In New York, a man was sentenced to four and a half to nine years in prison for illegally transferring the titles of seven million-dollar houses from their true owners to himself or a corporation.
How was he able to pull this off? Because the owners didn’t live in the properties and hardly visited them. Once the title was transferred, he either rented them out or sold them. In one of the properties, the criminals visited the property with a buyer to inspect it and even told tenants they had to move out.
According to this article, to pull it off the man “filed false documents with the New York City Department of Finance, Office of the City Register, which maintains land records and other real property filings in New York City, including records relating to ownership and encumbrances, such as liens and mortgages”. The scheme, which had been taking place for years, wasn’t discovered until an employee of the actual owner of one of the properties noticed construction workers renovating the property.
You can read the full article here.