This happened more than five years ago, but today such stories are happening to hundreds of people across the country. Perhaps my experience will be useful to those who have encountered something similar, or will help protect themselves for those who believe that this cannot happen. I lived with my mother in a three-room apartment in the Writers' House in the center of Moscow. Now such an apartment costs approximately 20 million rubles. 2/3 of the apartment belonged to my mother, and 1/3 belonged to me. Then my mother was about 70 years old. She was disabled, suffered from diabetes and, as a result, experienced mental problems. One day my mother was given a free ticket to a boarding house by the social service. The boarding house looked decent and did not cause concern. But this is where it all began.
Massage therapist and “accidental” meeting with his girlfriend
During the massage sessions, my mother told the massage therapist (he is about 50 years old) about me. Perhaps she wanted to arrange my personal life this way. She was not embarrassed by the big age difference with me and his Yaroslavl registration. It wasn't interesting to me.
Returning from the boarding house, my mother accidentally met this massage therapist’s girlfriend in our yard. She introduced herself as a single mother. It bothered me. Too unusual an accident. I immediately suspected something was wrong.
At that time, due to her illnesses, my mother became a completely naive person, although by nature she did not differ in special abilities for self-defense. Many years ago, she was deceived by her brother, to whom she gave the dacha inherited from her grandmother. During his lifetime, my grandmother took a signature from him that he would not kick us out if anything happened. But as soon as the grandmother died, he, of course, took everything for himself. With this in mind, I agreed with my mother that I would make repairs in the apartment, and she would transfer her share in it to me in order to protect our property.
In the end, I made repairs, but my mother refused to transfer the property to me. And she began to talk more and more about that single mother. She said that this unfortunate girl works as a secretary in an office nearby. The girl started giving her gifts and introduced her to her child. All their meetings took place on the street. The girl did not invite her mother to visit her, denying that she lived in a rented apartment. She didn’t come to us either, avoiding meeting me.
This “friendship” seemed suspicious to me, and I talked with friends who had previously worked in law enforcement. They advised installing a “parental control” option on your mobile phone. Fortunately, my mother’s SIM card was registered to me, and installing this option was not difficult. It was enough to contact your mobile operator with a request to activate this service; everyone has it. Then it cost 70 rubles per month. I highly recommend that everyone give their elderly parents their SIM card. If you find yourself in a similar situation, you can quickly find your relatives by geolocation.
Mom began to have new things, the origin of which she refused to talk about. It was clothes, cheap cuckoo clocks, postcards. Mom claimed that her friend Tanya gave all this to her. I called Tanya - she denied these gifts.
As a result, my new friend managed to turn my mother against me. They told her that I was an enemy and wanted to evict her from the apartment. Mom began to distance herself from me. But I tried to keep an eye on her, I was afraid that they might kill her because of the apartment. During the day, when I was working, she went for a walk - at this time we had conversations with her.
The suspicious woman gained more and more confidence. She said that she came from Kursk. Sometimes I asked my mother to share care products, diapers and other things that were given to her by social security for disability. Realizing that my mother had previously worked as a teacher, she used the child as an indulgence from everything. Later, my mother got the impression that these were her relatives.
This woman did not directly ask for an apartment. This was a delicate game. As far as I knew from conversations with my mother, my new friend constantly complained that she had no housing, and I didn’t love my mother, and I didn’t need an apartment. Then this girl got ready to marry a massage therapist from a sanatorium and began hinting that they really needed an apartment. They rather gently persuaded my mother to transfer the housing. They didn’t insist, but said that mom was a very good person and the inheritance should go into good hands.
Distinctive features of “black brokers”
In order not to fall into the trap of scammers, you should be especially careful when choosing an agency or private intermediary agent. It is best to contact professionals who have been known on the market for several years. Such organizations value their reputation too much to engage in dubious transactions.
