But how could something like this happen, when the land was never upfor sale?
Daniel learns how a criminal with forged documentsimpersonatedhim and completed the sale without his knowledge.
You couldn’t walk through it.
[00:00:18] Bob: Somebody cut down a dozen trees or?
[00:00:20] Daniel Kenigsberg: They must have cut down hundreds of trees.
(MUSIC SEGUE)
[00:00:25] Bob: Welcome back to The Perfect Scam.
I’m your host, Bob Sullivan.
Daniel grew up in Fairfield, Connecticut, and still owned property there.
It was essentially his childhood backyard.
How could something like this happen?
And how would this kind of mess ever get untangled?
[00:01:19] Daniel Kenigsberg: Oh, okay.
So you had a Fairfield year?
[00:01:21] Bob: I did, I did.
[00:01:38] Bob: So obviously you went, right?
[00:01:39] Daniel Kenigsberg: Yeah, as a kid, sure.
[00:02:29] Daniel Kenigsberg: I actually moved into this home on my first birthday.
[00:02:32] Bob: Um, so you lived there until you were how old?
[00:02:34] Daniel Kenigsberg: I lived there until I went to uh college.
Daniel lived in a house on one lot and the vacant lot next door was a wooded playground.
[00:02:50] Daniel Kenigsberg: This whole area in 1953 was kind of undeveloped.
[00:03:41] Bob: Wow.
[00:03:41] Daniel Kenigsberg: That’s 1-7-1-6.
It belonged to the Parmlee family.
You know almost all the fathers were veterans of the second World War.
[00:05:23] Bob: So it should be clear why that property means so much to Daniel.
[00:05:43] Bob: Of course.
You know it’s not just a piece of land, right?
[00:05:46] Daniel Kenigsberg: Yeah, it’s, it’s funny.
So it’s a very different relationship.
[00:06:15] Daniel Kenigsberg: Yeah.
[00:06:17] Bob: Daniel now lives on Long Island where he enjoys a really successful medical career.
[00:07:27] Bob: They’re building a house next to your old house?
How could that possibly be?
Daniel hasn’t sold the land.
There must be some mistake.
But Daniel is fairly certain it’s not his friend making the mistake.
And so I believed him.
What is that like?
[00:08:08] Daniel Kenigsberg: Well, it’s, it’s surprising.
When was the first time you saw the property in its development?
[00:08:52] Bob: And what was that like?
But he’s shocked, particularly by what’s happened to that beautiful, wooded lot from his childhood.
They, they completely tore, tore it down.
[00:09:26] Bob: Ah, somebody cut down a dozen trees or…?
I mean…
[00:09:30] Bob: Oh my God!
[00:09:50] Bob: Wow.
[00:10:00] Bob: You had spent your childhood playing in these trees, right?
But…
[00:10:20] Bob: You had a tree fort in the apple tree.
[00:10:21] Daniel Kenigsberg: Yeah.
On land he owns.
And remember, Daniel has a lot to digest that day.
That sounds, that’s a lot to deal with in one afternoon.
[00:11:51] Bob: And what did she say?
[00:12:12] Bob: Someone pretended to be you and sold the property.
[00:12:14] Daniel Kenigsberg: Right.
And closed the sale and got the money.
And the developer got the necessary permits and razed all the trees on the land.
So the fight begins.
[00:12:42] Bob: I, I’m guessing there were lots of conversations between lawyers and builders.
So that was done.
[00:13:24] Bob: And stopped construction pretty quickly, right?
[00:13:26] Daniel Kenigsberg: Yeah, yeah.
[00:13:27] Bob: So with–, I mean within a week?
How quickly was that construction stopped?
[00:13:30] Daniel Kenigsberg: Oh it was within a week.
[00:13:31] Bob: Okay.
[00:13:32] Daniel Kenigsberg: Yeah.
And then when my brother Bernie died, it became 100% owned by me.
But that’s, I guess what happened.
How do you put back 70 years' worth of tree growth?
And you know, our position was, I wasn’t selling this land.
I refused several offers to sell this land.
And so you’re free to, you know, tear down the house and restore the land.
And that was the basis of the lawsuit that was filed.
[00:16:19] Daniel Kenigsberg: Right.
Local news is fascinated by the story which seems to have no happy ending possible.
So eventually, Daniel agrees to the best solution he can find.
So I’m not supposed to say anything bad about anybody.
[00:17:21] Daniel Kenigsberg: I no longer own the property.
[00:17:30] Daniel Kenigsberg: Well it’s, it’s what’s known as a forced sale.
[00:17:32] Bob: What is a forced sale?
So that’s forced sale.
I mean did you, did you get help from anybody as you were figuring this out?
And then the second part of this is that if this happens, is the town concerned?
Is law enforcement concerned?
And say the answer is, no.
[00:19:25] Bob: Of course.
[00:19:39] Bob: (laugh) I don’t mean to laugh, but yeah.
[00:19:44] Daniel Kenigsberg: They just didn’t, plain didn’t check.
[00:19:46] Bob: Yeah, yeah.
Okay, to my knowledge, this has not been done.
And…
[00:20:08] Bob: This is $330,000.
Do I have that right?
Well at the other bank, somebody’s on the receiving end of that money.
I mean wouldn’t that be the suspect?
