CLAY COUNTY, Fla. – Imagine owning a piece of waterfront property near Black Creek for decades and learning it’s been sold to a developer without you even knowing it. It’s a Middleburg man’s reality. His nearly 3-acre plot of land was sold to a Jacksonville developer by a scammer.
“It was really numbing to know that someone can steal something that’s paid for and you have a deed on and all of the sudden, it’s not yours anymore,” John Rooney said.
Rooney says he purchased a nearly 3-acre plot of land in 1996 as an investment for roughly $35,000. It’s land that was almost stolen from him without him even realizing that a deed with his address had been sold to a Florida home builder for $40,000. Rooney says he learned of the scam as the developer was preparing to break ground on his land.
WATCH: Northeast Florida Clerk of Courts team up against property and mortgage fraud
“There was a piece of equipment, front end loader on the property -- and I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, this was caught just in time, what if they had built a house on my property? What would I have done then?’” he said.
Rooney says Clay County detectives were the first to alert him. The scammers manufactured a fake driver’s license and a bogus property deed.
The driver’s license number was one number off and his signature was printed instead of signed. On the property deed, his name was spelled John Romey, instead of his real name, John Roney. They’re small pieces of critical personal information that a Florida title company failed to identify at closing, authorizing the $40,000 transfer to an overseas account. A local bank, however, caught the discrepancy.
“Truist Bank stopped it. They saw some irregularities in the closing and the transfer of money, so they shut the whole thing down and contacted the sheriff’s office,” Rooney said.
Better Business Bureau spokesperson, Tom Stephens, suspects an organized crime ring. “Never underestimate the ability of a scammer to use technology, desire and greed to overcome an honest individual.”
Stephens has been with the BBB for 29 years and says there’s one easy solution for every Florida property owner to keep this from happening to them.
RESOURCE: Florida Property Alert Service
“Every county has a property alert service through the circuit court. So, you can go to statewide property alert services online, and it has a list of the counties and all you have to do is punch a button and you can sign up. Any time anything comes through with a name that is similar to yours, you’ll get an e-mail that says this transaction occurred on this property,” Stephens explained.
Roney says because the title company failed to identify the irregularities and misspellings, they were responsible for ensuring the rightful ownership of the land to Mr. Rooney. The FBI is still working this case, and as far as we know, the scammers have not been caught.