I think these days the easiest thing is to take a HELOC loan backed by the property. Do not withdraw money from HELOC and pay the $125/year fee. This puts a lien on the property. (The article alluded to this solution by noting these scammers avoid properties with a mortgage).
It'll work in this area of the country (Connecticut, Massachusetts,) because this is a known scam and relators and attorneys know to keep an eye out for this.
The problem is that a 4x8 plywood sign will weather very fast in New England weather. You're better off following the article's suggestion of flagging the property with the court.
> Kenigsberg received an undisclosed sum. Sky Top Partners gained a clean title to the land, finished the house and made the sale.
> Kenigsberg remains critical of the system that failed to stop the fraud and of public safety agencies that have not found the perpetrators. Under the law it's possible he could have seen the house destroyed and himself enriched more than he was. He prefers to see the case almost as an outside observer, above the fray.
Either the parties involved in the sale who should have known better, such as the relator and/or seller's attorney; or the party that took the trees down.
Furthermore, at least in Massachusetts, when you purchase property you also purchase title insurance that protects you against this. I remember very specifically, at closing, that my attorney explained that the insurance was in case someone came around with an old claim to the land.
It would be interesting to find out who and what paid out, because these scams have been going on for a bit. (There was one linked to where a property owner drove by and found a house being built on their land.)
TLDR: The real property owner contacted the town to block the building permit, and then contacted the other people involved in the sale, the documents provided by the scam artist were obviously foraged, but the sale still went through and construction started.
The other major difference between this one and the other link I posted is that the owner was very likely going to build a home on the property when they retired; unlike the other link that I posted where the property was most likely an investment and going to be sold.
A motivated attacker need only don a green safety vest and hard hat, then roll up with a white pickup truck, place some orange safety cones and take down the sign with a chainsaw.
The point is that nearly all of the people doing this don't even live in the country where the land is being sold from. A simple sign would probably be quite effective
True, but you can still do a confused deputy attack. The fraudster hires a property manager, informs them that they would like to remove the sign because they wish the list the property for sale. Either that or they con a realtor they're working with into doing it. The unknowing realtor, eager for the commission, knows a guy who can take it down.
There's always something that can happen in any scenario. Social engineering, hiring locals, deeper forms of identity theft, or worse. The possibilities never hit 0, they just become a lot less profitable (and a lot riskier) a scam to try to run.
Yes, locks aren’t there to prevent the determined thief. They are for the 99% of other opportunists that will move on to an easier target immediately when they see your lock is harder to defeat
The idea is just to avoid being the softest target. The scammers attempting this fraud don't want to do all the work you describe. They'll just move on to the next vacant property.
No, but paying someone $300 is cheap when you hope to get a check for several hundred thousand in a few months. (even if the scam is only to get the earnest money that is still a $300 investment for the final thousand or two you make - with very little work)
The realtor might pay for it or even do it themselves. It would take 5 minutes with a reciprocating saw. Or the scammer tells the realtor "never mind that" and the realtor tells the buyer.
I'm sure you could put an ad up on craigslist or fiverr or whatever, one asking for someone to take photos of the property to see if there is a sign, and another to remove it. There's plenty of people willing to do anything for money.
Note that in the article, the author says how the scammers do everything to avoid having to show up in person. That's because they are in a different country and try to commit the scam without setting foot in the US.
That's selection bias. Most replies in the post were positive.
BrandonM's comment also wasn't that unreasonable in my opinion. Imagine telling someone many years ago that we'd use an app on our phones to get in stranger's car and pay a lot for the privilege as well. His reaction to Dropbox wasn't on point but wasn't tone deaf.
Drew from Dropbox responded to the post at the time and BrandonM responded positively, praising the product.
It was overall a mature and very fair way of saying it wasn't for him.
I don't trust Distrowatch's popularity list. I have thought for years it was probably gamed.
There are constantly distros in that top ten list that aren't in other top ten lists like mentions of reddit, mention on Twitter, Google searches for "linux distro", etc.
I assumed it meant stories that trended highly and were now fading in popularity (outgoing) and stories that are trending but trending quickly and may be on a fast ascent.
Sort of a combo of "in case you missed it" and "the next new big stories".
Your marriage is a decision between you and your spouse and is a mutual decision.
A job is a decision that your boss(es) made and can be taken without your consent. You don't have the ownership of your job that you do of your marriage.
Both marriage and job contracts are mutually binding legal agreements. You have the agency within those dynamics that the law gives you, which varies by region/jurisdiction respectively.
Your partner in some (most?) cases can absolutely make an executive decision that ends your marriage, with you having no options but to accept the outcome.
Someone makes a comment about how its okay for things to be replaced in specialization in business
Then someone equates it to intimacy
Then someone says its only possible in HN
Then we get into some nifty discussion of can we argue about the similarity between marriage and job contracts and first they disagree
Now we come to your comment which I can kinda agree about and here is my take
Marriage and business both require some definition of laws and a trust in state which comes out of how state has a monopoly (well legal monopoly) over violence and how it can punish people who don't follow laws over it and how the past record of it handling cases have been
As an example, I doubt how marriages can be a good mutually binding legal agreement in something like saudi arabia which is mysognistic. Same can be said for exploitations in businesses for countries, same countries like saudia arabia and qatar have some people from south asia like india etc. in a sort of legal slavery where they are forced to reside in their own designated quarters of the country and they are insanely restricted. Look it up.
