Hat tip to daytrip for sending this in from www.wfaa.com:
PLANO — Jeff Nunn and Melissa Nunn still can’t quite understand what’s happened to the home they worked so hard to build nine years ago.
“It’s awful, awful,” Melissa said in her driveway Thursday afternoon.
They are victims of a wild squatting scheme that Plano police are now trying to unravel, too.
Jeff and Melissa recently divorced and put their home in the Kings Ridge subdivision up for sale. Jeff moved out first. Melissa moved out in March, but they left many of their personal belongings behind.
Tuesday, neighbors called the Nunns to tell them strangers were in and out of the house. When Melissa arrived, she found men painting her home.
“They were moving in! They brought flowers! They put a clock on the wall! I couldn’t believe it,” she said. “There was a man — he was painting the room and painting a cross on the wall!”
Those strangers were claiming Jeff and Melissa Nunn’s home was theirs. They taped a piece of paper in the window announcing the home was abandoned and they were taking it over.
Plano police arrested Jack Brewer, 74, because he was wanted in Denton County. He remains in the Collin County Jail on a $50,000 bond.
This may be just the beginning. When Jeff Nunn went in to see the damage, he says he found a calendar full of plans and a binder full of confidential information on other potential victims.
“I mean, the files they had on people were so amazing and so thick,” he said. “The book was full of Social Security numbers, full of drivers license numbers, student ID’s, ID numbers on it, e-mail accounts, user names, passwords — all that kind of stuff.”
“They were stealing our mail, probably going back two-to-three months,” Jeff Nunn continued. “They had Social Security statements for Melissa. They had bank statements, utility statements. They turned the electricity back on. How, I don’t know, because you have to have a Social Security number to do that.”
“They had our divorce decree, my paycheck stubs,” Melissa added. “It is very scary.”
Jeff saw Brewer’s wife pulling out of the driveway to his home Thursday morning. He followed her and called police. She was taken into custody because in her vehicle, she had one of Melissa’s purses filled with her own personal belongings. She also had photos of the Nunn’s children.
“It’s so upsetting,” Melissa said. “These people violated us. Came into our home, destroyed our home, destroyed our privacy.”
Plano police say an intense investigation is in its earliest stages.
http://www.wfaa.com/news/
from wcvarones:
Jim,
I don’t know if the police here in Atlanta metro even have the time or resources to go after all of this stuff. It seems to happen too often. And it doesn’t seem like the banks/servicers are much help in securing properties are helping police. It seems the media has to track down the bank people through great effort. These people seem to drive around looking for empty homes, of which there are a lot around here.
The squatters are not the only crooks in this banking/mortgage scheme.
Anyway, your example is straight up theft of property/identity theft/B&E, etc. I hope somebody goes to jail.
Moving out and leaving stuff? Really, really bad move.
Goes to show you that you can never leave a property unoccupied in a “down” economy. If its not copper thieves or swatters its these doplegangers!
As someone old enough to have watched the Watergate hearings, I have but one question. Why aren’t Obama and half of Congress in jail? Where are articles of impeachment? Watergate was one physical break-in. PRISM is hundreds of millions of electronic break-ins. Nixon must be rolling in his grave.
They did not forward their mail after they moved out? That is a strike against them right there. Anyway it takes 5 years in Tx for adverse possession to take affect, so that is an issue. Of course the house was no longer insured as in Tx policies say that if a house is unoccupied longer than 90 days the policy lapses. But its clear that since divorces are public info this sort of thing can happen (as well as to houses of folks who are recently deceased.)Now one wonders given that this was an upscale subdivision in Plano, did the subdivision have a constable keep watch, and did they notify this group to keep watch on the house?