Florida officer found dead man, impersonated him for years, renovated his home

Comments

Comment by jopsen 1 day ago

> Sguros filed a complaint against the real estate company in February, saying in filings that he discovered West in the home while he was on duty and detailing how he subsequently began to clean, secure and invest in the property. However, he never established in his records that he came to be involved in the home through a purchase, lease, probate appointment, deed or relationship with West’s heirs, the arrest affidavit said.

Wow, cops certainly know how to produce a confession.

Comment by 1 day ago

Comment by kaydub 1 day ago

Cop stole house from dead man. Then cop sued company that rightfully bought house from dead man's heirs?

Comment by JumpCrisscross 1 day ago

It’s always surprising how craftiness and intelligence, which one would expect to be joined at the hip, can exist almost independently to each other.

Comment by nostrademons 1 day ago

It looks like he was working toward an adverse possession claim. In Florida it's 7 years of "open and notorious" possession, as well as paying all property taxes (which it sounds like he did), filing a letter with the appraiser's office (which it sounds like he did), and improving the property (which he did). His adverse possession claim was interrupted 4 years into the 7 year clock, and then he tried to file an "unjust enrichment" claim to get the money he spent on the property back.

His big mistake was forging the signature and impersonating the decedent. If he'd just signed under his own name and hoped nobody noticed, no felonies would've been committed and he would have a case to get back the $200K in the "unjust enrichment" lawsuit.

Comment by pxmpxm 1 day ago

I'm quite sure you can't actually claim adverse posession on anything that is court administered (ie in probate) - if that were the case, you'd have people coming out of woodwork left and right to try that just given how long probate takes in general.

Probaby a long shot to find someone admitted to the Florida bar to chime in here.

Comment by nostrademons 1 day ago

I don't see anything in the statute that would support that:

https://www.flsenate.gov/laws/statutes/2018/95.18

I asked Gemini specifically about the loophole you highlight, and why more people don't commit adverse possession on houses that are in probate. It came up with:

1) Probate usually takes far less than 7 years - in this news story, it was done in 3

2) The adverse possession claim will come up on any title search, which any probate attorney or real estate agent would likely do. From the article, it looks like this is what actually caught the cop here.

3) Usually heirs that want to keep the house will pay property taxes on it. This resets the clock, and they'll get notification that somebody has already paid the taxes on it when they try to do so.

For people who aren't paying property taxes, aren't actively checking on or maintaining the property, and aren't trying to sell it - those are exactly the cases that adverse possession laws are trying to solve. The state believes that it's better for people to actively maintain properties and pay taxes on them, and if you don't do that, you risk losing your claim on them.

Comment by AppalachianEng 1 day ago

It's 20 years without color of deed, meaning he would have needed a legitimate deed that conflicted with the deceased mans deed for the 7 year time line.

Comment by nostrademons 1 day ago

Are you sure you aren't thinking of prescriptive easements instead:

https://ilabacalaw.com/blog/real-estate/florida-easement-law...

The Florida statute on adverse possession explicitly says 7 years, with no exceptions:

https://www.flsenate.gov/laws/statutes/2018/95.18

Comment by AppalachianEng 1 day ago

You're right

Comment by JumpCrisscross 1 day ago

Is seven years a common timeline for adverse possession to the point that title conveys without compensation?

Comment by nostrademons 1 day ago

It varies, and is on the shorter end. The shortest is California/Montana/Nevada at 5 years; the longest is Louisiana/NJ at 30. 10-15 years is average.

Comment by mzajc 1 day ago

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Comment by p1necone 1 day ago

I've long thought that pure desire/drive is much more important than intelligence in just about everything, including things that stereotypically require intelligence like programming, math etc.

Comment by hackeraccount 23 hours ago

Woody Allen's line was that “Eighty percent of success is showing up.” and he's absolutely right.

Comment by jazzyjackson 1 day ago

You can have anything you want, so long as you want it more than everything else.