Also off topic but I asked LLM's to find countries where divorce for women are illegal and I confirmed it, as an example, divorce in philipines for non muslims are banned (muslim woman's divorces are handled via sharia law) I have since fact checked it as well via searching but it's just that divorce itself isn't an option in philipines but rather limiting marital dissolution to annulment or legal separation
"In the Philippines, the general legal framework under the Family Code prohibits absolute divorce for the majority of the population, limiting marital dissolution to annulment or legal separation " [1]
I'm not sure where you live, but employee contracts in the US are very rare in tech. Unions, execs, and rock stars - that's about it. The rest of us are at-will and disposable. Worker protections in the US are limited to "the machine can't eat more than two of your fingers per day" and "you can't work people more than 168 hours in a week".
When you sign your offer letter, you're entering into an employment contract. What you're describing is regulatory limitations on what that contract can say, and how different contracts can have different terms.
Most states in the US have at will employment. That means from the moment you sign the contract, they can fire you at will. So it's like a contract that ends straight away after it starts.
Now from what you've said I think they might be right. You don't get a full contract that you sign that details your job, leave entitlement etc in the US?
Unless it's a contracting or union position, what you get is something resembling a contract, but your agreement to it comes with the mutual understanding between you and your employer that no effective enforcement body exists to uphold your interests.
If it says "you work 40 hours per week and have 4 weeks of paid vacation" and your employer, EVEN IN WRITING, compels you to work 60 hour weeks and not take any vacation at a later date, then your only real option is to find work elsewhere. The Department of Labor won't have your back and you likely won't have enough money to afford a lawyer to fight on your behalf longer than the corporate lawyers your company has on staff.
Many programmers don't get treated this way because of the market, but abusive treatment of employees runs rampant in blue collar professions.
Need proof? Look at how few UNPAID weeks of maternity leave new mothers are entitled to under the law. This should tell you everything you need to know.
I have personally seen women return to work LESS THAN A WEEK after delivering a baby because they couldn't afford to not do so.
Oh I'm aware workers in the US are treated extremely badly. In the UK statutory maternity pay is 90% of full salary for the first 6 weeks and around $250 a week for the next 33 weeks.
But I was just trying to clarify if work contracts were a normal thing there. The original post said they weren't where you seem to be saying they are, but effectively unenforceable.
I don't get it. Do you sign an offer letter or a contract?
So the normal routine here is you get an offer, if you accept you get sent a contract which is signed by the employer, if it's all ok you also sign and then you get your start date. Is it different in the US or the same?
> I'm not sure where you live, but employee contracts in the US are very rare in tech.
Single integrated written employment contracts are rare in the US for any but the most elite workers (usually executives); US workers more often have a mix of more limited domain written agreements and possibly an implied employment contract.
> employee contracts in the US are very rare in tech
Is that true? I've never had a job where I didn't sign a contract (in the UK and for multinationals including American companies). I wouldn't start without a contract.
And I'm not in any rockstar position. It's bog standard for employees.
> It's bog standard for employees...in the UK and for multinationals including American companies
^^^ that's the thing. Contracts are by country, not by company ownership.
I worked for an F100 multinational US-based company for many years. My coworkers in the EU (including the UK at the time) got contracts. A buddy who was a bona fide rock star in the US got one. I know VPs got them.
I got nothing, as did the vast, vast majority of my US-based friends. And while I'm not a rock star, I'm pretty well known within my niche and am not a bottom-feeder. It really is as bleak as you might fear.
Do these contracts provide guarantees to you, or just to the employer? In the US it is entirely one sided and provides no protection from arbitrarily being fired without cause.
There are statutory rights that you have anyway, such as for a full time position you are entitled to 28 days leave, so the contract normally covers extra stuff (so I have 33 days under my current one).
Plus it covers things like disciplinary procedures, working hours etc. It's really weird to me that you don't have that. Are you sure it's normal?
To address your specific point, you can mostly be fired without reason if you're a new employee. You get more rights after 2 years so companies generally have a procedure to go through after that. You can always appeal to an employment tribunal but they won't take much notice if you've been there a couple of months and got fired for not doing your job.
Note that isn’t universally true, for either case. Without mutual agreement, in the EU you can’t fire someone just because, and in Japan you can’t divorce unless you have proof of a physical affair or something equally damming.
You don’t own your marriage either? What exactly is the distinction you’re trying to make here, that you can hang onto your marriage even if your spouse doesn’t want it?
Bosses should be able to make decisions about jobs or AI. That ok.
But as a society we have to ask ourselves if replacing all jobs with AI will make for a better society.
Life is not all about making as much money as possible. For a working society citizen need meaning in their lives, and safety, and food, and health. If most people get too little of this, it may disrupt society, and cause wars and riots.
This is where government needs to step in, uncontrolled enterprise greed will destroy countries. But companies don´t care, they'll just move to another country. And the ultra-rich don´t care, they'll just put larger walls around their houses or move country.
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