In 2016 Big Canoe Property Owners paid $9.4 Million Dollars for several tracts of land. The Sale was part of an Illegal Fraud committed against the Big Canoe Property Owners. This article addresses potentially $3,000,000 worth of fraud, in just a single portion of the overall deal.
The 2016 Land Deal wasn’t actually a single sale, but was broken into many smaller sales. This article is going to deal with just one of those sales, recorded in Warranty Deed #8. This was the largest of the sub-Sales, valued at $3,600,044 according to the PT-61 filed as part of the sale, which as required by law references the Parcel to which this land was being associated – Pickens County Parcel 046D 001 004. The property supposedly came out of a Big Canoe Developer Parcel 046D 001.
INSERT NOTE: Pickens County Parcel 046D 001 004, into which much of the land purchased in Warranty Deed #8 was rolled, is the largest of all POA Land Parcels within Pickens County. A single Parcel can be a conglomeration of many, many sales that are all different tracts of land, all merged together. This POA Master Parcel includes most of our amenities, currently holds 859 acres of land, and is currently valued on the Tax Records as over $12 Million Dollars. In 2018, the POA paid $114,717.24 in property taxes on this parcel alone. Below is a representation of what most of it currently looks like in the Tax Website;
Note 1: the Acres shown above represent a 15.54 acre drop in 2018. But in 2015, 2016, and 2017 the Acreage was exactly the same 875.34 Acres. REMEMBER THIS, because it becomes important to the story as we proceed.
Note 2: My experience in land investigations is that failure to file plats, and the filing of illegally misleading PT-61’s are often intentionally used to complicate reviews of the sale, by making it hard to track individual land pieces involved. Dumping multi-tracts of land into a single parcel is another land fraud trick – akin to throwing fruit in a blender. It “Mixes” the land history to the point that it is hard to track the Ownership Title. This is exacerbated even further when the “Mixed” land doesn’t have Visual Plats filed as parts of the sale – making it that much harder to identify what is what. And of course when you are researching land, and a PT-61 leads you to the wrong piece of land, you hit dead ends, which is of course the Goal of those committing the fraud. The 2016 Land Deal had a MULTITUDE of ALL of these components: 1) Parcel Mixing, 2) No Filed Plats & 3) Illegally Misfiled PT-61’s. See how many instances you can find as we begin this Sale Review.
Warranty Deed #8 (18 Page text copy) was executed on April 14, 2016 and filed in Pickens County Deed Book 1080; Pages 473-490 (1 Page file copy). Below are the land tracts sold to us in Warranty Deed #8, as shown in Exhibit A:
Tracts “C-1”; “C-2”; “H”; “S”; “T-1″; T-2”; and “T-3” detailed individually below.
1) Tract C-1 ~ Treetop Ridge Tract — 7.84 Acres.
* This land IS currently shown as included in Parcel 046D 001 004. Here is an image….
2) Tract C-2 ~ Treetop Ridge Tract — 9.54 Acres.
* This land IS NOT shown as included in Parcel 046D 001 004, but as part of Parcel 046A 355 (see below). This is a standalone parcel that the POA has been the owner of record for, and has been paying taxes on since 1999 (in other words, we probably already owned it since the records show we did, and we were paying the taxes on it for 20+ years). It is of note that the PT-61 ILLEGALLY identified this as part of another parcel, in violation of Georgia Law that requires PT-61’s to correctly identify the parcels involved in a sale.
3) Tract H ~ Cox Mountain / Wilderness Pkwy Tract — 44.90 Acres.
* This land IS currently shown as included in Parcel 046D 001 004. Here is an image….
5) Tract S ~ SCONTI POINT Tract — 8,2 Acres.
* This land IS currently shown as included in Parcel 046D 001 004. Here is an image….
Before we go to the next Tract, let me spend a moment on this one, because Sconti Point was billed as a HUGELY EXPENSIVE part of this deal, and there is evidence that we were previously sold this land in 1987. With that said, here is the Appraisal Excerpt from CBRE in regards to the 2016 Sale, and then below that is the one from Norton (which we were repeatedly pounded with to get Voter Approval):
So to add insult to injury, not only were they probably selling us our own land, they were also using BUCKHEAD Commercial Property valued at over $1,000,000 per acre to drive up the price (<< see link for comps). When they cost averaged that into the Appraisal Comps, we ended up paying about $300,000 per acre for raw mountain land. Let that sink in. They sold us our own land, used inflated appraisals, and suckered us into buying raw land for $300,000 / acre. I’m not sure whether to feel embarrassed or furious with the previous Board that was supposed to be watching our backs (or the POA Attorney that sells us down the river time after time).
Another bit of information in the Valuation, was a false & fraudulent statement that the Sconti Point land was zoned by Pickens County at 6 Units per acre. Pickens County Zoning states that the maximum zoning is for 5 Units, not 6. That alone is a 17% over-inflation of the value.
Considering the above, the value of Sconti Point was fraudulently misrepresented to the Voters; and the property overvalued by 9 Units x $50K/unit = $450,000 fraudulent over-valuation. That’s a lot of money.
Of course, this is assuming the sale was even legal in the 1st place, because as I previously stated, there is evidence that we already owned the land. Here is an excerpt of land we were given in a Deed filed May 15, 1987…
ABOVE is the sole description given in the 1987 Warranty Deed, where the Developer sold “Tracts A, B, C, and D” to the Property Owners Association. There is no Metes & Bounds description – only the reference to a Plat dated May 11, 1987 which was NOT FILED. The Golf Course itself was Deeded separately, so it wasn’t the Course land.