Comment by Fricken 1 day ago

By "everything" I'm presuming you mean the trivial little games that humans these days are preoccupied with. You can play those games if you like, but they won't save you. Everybody dies in the end no matter how smart or motivated they are. The final score is always zero.

Comment by JumpCrisscross 1 day ago

> Everybody dies in the end no matter how smart or motivated they are. The final score is always zero

This system of morality is cute when we compare a rich man and a pauper. It falls on its face when we compare a violent heathen and someone who tried to live well. It's lazy nihilism by another name, an absolution of moral agency, albeit with compelling dressing.

Comment by Fricken 1 day ago

We're just dumb apes, we play dumb ape games, we cannot get outside of our nature, and it's in our nature to tell ourselves fairy tales about how special we think we are, I get it. That's why I'm a nihilist, because I can see that different peoples all have different stories about why they are absolutely convinced they are god's special chosen people.

Our "moral agency" is no different from that of a dog's, it's just the evolved game theory outcome of many millions of years living as social animals. It's an intuition about when to cooperate and when to compete.

As social animals we have devolved into violent heathens regularly throughout history if you think those violent tendencies isn't hardwired into your own DNA you're kidding yourself. When a technology is invented all of it's negative externalities and misuses are invented as well, and if said technology is used for violent heathenry, it's inventors are complicit.

And yes, I'm lazy, that's a win condition, why wouldn't I be? What were all those labour saving devices for if not so we can be lazy? Climate change is humanity's biggest threat. It is entirely the fault of people doing things, they're making a huge mess. Just chill out.

Comment by recursive 1 day ago

For your way of scoring maybe. If I can see and do some cool stuff along the way and maybe even love, then my final score will be non-zero, according to my scoring system.

Comment by RunSet 1 day ago

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/low%20cunning

Comment by JumpCrisscross 1 day ago

This is different. I'm not commenting on morality. I'm saying they were cunning enough to pull this off–and get away with it for many years–but not smart enough to realize that pressing this legal claim would cause him to lose everything.

Comment by lazide 1 day ago

In this case, more like sometime someone can buy their lies so much even they start to believe them?

Comment by tanseydavid 1 day ago

I cannot help but wonder, "What did the cop do with the body?"

Comment by triceratops 1 day ago

The story has a video showing paramedics or someone taking the body away on a stretcher.

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Comment by wrs 1 day ago

I take it you stopped reading before the fifth paragraph.

Comment by josefritzishere 1 day ago

[dead]

Comment by triceratops 1 day ago

> Sguros [the cop] claimed he spent at least $214,000 of his own money on the home.

If he spent so much, why not just buy his own house? The house in the article is nothing special to look at.

Comment by fallinghawks 1 day ago

A real estate website tells me the average in that city is $400K. But it does seem pretty dumb to spend that amount of money on improvements when you know damn well your ownership is fraudulent and may come back to bite you.

Comment by JumpCrisscross 1 day ago

It looks like he might have been going for turbo squatter's rights [1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50215874

Comment by hackeraccount 23 hours ago

I'd take that 214,000 figure with at least a grain of salt. That's the number he was asking to get paid back. Call me crazy but I don't totally trust him when it comes to details.

Comment by cowlevel 1 day ago

does a house cost below $214,000 now? I haven't heard the news that the market crashed.

Comment by triceratops 1 day ago

When a fraudulently obtained house costs $214k you may as well spend the $400k average house price in that city and avoid jail forever. Staying out of jail and continuing to work as a cop is easily worth more than $200k.

Comment by Jtsummers 1 day ago

$214k is more than I have spent on the home I "own" (have a mortgage on) even adding in my downpayment over the last 7 years. He could have bought a home for what he claims to have spent.

Comment by cowlevel 1 day ago

A house price is a house price, you can't say it's only 20%.

Comment by Jtsummers 1 day ago

Your original comment to which I was replying when you edited your comment:

> You have to count the total amount you will pay on the mortgage.

Yes. That's what I was counting, I have spent less than $214k on my house, repairs and mortgage.

