Possession Of Another Unoccupied House In Foreclosure Swiped In Home Hijacking Scam Disguised As Legitimate "Adverse Possession" Claim

In Puyallup, Washington, KOMO-TV Channel 4 reports:

• A young couple facing foreclosure says their house was hijacked and rented to strangers without their consent. Eric and Ashlie Bogue found themselves locked out of their own house. "I still own this property. They changed the locks on the door. I can't even get into my own house," said Eric Bogue.

• The Bogues got behind in their payments. The bank agreed to a short sale. So they moved out to keep the house ready to show at a moment's notice. But when they went to check on the house on Saturday, they saw an entire family moving in with their beds, their clothes and all of the kids' toys, including the son's baseball card collection.

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• The Bogues tracked down paperwork that traces back to one rental agent, Washington Resolution Trust. Peter Dodsondance,(1) the man behind the company, says there's nothing funny going on. "No I'm not trying to do anything shady. What I'm trying to do is save our communities," he said. Dodsondance said he's acting as the custodian of the Bogues' home, which the couple abandoned.

For more, see Couple returns home, finds family of strangers living inside.

See also, KING-TV Channel 5: Puyallup couple says squatters trying to take over their home:

• The new occupants told [the Bogues] they were making a claim to the house because it had been abandoned. "They told us they were renting it, and that they were doing adverse possession on the property," said Bogue. [...] We showed the adverse possession claims filed on the Bogues' home to a real estate attorney. "What they amount to is some stranger coming in and recording something that looks legal and using that to claim the property. These are not functionally any different than a forged deed," said Gerald Robison. Robison says "adverse possession" claims are being made all over the country and are even promoted on the Internet and in books as perfectly legal.

(1) According to other stories, Dodsondance reportedly:

• pleaded guilty to felony theft for taking money from an elderly woman in a real estate transaction in 2007,
• goes by the names Peter T. Dodsondance, Peter T. Dance, aliases that appeared in a trail of courthouse records in both Pierce and King counties,
• has used seven different social security numbers, including that of a dead man, according to detectives looking into the case,
• appears to do property managing under a number of different titles: United Plus Property Management, CW & Jones Property Management, Washington Pacific NW Trustee Service, Inc. and a nonprofit, the DodsonDance Foundation, among others.

Sources:

• KOMO-TV Channel 4: Man claims he rented out strangers' homes to keep up property value; and
• KING-TV Channel 5: AG's office investigating squatters cases.