The following signs may also be the first warning signs:
- The intermediary arranges business meetings for you in a cafe, in a car, on the street, but not in the office of his company. There are different reasons - the office was flooded due to a water pipe break, it suffered from a fire and other force majeure. One can draw a logical conclusion that this agent has no trace of any office;
- The imaginary realtor refuses to give contact numbers of his agency and does not say the address of its location. A real broker will not hide such obvious data;
- “Black realtors” really like to work with advances. For example, they offer clients to transfer part of the money to them in advance, demanding in return the execution of a power of attorney or other title documents.
The unexpected disappearance of my mother
And then one day I come home and my mother is not there. I start looking for her and calling. A man picks up the phone, introduces himself as the father of that girl from the Kursk region and says: “Your mother came to visit us at the dacha. There's no need to bother her." I said that if they don’t return my mother, a capture group will come. I was bluffing, of course, but it worked.
The man handed the phone to his mother. I understood from her voice that she was not feeling well: her speech was sluggish, her voice seemed glassy, and she constantly repeated the phrase: “There is a child here” (apparently, with the help of his presence, these suspicious individuals tried to show my mother that it was safe with them). At the end of the conversation, the man promised that he would return my mother in a couple of days, when she “rested.” They put her on a train. And when my mother arrived, she simply said that her friends had invited her to the dacha. I wrote a statement to the police, but they shrugged it off.
How to become black realtors
Black realtors are people who are inclined to get rich quickly and have no moral principles. This is a trait of many, but those who want to earn even more cross the line. They want the full price of your apartment.
During times of crisis and decreased consumer activity, realtors have fewer transactions, and the family needs to be fed. Intermediaries begin to look for new ways to earn money and try to earn more.
This is how criminal groups appear. In a conspiracy to take possession of apartments, everyone from the director of the agency to the employees of passport offices, housing office, police, notaries and authorities.
Not all realtors are bad, there are excellent specialists and sellers. In this article we talk specifically about the work patterns of black realtors. Those who have crossed the line and make a living from crime. They are called black realtors only because of the criminal activity associated with real estate.
What tricks do “black realtors” use to force a person to sign over an apartment to them?
Black realtors never work alone; as a rule, they are a whole group of people.
They find information about people at risk. First of all, these are lonely elderly people, antisocial people (drug addicts/alcoholics), and disabled people. Elderly people are the first at risk. For a professional fraudster, gaining their trust is just like taking candy from a child. The latter is even more difficult. They can help carry a bag up the stairs and make contact under the guise of a postman. They can play the role of a social worker and bring a “bonus” to their pension. A lonely pensioner will be happy with 5-10 thousand rubles. For a fraudster, the money is small when an apartment worth 7-10 million rubles is at stake.
Having provided assistance, be it material, physical or moral, they try to talk about various topics in order to earn trust. Sometimes scammers call, ask how you are doing, if you need help, and accidentally drop by for a visit. They go to any lengths. They can put pressure on pity and settle in an apartment, taking them to the dacha several times, thereby fueling the elderly person’s interest in life outside the city.
A more terrible scenario is to drink, gradually making the victim drunk, and then completely control the situation. Sooner or later the documents will be signed. The scammers will get the apartment. A trusting elderly person will end up somewhere far away in the region or in a nursing home as the best option.
Legitimate schemes for ensuring the life of older people include, for example, a will or an annuity agreement with life support. The latter is the safest method for the victim that black realtors can use.
Work by proxy
There is nothing terrible about working under a power of attorney. A general power of attorney is a legal means of performing transactions on behalf of the owner. But there are several pitfalls here. So, the schemes of black realtors in this case.
For example, after completing a transaction, it may turn out that the power of attorney had already been revoked at the time of the transaction. That is, the owner actually signed such a power of attorney, and then revoked it. Accordingly, all actions carried out using this power of attorney will be declared invalid. Of course, the money for your purchase will be returned to you. But this process can take years.
To protect yourself, be sure to check whether the power of attorney is valid in the Register of Revoked Powers of Attorney at the notary chamber.
Well, insist on the presence of the owner at the time of registration of the transaction. If representatives of the other party refuse in every possible way to provide you with a person “alive”, citing the fact that he is sick or is in another country, be wary.
