Point Breeze Real Estate Scammer Gets the Slammer

The house at 2022 Titan Street that Tubbs “sold” for $22,000. Image via Google Street View.

According to a U.S Department of Justice release, a Philadelphia man was sentenced last week to almost six years in prison for selling three homes he didn’t own. (Don’t worry, though: The homes weren’t occupied at the time so there were no surprise evictions while the family was eating dinner and watching The Voice.) He created fake deeds that he used to transfer the vacant homes to other people he’d recruited, and then sold the properties to new buyers. But he wasn’t just interested in “dead” properties. He also drafted people to act as phony executors of estates, and sold those properties too. The people who bought the homes from him had no idea they were basically buying air.

He certainly didn’t have expensive tastes: He sold one home for $140,000, another for $140,000 and the last for $22,000. Unfortunately for him, that last one got him only $877 due to all the liens on it. Perhaps he should have checked the city’s website first.