There is another document filed the same day in 1987, which also clearly references an unfiled Plat dated “May 11, 1987“, and specifically identifies Sconti Point as Tract “A”. See Excerpt Below…
So we have two documents filed on the same day, both referencing a privately held, and unfiled May 11, 1987 Plat – and one of those identifies Tract “A” as being sold to us, and another identifies Tract “A” as Sconti Point. Until we see evidence to the contrary, I think it a fair assumption to make – that the Big Canoe Property Owner’s Association OWNED Sconti Point as far back as 1987.
SUPPORTING NOTE: This is further backed up by the fact that Property Owner Records, and Tax Payments also show the POA as the historical owners of the Parcel that Sconti Point has been in prior to us “buying” it in 2016. A clear legal process exisys that the County must follow to get land into a Parcel. Absent any other evidence, we must assume that the proper procedures were followed, and the 1987 Warranty Deed is what most most likely caused the tax assessor to place Sconti Point into the POA Master Parcel.
2ND SUPPORTING NOTE: The POA has been registered as the Owner of that Parcel for 30 +/- years, AND has been openly paying taxes on it for that time. Georgia’s Adverse Possession Laws (OCGA 44-5-160 to 162) provides legal path to title of the land after just 20 years of possession.
3RD SUPPORTING NOTE: We hired Rochester & Associates to do due diligence on the Sale. They provided a report to the POA prior to the Closing. Sconti Point was listed in that report as one of the Tracts that showed as already being owned by the POA.
4TH SUPPORTING NOTE: They refuse to show us the Unfiled Plats, which are the ONLY referenced legal identification of the land in question. We are absolutely entitled to see it, and to have it recorded as part of the legal record. (A rational person has to ask, “Why the secrecy?”)
Again, absent evidence to the contrary, it must be assumed that WE OWNED THAT LAND prior to the 2016 sale.
This next Tract T-1 is an almost identical situation to the Sconti Point land.
6) Tract T-1* ~ Golf Course Edge Tracts — 32.03 Acres.
* It is very probable that we also owned this parcel since 1987. To prove it a review of the 2016 “T-1” metes and bounds description would have to be compared to “revised May 11, 1987” plats (which, again the POA & Developer will not release), but the acreage and location seems to match an earlier sale. See Below…
I am mentioning the tracts below, T-2 & T-3, just because they are part of Warranty Deed #8, but we are excluding them from discussion because in a Rare Instance – there isn’t any glaring problem with this portion of the sale. There may very well be fraud involved here also, but we don’t know, because we can’t exactly locate the land in prior deeds. This is due to the fact the Developer likes to play “hide the land” by failing to file visual plats, as well as practicing “Parcel Mixing”.
7) Tract T-2 ~ Golf Course / Wilderness Tract — 23.87 Acres.
8) Tract T-3~ Twin Creeks Drive Extension Tract — 0.16 Acres.
Anyway, for now we are ignoring the above 2 Tracts.
Remember as we started back at the beginning, showing how Tracts “C-1”, “H”, and “S” were all mixed into that Master Parcel 046D 001 004? All combined they included 7.84 Acres + 44.9 Acres + 8.2 Acres, for a TOTAL of 60.94 Acres.
Those 60.94 acres were added into Parcel 046D 001 004, yet the POA tax bills in 2015 before the sale; and 2016 & 2017 tax bills after the sale, all reflect the same 875.34 total acres. How did we add 60.94 Acres of Land to Parcel 046D 001 004 through the 2016 Land Deal, but the Volume of Land didn’t change within the Parcel? Answer: because we bought land we already owned – already IN the Parcel.
It seems quite probable that there is $2.5 – $3 Million Dollars worth of Fraud involved just in this single Warranty Deed #8.
Here is my message to the POA Board….
I don’t know exactly how you are getting ready to spin your next request for a Rate Increase to pay for some crazy expensive project, but everyone knows it is coming. I predict this $125,000 Chambers Consulting Study is going to suggest that we build a $3 – $4 Million Dollar Community Center.
Well, if you want to build your community center, or redo the golf course, or do any other massive capitol expenditure, I suggest that before you come to us Property owners for more money…. go do your job, put together a team to dig into the facts of this Land Deal, and if deemed appropriate, take Legal Action Against the Developer and CLAW BACK WHAT WAS DEFRAUDED OF US in the 2016 Land Deal, and/or use this as Leverage to push the Developer OUT of the Community! And while you are at it, FIRE our POA Attorney who continually oversees this nonsense.
ULTIMATELY WHAT WE NEED IS… a Special Property Owner Committee to oversee this. This is not an extreme or unprecedented suggestion. We did something similar in 2002/3ish to oversee the Financial Fraud & Theft allegations back then. This Land Deal is an even bigger issue, and involves a LOT more money.
Dear Board, Please do NOT ask us for More Money for any “Mega-Projects”, until this is fixed and/or all open questions addressed!
IF ANYONE HAS QUESTIONS, post them in our Facebook Group and I will do my best to answer….
https://www.facebook.com/groups/FocusonBigCanoeGA/
Good luck. Peace,
– david / publisher
Be the first to comment