An attempt to take away my mother's passport
After returning, she said that her friends were calling her to the dacha again. At this point I already realized that the matter smelled of kerosene, and took away her passport. I heard her calling these people and complaining about me. They advised her to call the police, which she did. The police arrived, I explained everything, but according to the law I had to return the document.
Honestly, by that time I had already consulted on the topic of depriving my mother of legal capacity. But this is a complex procedure that requires the participation of a prosecutor and voluntary examinations. So I abandoned this idea.
After some time, my mother went to the “dacha” again, and ended up in some village in the Kursk region. The beacon on the phone worked, but the search area was large. I called the Kursk police, and they agreed to look for my mother - unofficially, of course.
At the same time, through my friends, I managed to find a guy with registration in the village, which was determined by geolocation, and a car with Kursk license plates. We went with him and tried to find my mother. While we were searching, we found a bunch of abandoned places where there were people who found themselves in a similar situation.
Five days later we found my mother in the foster home at the monastery. She said that she was old and needed to pray all the time, so she refused to go with us. She had never been a pious person before. It was difficult for me to persuade my mother to return to Moscow.
Strange death
Three weeks before her death, the woman suddenly felt ill, although she had not been ill before. At the clinic I took tests four times - each time the doctors shrugged and made new diagnoses: hypertensive crisis, rotavirus. After the fourth visit to the doctors, a decision was made to hospitalize him. A few days later, the hospital performed a CT scan and urgently transferred the patient to intensive care. She died two hours later. The report, which was issued the next day, states that death was the result of bilateral pneumonia and aortic rupture. The family does not rule out that the cause of the woman’s sudden death could have been poisoning.
Now Olga is an heiress, but the apartment in fact no longer belongs to her mother. Three court hearings took place without the participation of the family, about which no one knew anything.
Criminal threat
After returning, my mother stayed at home. And here again there is a “surprise”. I am called to the police and informed about possible criminal prosecution based on my mother’s statement. The file contains a certificate of mutilation allegedly caused by my dogs (at that time I actually had five dogs, but they loved my mother and could not bite me). I returned home, and it turned out that those same Kursk “friends” advised my mother to go to the hospital for an examination. In reality, of course, there were lesions on my mother’s skin - but as a consequence of diabetes, no bites. But the statement said that I set the dogs on her. I could have been locked up for eight years, and then the apartment would definitely have gone to the raiders.
Fortunately, my lawyer was stronger. He was able to get the case dismissed without going to trial. How did it happen? I think he and I are simply tired of the police with our complaints, petitions and attempts to initiate criminal proceedings against suspects of fraud. By this time, I already knew everything about them, including passport details and full biographies. However, the case of attempted fraud was also not opened.
Trust but check
Whatever one may say, a situation may arise in life when a person needs real help from a realtor. What to do to avoid dealing with scammers?
Here are some tips:
- Be attentive even to details and trifles;
- Do not pay attention to suspiciously cheap housing options;
- Be prepared to pay for the services of specialists (this is cheaper than losing money after working with a black realtor);
- Seek services from agencies with a good reputation and experience;
- Read the proposed documentation, especially those that need to be signed;
- Use the services of an independent lawyer;
- Demand that the timing of the transaction and the amount of payment be established;
- Consider options in case of contract termination;
- Record the agency’s activities (correspondence, photos, videos);
- Maintain contact information for agency employees.
Unhappy end to the story
Threats from “Kursk friends” continued to come. And I had to hide my mother in one of the private sanatoriums for the elderly and hide myself. She felt good in the boarding house, at least better than in city hospitals. I paid 40–50 thousand rubles a month for the sanatorium. Additionally, I paid for doctors’ calls there - from 1.5 to 5 thousand rubles. But, unfortunately, the disease progressed. Mom had to be transferred back to the hospital. There, they first amputated her arm, then her leg, to prolong her life. I had to pay even more for a free hospital in Krasnogorsk, since I had to pay the nurse separately for care and for a good room.
