Dyck's Deeds Drive Homeowners, Recording Officials 'Wild' In Sovereign Citizen Title Snatching Scam; 'Paper Terrorist' Responsible

In Osceola County, Florida, the St. Petersburg Times reports:

• Last year, Olga Aponte sold the New York home she'd owned for 32 years and paid cash for a foreclosure house in Kissimmee. The 67-year-old wanted a solid retirement investment. For months, she lived in peace.



• That was, until she learned about the intruder. It happened this summer, when her son saw the name of a stranger on her property records, on a deed filed one month after she bought her house: Jacob Franz Dyck.



• But Aponte had never met Dyck, or agreed to sign anything. And she wasn't the only one. Dyck, the Times has learned, has filed more than 100 "wild deeds" laying claim to properties in Osceola county. The deeds bear no signatures of the rightful homeowners or any evidence of their consent.



• What is he doing and what does he stand to gain? It's unclear. Authorities can't find him to answer that question, but his track record gives them cause for concern.



• Dyck, 72, is a self-proclaimed "sovereign citizen," purporting to be above the laws of government. He's also a felon. The St. Petersburg Times wrote about him in August after homeowners said he misled them into thinking they could avoid foreclosure by deeding their houses to him to put into a "pure trust." For this, he charged a fee. Owners lost their homes anyway.



• "Sovereign citizens" have declared themselves free from government and believe banks don't have a right to foreclose on properties; they often flood the courts with documents, a practice known among critics as "paper terrorism."



• The theories for Dyck's actions matter less than the implication: There is little to stop this from happening to you.

For more, see Jacob Dyck's wild deeds perplex homeowners.