There is another alleged case of land fraud at 4 miles lagoon in the Corozal District where a North American couple has claimed that they acquired a piece of land formerly owned by Aldo Urbina through "title by prescription." It's not the first such case in this area but notably, just as in the first case, the same real estate agent who seems to be involved.
In the previous case, some Canadians attempted to claim land owned by Mike Feinstein back in 2024, claiming that they got it through title by prescription. Another similarity in both cases is that while the parcel ID is correct, the instrument numbers point to properties in Punta Gorda. municipality.
Like Feinstein, Urbina saw that someone had illegally acquired and was building on his land without his knowledge and you can see it in this footage. While this is a private land matter, today we asked the Minister of Natural Resources about this type of land fraud.
Cordel Hyde, Minister of Natural Resources:
"Honestly prescription applications don't come to me, I have absolutely no say over private land. There is a process for you to apply for prescription which is to say if a land is a private land and you have occupied that land for 12 years consecutively and no one has ever showed up to say to you, you need to get off my land, or this is my land, or give you that in writing orally or whatever then that's enough grounds for you to apply under the law for prescriptive rights but that doesn't come to me. Private land transfers don't come to the minister. The Minister of Natural Resources is responsible primarily for national lands, that's where we have jurisdiction, that's where we exercise jurisdiction. So I would imagine there's lots of applications for prescription but they never come to me, they go through the registrar, they have a whole process that they go through in terms of dealing with that in terms of reaching conclusion but it does bother us that that kind of fraud by all kinds of people is being pursued because the constitution in this country protects the rights of landowners and so we can't really encroach on the rights of landowners easily. That is why when someone dies, if a parent dies and leaves a title land, their child can't get that land right so. That child has to get a grant of administration from the Supreme Court registry before they bring that to natural resources because it's private land. You can't change the ownership on the private land so easily, there's a meticulous process to go through and there are checks and balances and that's why we have the courts and we are able to address these things in court when things go awry."
We will keep following the story.
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