After two operations, I took notaries to my mother in the hope of signing a deed of gift. She refused for a long time, and I had almost come to terms with the idea that I would soon become homeless. Having any share in the apartment, and even more so two-thirds, the raiders will be able to place professional neighbors there or force me to sell the share for pennies through another criminal case. Moreover, my share was not allocated in kind, and de jure they would be able to use the entire apartment. The apartment is small, and having sold 1/3 at the market price, it is difficult to buy even a one-room apartment in Moscow, just a room in a communal apartment. My friends and I modeled different schemes. It turned out that the most I could count on was a one-room apartment in Dubna.
Mortgage calculator
By transferring my mother to a boarding house, I achieved her long-term isolation from contacts with these potential scammers. I took her phone away so they couldn’t call it. She contacted me through the nurse. These people were looking for her and in the end almost found her in the sanatorium. One day the administrator called me and told me that some people introduced themselves as my mother’s relatives and asked if she was with them. The administrator turned out to be an honest person and kept her promise given to me when concluding the contract - she replied that she did not provide information about guests.
And now in the hospital, when I once again came to my mother with a notary, she agreed to sign the deed of gift. Having been alone, my mother again began to understand who was who. A week later, my mother passed away.
The terrible story has come to an end. It lasted about two years. This time was spent fighting for my mother’s life and trying to fight off people who wanted to get an apartment in the center of Moscow. In the end, I kept the apartment, but lost my mother.
Which cities have the most black realtors?
Black realtors appear where there is an opportunity to earn a lot of money quickly and at once. The larger the city, the greater the risk of running into a black realtor. According to statistics, 7% of transactions fall into this category of criminals.
This is approximately every 14 trade. The most criminal frauds are registered in Moscow, Kyiv, and Minsk. In the capitals, where the cost of housing is maximum.
But even in the million-plus cities of Odessa, Kharkov, and Dnieper, there are plenty of black realtors. Due to the very high cost of housing, people make any transactions with conscience. They are ready to deprive anyone of housing who owns expensive real estate and is not very protected.
Even in small villages there are problems with illegal acquisition of property and its resale. So there are black realtors everywhere and in every city. There are more of them in big cities, less in towns.
Black realtors from Odessa.
Plot for 2021. In Odessa, a son and daughter-in-law, the owners of a real estate agency, decided to send their mother to a psychiatric hospital. And sell her apartment on Shevchenko Avenue. They began to squeeze out the apartment according to the classic scheme of black realtors, but without crime.
They wanted to send her to a hospital, declare her crazy, and sell her apartment. A doctor at a medical institution was bought and participated in this scam.
The grandmother was saved only by her neighbors, who did not allow her to be taken to the hospital, where her fate was already sealed. There she would have ended her life under heavy drugs. But the neighbors managed to make noise and call the police.
They did not allow the raiders to leave the front door and turned to journalists to cover the situation. It was only thanks to these actions that the grandmother remained living in her house. But her own son, a realtor, could not sell her apartment.
2021 story about black realtors from Belarus
Black realtors chose victims from single people who had debts on utility bills or liked to drink. They met under the guise of a married couple or a bailiff who came to collect a debt. Realtors fraudulently persuaded and helped sell the apartment.
To be convincing, they showed the victim the apartment into which she would later move. To do this, we simply rented it daily. After registration and sale of the apartment, the victim was taken to the forest, the money was taken and they were killed. For these brutal crimes, the organizers were given the death penalty, and the accomplices were given 46 years in prison between them.
Only 1 person escaped from the embrace of death, and then by coincidence. With the help of a friend, he was able to escape and survive. The plot is not for the faint of heart, but worth watching. This is how the most cruel black realtors work.
What to do if a loved one gave or bequeathed an apartment to unknown people
Both a donation and a will can be challenged in court if there are grounds for recognizing them as invalid. As a rule, this is possible if the documents were signed by a person who is unable to understand the meaning of his actions, for example, during a serious illness. Or if the owner was misled, deceived or forced to do so through threats and violence.
