Follow up: Alleged home squatters indicted, accused of million-dollar racketeering scheme

[mfcorey1]

A DeKalb County grand jury indicted Susan Loraine Weidman on racketeering charges, claiming she and two other men set up an elaborate scheme to seize vacant, foreclosed homes and keep the banks that owned the homes at bay.

Weidman used the courts to claim squatters’ rights, then put fraudulent tenants in homes in well-to-do Cumming, Sandy Springs and Decatur neighborhoods using phony leases while warding off attempts to bounce them with letters threatening litigation, prosecutors alleged.

“Everything was fake,” DeKalb County District Attorney Robert James said. “The lease is bogus. The property management company is bogus. They had a bogus law firm calling to threaten legal action if they foreclosed. No one could accidentally do this.”

Included with Weidman on the indictment were accomplices Ian Justain Greye, a tenant at the Decatur home, and Mathew Daniel Lowery, who supposedly was renting the Forsyth County home. It’s unclear who rented or occupied the Sandy Springs house.

http://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta/alleged-home-squatters-indicted-1194450.html

[provis99]

1. It's remarkable.

Some people will go to any length to think up a complex, time-consuming criminal conspiracy, even when it would be easier and more profitable to have a straight job. Some people are just born criminals.

[dkf]

2. They were being cheered on iirc.

[Systematic Chaos]

3. Perhaps this was the result of some folks getting desperate due to lack of jobs?

To these people, maybe a couple of years flush with cash followed by the likelihood of another couple years in the slammer sounds like a better deal than four years earning $9.75/hr. in some call center or retail job.

[MADem]

4. +1 nt

[eilen]

5. Only the banks are allowed to steal homes nt.

[Politicalboi]

6. They seem to be only doing

What the banks are doing. LOL! I wonder who will get more time? Remember corporations are people, so there for, people are corporations. Sounds like these people need a bail out. And a tax break.

[Javaman]

7. Only difference is:

they didn't wear suits and ties, didn't drive a lexus and didn't give heavily to the rnc.

they are just wall street bankers without the license to steal.