Your comment after that was edited:

> A house price is a house price, you can't say it's only 20%.

What are you talking about? The question is could he have afforded a house for $214k, and the answer is yes. Houses in that area don't cost a minimum of $1 million, even the house he attempted to steal wasn't worth that much.

Comment by cowlevel 1 day ago

A house price of $214k is not the same as a down payment of $214k

Comment by zrobotics 1 day ago

But he had liquid 214k to spend on improvements. So how is that different than being able to afford to save up 214k for a down payment?

The only thing I can think of is he is using extremely suspect math and a lot of that 214k comes from "sweat equity" billed at a ridiculous rate. Otherwise he'd easily be able to afford a mortgage in that area with 214k down.

Comment by cowlevel 1 day ago

After you start a mortgage, you are forced to keep paying the mortgage until you've paid a certain amount. Hope this explanation helps.

Comment by jrflowers 1 day ago

cowlevel is saying that they know what a down payment is but also thinks that you can’t buy a house that costs more than the amount of money you have in the bank

Comment by Jtsummers 1 day ago

If that's what they believe they're a strange person. Very few people buy houses in the US with cash in the bank equal to the home price. They buy them with mortgages. And someone who can spend $214k on home repair work over 4 years could have afforded a pretty decent house with that same cash and a mortgage.

Comment by 1 day ago

Comment by apt-apt-apt-apt 1 day ago

That's one way to get a home.

This sounds bonkers, but there was a kernel of legal strategy here - adverse possession, basically a statute of limitations on getting your land back.

Comment by zrobotics 1 day ago

Having known some cops, they tend to be really bad about thinking they are legal experts. Attorneys tend to know enough about how things are ruled to avoid falling for these types of 'legal' loopholes. Cops think they are more expert in legal matters than they actually are, and can fall for a hare brained scheme like this.

Ironically programmers are also just as bad for this type of thinking for a different reason. They will read a legal statute and interpret it like it is code. I was very much guilty of this, and from comments I see here that's not an uncommon assumption. My friend who's a public defender spend some time pointing out that legal rulings aren't strict in that way, there's a reason judges have leeway when making decisions.

Comment by SlightlyLeftPad 1 day ago

Was Flock involved somehow?

Comment by SoftTalker 1 day ago

Assuming the identity of a dead person was (is still?) a common form of fraud. People (usually relatives) could collect pension and social security payments sometimes for years before being discovered (if they ever were).

Comment by chrisco255 1 day ago

It's crazy that we have such a disjointed system that someone can die and the Federal government is unable to timely discover and process death records.

Comment by jrflowers 1 day ago

That he is being prosecuted for this is a sad example of why officers need stronger qualified immunity for snap decisions made in the line of duty

Comment by _eyewumbo 1 day ago

To be fair, he likely wasn't trained not to impersonate a dead man and steal his house

Comment by jrflowers 1 day ago

Our law enforcement heroes are trained to tactically “take shelter” but when one does so strategically it is branded a “crime”

Comment by ethin 1 day ago

I can't tell if this is satire or not, but I'm suspecting that it is

Comment by jrflowers 1 day ago

Who is to say he wasn’t in fear for his life when he stole the house? Maybe the house committed a crime and he was detaining it. Civilians just don’t know the challenges faced by our boys in blue

Comment by phs318u 1 day ago

You forgot the /s

Comment by hackeraccount 23 hours ago

No. No. No. Don't ruin it for me.

Comment by 1 day ago

Comment by dritty8 1 day ago

[dead]

Comment by paxy 1 day ago

The most surprising part of this story is that a police officer got arrested and charged with a felony.

Comment by breezybottom 1 day ago

Happens like every week. Maybe you just don't read news outside HN.

Comment by 1 day ago

Comment by iAMkenough 1 day ago

Which news outlet would you recommend? Weekly updates about cops getting charged with felonies would be interesting.

Comment by throw16180339 1 day ago

There's the https://www.reddit.com/r/Bad_Cop_No_Donut/ subreddit for starters.