Recently, we've reported on many bewildering cases of land fraud - which went undetected when the fraud was being perpetrated and now remain unresolved - because no one has been criminally charged.
But this week - staff at the Lands Department was able to foil a land scam before it got perpetrated.
On Tuesday, a land agent went into the Lands Department with a land certificate to process a conveyance for a piece of land in the Orange Walk District.
But the front desk clerk caught on right-away that something - or a number of things were amiss.
When the clerk examined the documents, she saw that the certificate was manifestly fraudulent because the land registration number was for someone else's property, the certificate itself was not in the system, the seal was bogus, and the signature of the registry officer was also forged.
They called the police and the land agent - who seemed to be clueless to the scam - was detained by police and later released.
Police investigated and found that the land was signed over to a pawn shop owner in Corozal, Guillermo Briceno, the owner of Champion Pawn Shop.
In May, a woman had pawned two pieces of property with him for $1500.00 each and - as a security - she signed a transfer for both parcels of land in case she defaulted on the loan. Of course, it turns out that the land title she gave the pawnshop were bogus so it cost her nothing to default on her payments.
Briceno thought he was covered; that he would just effect the transfer of the two parcels of land. And so he hired the land agent - who went to the lands office - where the land titles were found to absolute fakes.
It turns out that both parcels of land in the Orange Walk District were not in the name of the woman who pawned them - they are registered in the name of two other individuals who had no clue that their land was being offered as security.
We note that these parcels were not being transferred under the conveyance system which is used in the south but under the Registry system which is much harder to scam.
Police are widening the investigation and looking for the JP who signed the conveyance and the woman who lodged it at the pawnshop as a security.
