Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/07/25/florida-squatters-700k-condo-heist-lands-him-40-years-behind-bars.html
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Anyone else think this sentence is extreme?
Murderers and rapists get less.
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“25 years for fraudulent use of personal identification information” >> that is insane. Will he be chained to a dungeon wall too?
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You don’t understand: this was a crime against property
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I came to comment this.
Good LORD. Fake docs, obviously guilty, but elsewhere in the world this would be more like 2-5 years. He’d done it elsewhere – I’d imagine this is an “I can get out of rent for a few months” type of scam as opposed to “I’m permanently stealing a condo from an 85-year-old.”
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This guy screwed up by not being a C level executive.
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https://www.flsenate.gov/Laws/Statutes/2023/817.568
If the value exceeds $50,000 or invovles the PII of 30 or more persons, it’s a first degree felony, with mandatory minimums. Rape is also a first degree felony.
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Sounds excessive but he’ll be out after a few years. It’s important to note that he has done this before and didn’t feel compelled to stop even after being caught. Maybe this will change that.
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Was this even under the new Florida law?
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Property theft has always seemed to me like the stupidest of all possible kinds of theft. I mean, it’s not like you can abscond with it. Eventually, you’re going to get caught.
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So they weren’t using it?
…which they would have been doing already, anyway, while holding the property vacant.
Yeah. I think people who steal someone’s identity (which appeared to be part of this scheme) are shitty, but at the same time, this guy was living in an unused shelter while the owner was leaving it empty. We’re in the middle of a housing crisis; leaving perfectly good housing empty in order to hoard it seems a bigger crime than living in it.
Squatting in empty housing isn’t even a crime in many places around the world. Heck, stay long enough and in some legal systems, you can claim adverse possession.
What seems stupid here is wealthy people hoarding a basic human necessity (shelter) as an “investment” while others live on the street. 
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Well, the good news is that losing the stolen condo doesn’t mean he’s homeless. He has a place to live for at least the immediate future.
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insurrectionists who try to overturn a free and fair election also get lesser sentences.
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all the heartstrings that the prosecutor pulled are here:
how the sausage gets made, I suppose.
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It doesn’t look like they used the new law, which is more about getting them out quickly, without needing to go the slow, expensive civil route.
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Adverse possession is a thing in all 50 states. It does, technically, involve a crime, at some point. Trespass. For adverse possession to apply, the possession has to be “hostile”. That doesn’t mean there has to be violence involved. It’s just a legal term of art that means you don’t have permission to be there. In other words, you have to be trespassing.
What got this guy in trouble was two things. It wasn’t the squatting. It was the fraud. And the second thing that got him was that instead of being a rich corporation, or even a city, he was an individual black man. Cities and corporations effectively steal people’s property way too often, in my opinion, but they do it “legally”. Accidentally underpay your property taxes one year by a few bucks, never notice the discrepancy, and let it go until the interest charges and fines build up too much? Bam! Watch the city foreclose on your house and sell it right out from under you.
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and there it is…
dude was not a squatter, he was a fraud.
that makes a big dif, he’s not just seeking shelter as a homeless person, he had done this before in different jurisdictions to flat-out steal property from elderly persons. that is why, i believe, the sentence is what it is.
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The State’s Attorney laid it on thickly
This defendant is a dangerous man,” James said, “and this conviction is more than a win for the victims. He committed similar acts in other places, like New York, and was sued but never arrested. That may be acceptable in other places, but when he did it in Bay County he was arrested and held accountable.”
Lesson learned, I guess. Don’t mess with an LLC.
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Sure, but 40 years is still excessive. In my opinion.
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And this seems dubious for a nonviolent crime. Maybe save that line for cops who shoot unarmed women in their own homes.
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