer and I was valid).  It couldn't be officially ended until the deposit money was released to either the original buyer, or to me.  Now I was screwed again.  The only way I could do it, even though it killed me to do so, was to release the money to the original buyer/con artist, so that it could be cleared and we could move on with the valid sale with the new buyer.

A few more weeks passed.  The detective had finally called Alicia and told her that they 'had' her.  Although it is difficult to prove forgery when no one sees you sign a document (this was all done in private after the original sale), knowingly passing forged documents is also a felony.  Mortgage Fraud is a felony and carries a 30-year sentence.  This had her very scared.  He told her that she needed to talk to me, to see if anything could be worked out.

She and I talked on the phone and I released upon her every bit of stress I had been feeling for months.  I made her feel like the dirtiest piece of white trash that ever walked the Earth.  She was crying and told me that she was only 21 and had her whole life ahead of her.  She didn't want to go to prison.  I didn't really care.  She said she had a lot of people in her ear telling her what to do and how to pull this off.  Although it would have been nice to prosecute all the others, I still didn't care -   She begged me and said she wanted to 'do the right thing'.  I told her if she really wanted to do the right thing, she'd send me the deposit money that I had to release back to her.  The next day, I received a cashier's check in the mail for the full amount.  The thing she forgot to do however, is make a deal with me that if I got the money, I'd go easy on her or let it go.  I continued working toward full prosecution.  I deserved the money and she deserved to get busted.

I had to complete a video deposition and create a written affidavit that will be used in court against her.  The indictment actually spelled out the details that I didn't know before, because she spilled the beans when the ax finally came down.  The '3rd party' buyer wasn't a real person.  It was a stolen identity.  Alicia was dealing on the phone with the mortgage company as that 3rd party.  She was going to take the additional $90000 and walk, as I suspected.  The person who's identity was stolen would have suffered the consequences of her defaulting on the loan.  Also, the appraisal was bogus.  She knew someone that worked as an appraiser and he was going to take a cut.  The mortgage company was the actual intended victim, but if I had gone through with the transaction, getting my money but knowing that it was a shady deal, she was going to lay false blame on me that I was involved.  She's been charged with Forgery, Knowingly passing forged documents, Identity Theft and Mortgage Fraud.  Hopefully she'll exhaust all of her resources on her defense, and still lose in the end.