So apparently a Beverly Hills woman has been filing Mechanics’ Liens (viz, liens that contractors can put on homes if the homeowner fails to pay for the work) on the homes of people she’s never done work for, doesn’t know, and indeed it looks like she’s just picking out addresses and heading to the courthouse. She has/had an estimated $500 million in such liens out.
I get how a lien works, but I don’t get how filing a fictitious lean = profit! If I put a $5 million lien on Fred’s home, it just … sits there until Fred tries to sell the home, or it goes into probate, or what have you. But do Fred/his estate not get a chance to contest the lien? Presumably if I put a lien on Fred’s house but he’s never heard of me and I can’t prove that a) I did work there and b) he didn’t pay me for it, then it’s case dismissed.
Best I can figure, this woman is filing hundreds of millions of dollars in liens in the hope that one of them will slip through the cracks and she’ll get the money. Sort of, throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks. Either that, or there’s some other scam here that I can’t suss out.
Filing fake liens might work if they were relatively small such that the owner wouldn’t notice or care enough to fight it. For instance, if you had a $100 lien on your house, you might just pay it off rather than take the time and effort to fight it. Especially if you were trying to sell your house and needed to quickly make the title clear. But this woman was putting $20M+ liens on houses that weren’t even worth that much. There’s no way that someone with a $1M house is going to just pay off a $20M lien. I’m guessing that she’s not very smart and thought that somehow she’d magically get the money from the government or something.
It kind of reminds me of when I was a kid and didn’t understand how credit cards worked. I thought if you had a CC, you got everything for free. I was shocked when I found out that you still actually had to pay for everything.
It’s like filing bogus lawsuits with no real basis that get settled out of court because it’s more valuable to just pay off the accuser than take it to court. (Though I would think in most cases those lawsuits would be dismissed before they got to court.)
Sort of like a “salami slicing” scheme?
You take amounts too small for people to get worked up about, but do it so many times that it eventually adds up to a fortune.
Regarding the liens, is there no reporting that one can sign up for, as a homeowner, to alert you to any new lien on your house? I seem to remember such a service being available. eta: I’m just pulling my free report now from California records, but I’m interested in a more pro-active service that I might be willing to pay for.
Also, is there no penalty for filing false liens? If this woman is doing this to hundreds of house owners, sooner or later she is going to get caught. I would expect there would be more to getting caught than just shrugging your shoulders and saying “well, I guess I don’t collect on that one.”
So I got mine, minimum charge is $1 so not quite free. I have no liens. One feature of the reporting here is to see registered sex offenders in my area, wow, there are a lot of them within say a square mile.
It was kind of a nuisance, and I would have to remember to do it. It seems like it could be a useful service for a third party, just for peace of mind.
My guess is that her rationale for doing this involves some sort of SovCit-adjacent logic. A combination of greed and a complete lack of knowledge about how stuff actually works.
Don’t discount vindictiveness as the homeowner doesn’t discover it until they go to sell & this delays the sale process by 90 days. What a way to screw your neighbors who pissed you off (provided you cant be charged with fraud or something)
I just looked and my county offers a free service to monitor this and send an automatic email if any documents are filed in relation to your property. Since the tax bill just came, I have the information on our place conveniently at my fingertips.
When we put a previous house on the market we discovered that a contractor we’d had problems with had put a lien on the home. With the help of an attorney who read (or more correctly, mailed) him the riot act, we got the lien removed before it had the chance to screw up a sale.
In a paper thin move, she put a lien on the house, suggesting that she deserves to be allowed to live there longer since she will soon own it. Its only in her head that things work that way…
In a more bizarre move perhaps intended to boost her credibility as a lien holder, to suggest she didn’t just out the lien on the house she lives in just as retribution, to make the case bigger and take longer, *she thinks*, she spams liens on other property…
Its only going to result in her attending an institution.
Ortiz has filed 35 mechanics liens. Those liens add up to more than $500 million worth of claims of unpaid work, including “cleaning” and other services.
That seems way more than anyone, even a fairly large company, are going to pay to just to avoid the hassle.
It’s possible of course she is just a very bad, greedy, fraudster and decided to go for stupidly large leins and that’s why you are reading about her her getting arrested. If she’d kept them small enough people would have paid them off and she’d have walked away with the cash.
As a real estate agent, I can call up any title company and request a “search and hold” on any property. This will show all liens and taxes pending or other unforeseen expenses (like charges that might be triggered by a sale). This is the same report that the title company will examine when they get the sale contract in order to prepare the sale documents, although things can happen between the first report and the final one.
So if you are selling or buying property, be sure to ask your agent for this. And if you aren’t using an agent, you’re on your own, kid.
Disclaimer: Not all states work this way for real estate sales and agency. My experience is mostly Wisconsin.
I once had a false lien on my house. I did not know it until I went to refinance. Turns out the lien placer had filed against everyone in the area with my last name and a first name similar to mine. I had to file an affidavit stating I had not lived at a certain address during a specific time period.
As I understand (not a lawyer) a lein implies debt for specific work done on the property in question. You can’t put a lien on Bob’s house because he hasn’t paid you for work on his summer cottage. You can’t put a lien on Bob’s house because he hasn’t paid you for the car he bought from you, or because the schmuck still owes you $200 for the superbowl bet.