Archive Episode: Miami Property Scammers, Part 1

The Perfect Scam

AARP

True Crime, Aarp, Fraud, Society & Culture, Scam, Crime, Bobsullivan

4.5 • 980 Ratings

🗓️ 21 March 2025

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this 2021 episode, Miami’s historic West Grove neighborhood has recently become a hot real estate market. So hot, in fact, that it has attracted the attention of scammers. It wasn’t always so. Shirley Gibson’s family has owned property in West Grove since her great-grandmother immigrated from the Bahamas over 100 years ago. Now in her 80s, Shirley had hoped to pass on the property to her niece and nephew. But when Shirley goes to pay her taxes one day, she learns that her property has been sold without her knowledge for $230,000. When another of her properties shows up on Zillow, it becomes clear this is not a fluke but an elaborate real estate scam, targeting property owners in this historically Black neighborhood.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This week on The Perfect Scamp.
0:03.0	Coconut Grove is one of the older neighborhoods in the city.
0:08.0	There's a specific area historically known as the Black Grove.
0:11.0	It was an African American community that has a really long and deep and strong roots in the culture of Miami.
0:21.0	The Economic Crimes Unit in the Miami Police Department is investigating a new case of
0:25.3	financial real estate fraud.
0:26.9	This vacant lot in Coconut Grove has been in Shirley Gibson's family her entire life.
0:31.6	I'm distraught from all of this that I have to fight to keep my property. Picture this.
0:38.3	You try to pay your property taxes and find out someone else has already paid them.
0:44.0	Your first thought might be, well, that's lovely.
0:46.6	But I hope your next thought would be something has gone really wrong here.
0:51.3	Fortunately, that's what Sterly Gibson thought when the 80-something Florida resident
0:55.3	found the taxes had been paid on her modest, empty lot, a piece of property that had been in her
1:00.6	family for more than 100 years. So she starts to ask questions and finds out someone else paid
1:06.7	those taxes because someone else now owns the land. The lot have been sold to investors without anyone even so much as texting or calling her.
1:16.6	And as she asks more questions, this longtime community organizer learns that dozens of homeowners
1:22.6	all around her largely African American community have suffered the same fate.
1:26.6	It sounds almost impossible.
1:29.1	How can someone buy property that isn't for sale?
1:32.2	You'll see how in this two-part episode we've plucked it from our archives while we work on new episodes of the perfect scam.
1:39.1	I must confess, Shirley is one of my favorite guests, and this is one of my favorite stories
1:43.9	because of how
	...

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