In such a situation, you need to apply to the district court with a claim to invalidate the document. The statute of limitations can be one or three years, depending on the grounds. All arguments in the claim must be supported by evidence confirming that the person was not aware of his actions. Most often, these are extracts from a medical history, a psychiatrist’s report, or evidence of the use of threats and violence by black realtors. Claiming that a person was deceived will not be enough.
List of black realtors
As such it does not exist. Because a black realtor can be any person who is ready to cross the line. They are indistinguishable from ordinary people. A black realtor can be a district or private broker or just a casual acquaintance.
Many scammers receive prison sentences for such crimes. But after the zone they go out and go about their usual business again. Because it's a quick way to get rich.
The only way to list black realtors is to be as careful as possible. You can run into them at any time. You’ll find out whether it was a black realtor or an ordinary intermediary when everything is done. So just be careful and don’t tell strangers about your plans or property again.
How to negotiate with a relative about inheriting his property
Probably, the main guarantee here can only be good relations in the family and the decency of the heirs themselves.
As for any documentary guarantees of inheritance, it is impossible to oblige anyone to bequeath anything. Even having a will does not guarantee anything. It can be drawn up an unlimited number of times, and each subsequent will cancels the previous one. In this case, no one should notify the heirs of the changes.
One way to resolve this situation may be to conclude a gift agreement or a lifelong maintenance agreement with a dependent. But, again, in this case the relationship between relatives is of great importance.
Questionable sellers
Two reasons have already been given why a personal meeting with the owner of the property is necessary - this helps to avoid overpayments and scams involving the sale of an apartment through dummies. The third reason is to check the seller’s capacity. If his role is played by a pensioner, a person with mental disabilities, alcohol or drug addiction, then a successful transaction may be declared invalid by the court.
The easiest way to exclude such a development of events is to ask the seller for a certificate from a psychoneurological dispensary. This document is not difficult to obtain if a person has nothing to hide. But if you receive a refusal, it is recommended not to enter into any transactions with such an owner.
Rental market: scope for criminal creativity.
At the moment, just under half of the country's population lives in rented apartments. There is constant movement in this market - people move, vacate their living space, rent it out again, and so on. The asking price is lower than on the purchase and sale market, but transactions occur more often. It is not surprising that black realtors have chosen this area as well.
How do they work when renting an apartment? Here are some common schemes:
- A person rents a house for a long period of time and signs an agreement with the owner of the apartment. And after a short time it turns out that the apartment has several owners, and the rest of the parties to the transaction do not agree with it. The tenant pays, for a moment, three large one-time sums - for the first month of residence, a deposit and realtor fees.
- Several landlords leave a deposit for an apartment. It seems that you have found the ideal option, and at an inexpensive price too? You leave a deposit and after a short period of time you arrive with the remaining amount and things, and then there’s a surprise - there’s also a carriage and a small cart just like that. And they all left a deposit. The owner of the apartment throws up his hands - I don’t know anything, I didn’t intend to rent out the property at all. This is especially true in large cities. This is how, for example, black realtors operate in Moscow. They have long known how these schemes work. And they always don’t mind making money on several collaterals.
- The realtor himself rents an apartment and, under the guise of the owner, rents it out to several people. Having received collateral and deposit amounts, he “reels in the bait.” All the data that he provided to the owner of the apartment most often turns out to be fake.
From the latest: working with bankrupts
Recently, a bankruptcy law was passed in our country. Naturally, black realtors immediately responded to the new bill. How do they work in this case?
And they simply take advantage of our citizens’ ignorance of the essence of the law. It contains some points under which the apartment can be seized from the owner. In these cases, fraudsters always try to complete the transaction as quickly as possible, which means they significantly underestimate its real value.
Those who fall for the “tidbit” may be severely disappointed. If the court decides that the property was removed from the general bankruptcy estate intentionally, the apartment will be taken away from the buyers. Of course, they can always sue the bankrupt seller and take their place in the long line of debt collection.