You know she’d read something, you know, in the local paper that pertains to me.
And you know, she wanted to put like “No Dumping” signs on the property.
Anyway, I’ve been in regular touch with the person who’s right next door.
So it’s, it’s not that I’m not hard to find.
[00:21:45] Bob: And yet, the system let him down.
It’s kind of, you know, you…
I didn’t doubt that it happened, but it was like amazing to me.
How could this have happened?
[00:22:51] Bob: Still, Daniel maintains an admirable detachment from the madness of this situation.
It was just something, you know, very odd and rather big and very interesting to me.
[00:23:30] Bob: And so interesting is one word.
I bet you’ve used a few other words along the way for it.
[00:23:34] Daniel Kenigsberg: Yeah.
Is there anything that listener should be doing?
What, what do you think?
I don’t know.
[00:24:54] Bob: Hmm.
[00:25:06] Bob: Land rights are pretty fundamental to the order of things here.
So if it’s this fragile, that’s pretty alarming.
[00:25:14] Daniel Kenigsberg: Yeah.
How, how, how are you about this?
Fairfield County is one of the wealthiest, most educated counties in the country.
I think uh, the legal system there, in my experience, has worked like pretty darn well.
[00:26:37] Bob: That’s why Daniel is anxious to talk about what happened to him.
He wants this problem to be solved so no one else has to go through what he did.
Number one, that, that this can happen.
[00:27:07] Bob: Hopefully some good comes out of you sharing your story.
Maybe the right person hears it and decides it, to fix this problem.
According to one survey, fully half of realtors report someone has tried to impersonate them.
She is the CEO of the American Land Title Association.
We represent every single county.
We have a member in every nick and cranny of this great country of ours.
So every county in the country, we have somebody represented there.
This is something else.
This is seller impersonation, right?
But you’re right, it’s what, that’s what the fraudsters do.
[00:29:34] Bob: So wire transfer fraud is still happening.
In fact, it happened to a friend of one of my family members recently.
The news isn’t all bad though.
[00:30:01] Bob: And it’s on the rise?
It’s as bad as it was then?
Is it not as bad as it was then?
As I mentioned at the beginning of this episode, it almost happened to Graceland.
So they could uh recapture the actual home.
So it did not move forward.
Obviously, that was a high-profile sale, so that helped.
Not so with Daniel’s fraudulent sale or with others.
How can this be?
[00:32:03] Diane Tomb: Right?
So they actually oftentimes they use the real property owner’s Social Security number.
[00:32:42] Bob: Daniel’s situation was obviously emotional for him, but others lost out too.
In this crime in Connecticut, the property was, you know, was a beautiful, wooded property.
So you know the buyer was clearly a victim.
The, the owner was clearly a victim.
It’s a really, really messy crime.
So there’s that piece that seems to be, you know like very violating for people.
[00:33:28] Bob: What’s more personal and, and more sentimental than a piece of property.
[00:33:32] Diane Tomb: Right, your home, right?
A place where your memories with the, your loved ones.
[00:33:43] Diane Tomb: Right, yeah.
And this is the biggest purchase they’re ever going to make and sometimes that’s just gone quickly.
[00:34:07] Diane Tomb: I some cases, yes, but not always.
[00:34:21] Bob: What are the red flag that a crime like this might be happening?
And that’s something I think we need to apply to all aspects of our life, right?
They’re the ones that these fraudsters–, the fraudsters tend to sort of focus on.
[00:35:37] Bob: That’s interesting.
So requiring a video call, while I’m sure not perfect, is a protection.
[00:35:43] Diane Tomb: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:35:56] Bob: Have some kind of footprint out there in the world.
[00:35:58] Diane Tomb: Correct.
[00:36:11] Diane Tomb: You know, as you know real estate is local, right?
Can you help me understand that a little bit better?
I mean it’s a very daunting process.
And it’s free.
So any time anything has been done related to your property, you will get a notice.
So when any document is filed to it pertaining to your property, you will get a notice.
I think they would like government more frankly and realize it actually serves a purpose.
[00:38:18] Diane Tomb: It would be.
Nothing has been done.
So every county has a different approach how they do it, but it’s free.
[00:38:47] Bob: That makes a ton of sense to me.
I, I love giving people specifics, the actions they can take to help themselves.
[00:39:00] Diane Tomb: First and foremost, you know, always ask questions, right?
[00:39:18] Bob: What else can consumers do?
And in, in this case, as you know, there’s really two victims, right?
There’s the unsuspecting buyer, like they’re not, they’re assuming the proper–, right?
Why wouldn’t they?
And I think there’s always you know that, that trust your instinct.
I think as humans, you know, we talked about that part earlier.
If something seems off, it probably is off, and doing something about it.
You know that’s the most important thing.
But you know then there’s the back end of it, right?
But technology’s also opened a lot of these doors for criminals, right?
[00:41:58] Diane Tomb: Yeah, it did.
Well we here at The Perfect Scam will be right there with them.
For The Perfect Scam, I’m Bob Sullivan.
Call the AARP Fraud Watch data pipe Helpline at 877-908-3360.
Their trained fraud specialists can provide you with free support and guidance on what to do next.
That address again is: theperfectscampodcast@aarp.org.
Be sure to find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
For AARP’s The Perfect Scam, I’m Bob Sullivan.
