A civil court judge in Wake County, North Carolina, has restored the deed to a dentist’s home that was stolen in a case that generated national attention.
WRAL reports Dr. Craig Adams needed to go to court to void the fraudulent deed on his property filed by Dawn Mangum, a woman he never met. Adams only learned of the deed theft when his homeowners’ association informed him that Mangum was trying to gain the access codes for the gated community where he lives.
Mangum, who attempted to list Adams’ home for sale at $4 million and later claimed that she thought the house was abandoned, was arrested in September. But North Carolina law does not allow the Register of Deeds to void Mangum’s fraudulent paperwork, which was approved without verification. Thus, Adams needed to go through an expensive civil court process to correct the record and legally regain his deed.
During the virtual court hearing on Wednesday, Mangum asked for a continuance, claiming the situation was a mistake and adding she planned to sign the deed back over to Adams. The judge denied the continuance and ruled the deed filed in Mangum’s name was a fraud. Mangum was also ordered to pay Adams’ attorney fees and had an order filed against her to prohibit “filing any complaints, motions, or other papers related to Plaintiff in the Register of Deeds or in the Courts of Wake County, North Carolina, related in any way to the Property or any other property held by Plaintiff or Dr. Craig Adams, unless such document contains certification signed by an attorney licensed under the laws of the State of North Carolina to practice law in this state or is preapproved as non-frivolous by the court.”
Photo: Dawn Mangum mugshot
The seems to be NO shortage of pirates running around these days. Don’t even get me started on the criminal activity from Wall Street and lenders that tanked our Real Estate market in 2008. We should have seen a lot more people locked up.
Agents need to carefully vet all sellers of raw land with an out of state address who contact them to list their property. I had two fraudulent sellers contact me in 1 week to list land with no improvements and located in affluent areas. Both fraudulent sellers resided out of state, provided me emails for they and their spouse, and provided me with a copy of drivers license or passport for ID. I pulled tax record for each when I was on the initial calls. Their accents didn’t match the part of the country they claimed to reside in. In each instance I called a real estate agent in the city/State listed on tax record. Both were small towns in western states and the agents I contacted knew the actual owners of the land parcels and were happy to contact them. The real owners of land parcels called me and were thankful. We live in a world of people who don’t work………..they steal
How she got as far as she did boggles my mind. Who allowed this to happen? Lock her up and throw away the key. She tried to steal 4 million from this man!
It appears this case will be able to set a precedent for “stolen deeds”, but can’t help but think there should be safe guards at the Record of Deeds Office to verify transfers of real property. Does the NC Legislature need to pick this up and write some statewide laws to protect folks?