A homeowner from Arizona has spoken out after two squatters allegedly forced their way into her property and sold it for $200,000 by pretending they were the owners.
D’Andrea Turner and her now-ex-husband, Keith, bought their home in Phoenix, Arizona, together and lived there as they raised their children.
Keith kept the home when D'Andrea moved out, but his job as a long-haul trucker meant that the property would be left vacant for extended periods of time.
Then, in January, the former couple learned their home had been sold - with absolutely no input from either of them.
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“That is not my name, and that’s not my signature,” D’Andrea said as she opened up about the ideal with ABC15. “How does this happen? At what point that someone didn’t do their job?”
The homeowners were left stunned as the title documents to their home were published on the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office website, and as they sought to get to the bottom of what happened they learned that two squatters, identified as Aaron Polmanteer, 51, and Lledera Hollen, 37, had allegedly forced their way into the house, and made it their own.
Polmanteer and Hollen are accused of 'assuming the identity' of the Turners using documents inside the home, which they then allegedly used to produce 'fraudulent identification'.
Armed with their fraudulent ID, the suspects are said to have then contacted a third-party real estate contractor who put the home on the market, after which it was bought by a pair of investors.
In interviews with ABC15, the investors admitted to touring the home twice with Polmanteer and Hollen, who were allegedly posing as the Turners.
“Squatters stole my house,” D’Andrea said. “They actually moved in, posed as me, and sold my house. It feels so surreal. I feel like I'm in the Twilight Zone. Really, I didn’t even think something like this could happen.”
The suspects are said to have run into an issue in their scheme when they failed to cash checks in the Turners' names.
Polmanteer and Hollen have now been indicted, and the investors are working to get their money back; a responsibility which falls to Pioneer Title Agency; the company listed on the warranty deed.
James Carrieres, who investigates document fraud for the Phoenix Police Department, explained: “In this case, the title company is literally responsible for paying back the investor all of his money, getting the title reverted back to the homeowner, as well as establishing loans that were there."
Legally, Keith and D’Andrea are still the rightful owners of the home - though D’Andrea noticed that mail addressed to Polmanteer and Hollen was still appearing in the mailbox.
Emily Brown