Man illegally rented foreclosed homes - And you thought the BANKS were bad...

[justbroke]

February 17, 2010

Officials: Man illegally rented foreclosed homes

Authorities say a man is accused of illegally taking possession of foreclosed homes in Pasco County and renting them to unsuspecting tenants.

Authorities say 48-year-old Stephen Thomas Bybel was arrested Wednesday for one count of scheme to defraud. A jail official says he was released on $5,000 bond.

Detectives say that Bybel has taken possession of 72 homes and is currently renting 31 of them. Authorities say he would drive around neighborhoods, look for homes in foreclosure, and then claim them as his own. Authorities say Bybel claims this is legitimate practice and he has conducted several such conversions.

Investigators are identifying property owners and notifying the tenants.

It was not immediately known if he had an attorney.

Source:
Miami Herald

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/florida/AP/story/1485165.html

__________________________
We keep seeing posts about Banks and how they foreclose on the wrong home and how they are even refusing to foreclose. This person found the PERFECT thing to do with the Shadow Inventory... only he got caught!

[nodollarsnomo]

The same thing happened in a town not to far away from me. The guy was even involved in city government and I think he had even made a run for mayor.

He too felt like he had done nothing wrong.

[MSbklawyer]

You would think that the banks would be renting out these properties. Obviously there are people who want to rent them . . . witness this man's transactions with his tenants. They might not get as much rent as they would if they were not foreclosures, but it seems like any positive cash flow from the properties would be better than nothing.

[OhioFiler]

I like the way this guy was thinking, a real entrepreneur.

[frogger]

You would think that the banks would be renting out these properties.

Not in my area. The banks don't rush to kick out tenants that are in place, but they will not rent to a new tenant. Once a property goes vacant, it stays that way.

Sheer stupidity........

[OhioFiler]

Not in my area. The banks don't rush to kick out tenants that are in place, but they will not rent to a new tenant. Once a property goes vacant, it stays that way.

Sheer stupidity........

The banks aren't in a position to act as landlords and probably can't do so legally.

Imagine the feigned indignation of politicians like Barney Franks when Bank A kicks out a family of 8 via foreclosure then rents the place to Joe Slumlord who sublets it back to the family of 8 for several hundred dollars more each month than their original mortgage.

[MSbklawyer]

The banks aren't in a position to act as landlords and probably can't do so legally.

Imagine the feigned indignation of politicians like Barney Franks when Bank A kicks out a family of 8 via foreclosure then rents the place to Joe Slumlord who sublets it back to the family of 8 for several hundred dollars more each month than their original mortgage.

The name is "Fwank", not "Frank" or "Franks". I heard the man pronounce it that way himself. Nor is it "F*g", as Dick Armey pronounced it.

[OhioFiler]

the name is "fwank", not "frank" or "franks". I heard that from the man himself. Nor is it "f*g", as dick armey pronounced it.

That's funny!

[flyinbroke]

This happened quite a bit down here too. They always request cash, and the tenants are none the wiser until the banks show up to evict and they have no clue why. By that time, dude is long gone with the cash.

[justbroke]

When I last went to rent, just before filing, I checked the address, against the Owner's name. I made sure there were no foreclosure proceedings by checking the County Court website. I almost fell to one of these shady people, trying to rent me a $1M property for $1,500 a month.

If it doesn't make sense, it's probably wrong. Do your due diligence. Check out the owner. If it's a management company, you're usually okay, but I'd still run a foreclosure report by address.

[NHC]

..Something like this happened here too.....I want to say last summer.....

[tigergem]

Once upon a time in central Texas there was a little town just that side of one of the largest army bases...

Deployment happened and suddenly there were about 300 vacant houses in that little town.

And ... coincidentally approximately that same number of homeless people living on the street.

And ... coincidentally about $2.5 million of unclaimed federal money in the state coffers earmarked to prevent or alleviate homelessness.

No existing eligible community block grant recipients had a grant writer on the ball to request it.

And one little entrepreneurial spirit tried to tie all of this together in a legitimate endeavor to put the homeless into houses.

Stonewalled by the state, who really wanted to absorb that money into the treasury for other purposes -- probably for Hair Perry's hairdresser -- once the deadline passed to request it.

Who committed the greater crime?

It's no wonder stuff like this happens.

[DeadManCrawling]

LOL, not surprised.

I live in Pasco County, FL, and the landscape here is a bleak, exhausted battlefield of empty homes. Vast subdivisions of thousands of homes sit vacant, in the wake of our housing disaster. Truly, it looks like something from an Edgar Allen Poe nightmare. The police and sheriff cannot keep up with merely patrolling these areas, much less inquiring about whether the occupants are there legally.

I drive by these wastelands every day. It is getting worse, and more stories like this will be coming I am sure.

From the epicenter, this is slowly engulfing the nation. Once-safe states and cities are starting to feel the pinch, and the phenomenon is probably coming to your town, even if you believe otherwise.

Very few places are safe when the entire nation is in a downward spiral.

Unless you work on Wall Street or in D.C. you will eventually be impacted.

[bulletproof77]

LOL, not surprised.

I live in Pasco County, FL, and the landscape here is a bleak, exhausted battlefield of empty homes. Vast subdivisions of thousands of homes sit vacant, in the wake of our housing disaster. Truly, it looks like something from an Edgar Allen Poe nightmare. The police and sheriff cannot keep up with merely patrolling these areas, much less inquiring about whether the occupants are there legally.

I drive by these wastelands every day. It is getting worse, and more stories like this will be coming I am sure.

From the epicenter, this is slowly engulfing the nation. Once-safe states and cities are starting to feel the pinch, and the phenomenon is probably coming to your town, even if you believe otherwise.

Very few places are safe when the entire nation is in a downward spiral.

Unless you work on Wall Street or in D.C. you will eventually be impacted.

The exact same type of phenomenon is happening in the upper and lower deserts of Southern California. You may have heard the stories recently on the news of the City of Victorville, CA. bulldozing a tract of BRAND NEW homes. It's true, took a week and I saw it happen and now that land is going "back to being desert"..As they say, "we ain't seen nothing yet ".....

[lsditter]

Happened to Us!

My husband and I had this happen to us. We rented a place and about two or three months later the banker showed up and told us that the person had fraudulently rented it out to us and that it was a foreclosure. So we ended up making an agreement with the bank to pay the rent to them. Later when my husbnd and I went to purchase the place I noticed that it was a person's name endorsing the rent checks and not the bank so I think an employee at the bank was actually cashing the checks. My husband and I did eventually end up buying the house but we never did go after the origianl renter or the bank for fraud. Maybe we should have, but we just let it go. We will definately know better next time. I guess we should have known something was up when they told us we could go ahead and go look at it without them being there since they lived out of town. You live and you learn!