7 News Belize

Land Fraud Dissected
posted (March 24, 2015)
Last week, we told you about the cases of land fraud that the Lands Department came across.

The first case that they discovered last week involved lands on the Placencia Peninsula called plantation palms in a subdivision of about 30 lots. There is the suspicion that former employees of the Ministry may be involved, so when Lands Commissioner Wilbert Vallejos appeared on the Wave Morning show today, the media waited outside to speak with him about it.

Here's how he described what was found out about the fraud:

Wilbert Vallejos - Commissioner of Lands
"When the documents were lodged, the front line officers were going to their check list and verifying that everything was in order, recognized that the forms of identification produced did not match, in terms of nationality. I think they submitted, if I am not mistaken, two forms of identification. On one form of identification, the nationality was X and in the other form of identification, the information was something else. That prompted us to be able to suspect that something was wrong and when we did further checks, we found out that indeed the signatures are not correct, that everything seems to be suspicious and so, we immediately got concerned and sent out the press release."

"We have been suspecting of situations like this happening, but this would have been perhaps one of the few times when we actually had the documentation in our hands to be able to say it's really happening."

"The other situation had to do with fraudulent land titles being issued by somebody outside to somebody outside, like outsiders doing land business on their own and them being responsible for the process and even the preparation of the land title. But as any new land owner would want to do is to go to the lands department and immediately pay their land tax. As a matter of fact, land tax is now due. The 1st of April is very close, so people want to pay their arrears and ensure that they don't have any arrears with the government of Belize and when they were referred to the cashier or to the debt management section, they could find any account for that person. So, at that moment in time the persons who were referred to the land registry, for them to verify why the account haven't been open yet. From the very onset when the officers who first received the document, they were very suspicious of the document. The document, although it looked very similar to an official authentic land title, because of the seal, because of the signature. But the signature obviously looked different - the whole appearance, the font and everything - were very suspicious. But only the registry could verify if in fact it was an authentic on that document. Then when it was brought to the attention of the registrar, it was discovered it was a fraudulent document for many reasons. In my opinion, it's a very large scale ring being orchestrated because it's several properties."

So, what does that mean for you as a land owner? Well, the commissioner says that you must be vigilant when buying your land, to be careful that con artists aren't trying to sell you lands obtained through fraudulent means:

Wilbert Vallejos - Commissioner of Lands
"We felt that the general public needed to know and needed to be aware of these situations taking place, because nobody know who can be a victim of fraud. The problem with it is that while you think that your land title is secure and even though when the land registry can't stop certain things from happening, they occupation of the land might be another thing, because you thinking that you have received the land, somebody go and show you the land, people actually take possession of the land and then they start build, develop and spend money and then things start to become very much complicated. So, we wanted to tell people, hey, this is happening, its happening outside, the land department through its system, is able to capture it, is able to detect it and then refer it to the police, but it can happen to you, so you need to do something about your private land. You need to take possession, you need to clean you land, you need to show some sort of acknowledgement that it is yours, rather that leave it there in high bush or unoccupied."

Mike Rudon, Ch5
"Have you all been able to pinpoint the persons in either of those two scams and is it believed that there is any collusion with persons inside the ministry?"

Wilbert Vallejos
"While we haven't been able to say specifically who it is, we believe that it's the same person behind the two cases, because of how things were done. I can't comment too much on it because it's an ongoing investigation and I myself are not too familiar with exactly as to how advanced the investigation is. Also, we haven't been able to point out at this point in time if there is any internal collusion, but we are taking everything in consideration. Whatever needs to be investigated, whoever needs to be investigated - we are doing that and at the end of the day, if the investigation points out that there was collusion inside and outside, then it will be dealt with at that point."

The fraud cases have been taken to the police. The owner of Plantation Palms - which is the land that was used to create Maya Beach.

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