Valuable land in Concord, Massachusetts stolen from couple. Now a home is being built there
CONCORD - A couple says thieves targeted their property in Concord, Massachusetts and sold it. The new buyers are now building a house there.
"They stole our dream," Dr. Omar Jaraki told WBZ-TV's I-Team. "They stole our property. They took a mortgage on it. They're building a house on it."
Gone are some of the beautiful trees that the doctor and his wife wanted to keep and the house is nothing like what they imagined. Dr. Jaraki said they don't like it and they don't want it.
How the land was stolen
It was an elaborate scheme. Thieves targeted the vacant land and, pretending to be Halla Jaraki, emailed a local realtor and put the property on the market.
The Jarakis live in South Carolina and had no idea their land was up for sale.
They only discovered the problem when they called town hall looking for their tax bill. That's when they say they were told the property was sold. Halla Jaraki said she was shocked and told the clerk they did not sell their land. But, it was fraudulently sold.
Sold for just $525,000
The Jarakis learned the property sold in months for $525,000, which was less than the asking price and much less than the $1 million it was actually worth. The money was sent to a bank account and shipped overseas.
"A quick half a million for a counterfeit driver's license and passport and sending a couple of emails. That's a day's work," the Jarakis' attorney, Richard Vetstein, told WBZ.
The couple bought the vacant land in the upscale Concord neighborhood 33 years ago. They planned to build a family home on the property when they retired.
No one ever met or talked to the fraudsters who pretended to be Halla. The thieves signed all of the closing documents electronically or sent them through the mail with a phony seal from a notary in Texas.
"So many other red flags"
"The minute I saw this deed, I knew it was a forgery," Vestein said. "You just can tell by looking at it. Just the handwriting, it looks off. There were so many other red flags."
Red flags that the broker and both the buyer and seller's attorneys missed.
One of the biggest was the identification the thieves provided. There was a South Carolina driver's license that looks nothing like a real one and a United States passport that had the same photo as the driver's license. That's not possible because license photos are taken at the Department of Motor Vehicles. The woman in the fake ID's looks nothing like Halla Jaraki.
"This is a disaster. It's not only for us but for other people like it's going to happen to them," she told WBZ.
The Jarakis are heartbroken because the property had special meaning for them. They were married in the Boston area and always planned to return. Their lawyer has filed a lawsuit against the buyer and the lawyers involved in the transaction.
"What do we do about the house?"
"They're definitely going to get their property back," Vestein said. "I think the only question is, what do we do about the house? There's kind of two ways to go. They can deed the property back to the owners or there can some sort of financial settlement."
The Jarakis want more than just their property and money. They want the fraudsters caught. Halla says for all they have gone through, "these people need to be punished."
There is a chance the thieves could be caught. The Jarakis and their attorney said the FBI has opened a criminal investigation into the fraudulent sale.