A man made his way back to his family’s land in Connecticut after a span of five years, only to discover a $1.4 million house under construction. This unexpected development occurred due to a con artist assuming his identity and fraudulently selling off the property.
The land in question belongs to Dr. Daniel Kenigsberg and has been in his family’s possession since his mother’s demise in 2007. The property, spanning 0.45 acres, remained densely covered with trees for a remarkable seventy years. This is despite the fact that Daniel’s parents, Nathaniel and Esther, had originally purchased an acre of land, using only half of it to construct their home.
After he sold the family house in 2011, Kenigsberg intended to hand down the vacant piece of land, valued at $350,000, to his kids and grandkids.
But things took a turn in August 2022. At that time, someone pretended to be him and used his identity to give a lawyer the authority to handle legal matters for him. This led to the sale of the land without his awareness. The lawyer then transferred ownership of the property to a real estate company.
In a legal case, a company from Connecticut named 51 Sky Top Partners allegedly purchased the land for $350,000 in October of the previous year, with Kenigsberg having no knowledge that the land was being sold.
A few months later, they hired a building company to start constructing a four-bedroom house on the land. During all of this, the doctor remained completely unaware of these developments.
“Kenigsberg is requesting that the land’s title be returned to him and that Sky Top Partners stop construction and “remove any structures and/or materials” from the property, according to the suit,” CNN reported.
“The lawsuit accuses local attorney Anthony Monelli of using a forged power of attorney document to say he was Kenigsberg’s lawyer and execute the sale of the land.”
Kenigsberg believes the paper has a fake version of his name signed and lies by saying he stays in Johannesburg, South Africa. However, as the legal claim mentions, he has never actually lived there.
Currently, Dr. Kenigsberg lives in New York. He grew up in Connecticut on a piece of land next to the property mentioned in the legal case.
“I was living my life normally until May 31st, and all of a sudden, this happened,” he told The Washington Post.
Meanwhile, owner Gina Leto told the publication that they had no idea what was going on while signing the deal with the impostor.
“We, as buyer, had no contact with the party impersonating Kenigsberg,” said Leto. “We had no reason to believe he was an impostor. We would not have paid $350,000 for the property — nor would we have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars more in construction — if we had.”
Leto is also planning to ask for the company to be taken out of the legal case. Kenigsberg took legal action against Monelli and 51 Sky Top Partners on July 14 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut.
He has asked to get the land back, for all the other people involved to stop using the land and to have the house they constructed removed.
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Sources: CNN – The Washington Post
