C. Fla. Man Claims "Adverse Possession" Defense After Arrest On Home Hijacking Charges; Swiped 72 Houses, Rented Out 31 To Unwitting Tenants, Say Cops

In Land O' Lakes, Florida, The Tampa Tribune reports:

• Stephen Thomas Bybel had a business idea that would make him a landlord and line his pockets while sprucing up neighborhoods where homes in foreclosure were left to deteriorate and become targets of vandals. Pasco County sheriff's officials see it another way: He broke into vacant homes, changed the locks and rented out other people's houses. Bybel was arrested at his house Wednesday and was charged with one count of scheming to defraud.

• Reached by telephone after his release from jail, the 48-year-old Bybel maintained he didn't defraud anyone. "I think I'm doing a service to the community." In all, Sheriff Bob White said, Bybel took possession of 72 homes – in the Land O' Lakes and Wesley Chapel areas -- beginning in December and rented out 31 of them.

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• The investigation into Bybel began when a real estate agent, also a part-time Pasco deputy, was recently trying to show a house that was for sale but discovered the locks had been changed. [...] One of the homes which Bybel has taken over, White said, is owned by another deputy who just started work this week. Apparently, it's a scheme that's being done in Miami and Las Vegas, the sheriff said. In fact, White said, they are investigating another unrelated similar scheme in Pasco.

For more, see Man says he did no wrong by renting out others' homes.

See also:

• The Tampa Tribune: Little-used statute at center of alleged rental scam,
• St. Petersburg Times: Man accused of turning foreclosed homes claimed by 'adverse possession' into Pasco rentals.

(1) Reportedly, Bybel started a company – Real T Solutions Investments, LLC -- and hit the streets of central Pasco searching for vacant homes. He would select some and then by filing a one-paragraph "memorandum of adverse possession" legal notice with the Pasco Clerk of Courts office, he would take possession of such properties, the story states. Bybel would then change the homes' locks, sometimes give them a fresh coat of interior paint and then rent them out.