# What's the scam? Why would someone place millions of dollars' worth of liens on homes they have no affiliation with? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 19, 2026, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-scam-why-would-someone-place-millions-of-dollars-worth-of-liens-on-homes-they-have-no-affiliation-with/1027827 "2026-02-19T20:27:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Roderick\_Femm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/roderick_femm/32/14875_2.png) [@Roderick\_Femm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roderick_Femm)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2026, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-scam-why-would-someone-place-millions-of-dollars-worth-of-liens-on-homes-they-have-no-affiliation-with/1027827/21 "2026-02-20T17:55:04Z")
There are different kinds of liens. You are talking about a mechanic’s lien. If you win a lawsuit against someone who either can’t or refuses to pay the damages, you can slap a lien on any identifiable property – real estate, personal property, bank accounts, etc. The trick usually is to find something owned by the entity that you sued. When I was a kid I delivered advertiser-type newspapers in my neighborhood for a small company that then went bankrupt and failed to pay me. My father won against them (not in attendance) in small claims court, but there was no way to collect, the entity that was supposed to pay me had dissolved itself. ---
**Author:** ![Ancient\_Nerd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ed655f/32.png) [@Ancient\_Nerd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ancient_Nerd)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2026, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-scam-why-would-someone-place-millions-of-dollars-worth-of-liens-on-homes-they-have-no-affiliation-with/1027827/22 "2026-02-21T20:04:18Z")
> [@Roderick\_Femm](#): > > but there was no way to collect, the entity that was supposed to pay me had dissolved itself. The description I heard for that entity was ‘legal turnip’. You can’t squeeze blood from one. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2026, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-scam-why-would-someone-place-millions-of-dollars-worth-of-liens-on-homes-they-have-no-affiliation-with/1027827/23 "2026-02-21T20:45:58Z")
> [@Roderick\_Femm](#): > > Well, she won’t have to worry about rent – 3 hots and a cot, rent free. Strangely, having inspected jails, breakfast is not a hot mean, and lunch is sandwich and soup or fruit (no choice). ---
**Author:** ![Roderick\_Femm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/roderick_femm/32/14875_2.png) [@Roderick\_Femm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roderick_Femm)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2026, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-scam-why-would-someone-place-millions-of-dollars-worth-of-liens-on-homes-they-have-no-affiliation-with/1027827/24 "2026-02-21T22:31:36Z")
Nothing strange about it, including the fact that the old rhyming phrase\* is no longer nit-pickily accurate. Well beside the point, in fact. \*borrowed, I think, from army boot camp, in which it may also no longer be perfectly representative of the fare on offer. ---
**Author:** ![md-2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9d8465/32.png) [@md-2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md-2000)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2026, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-scam-why-would-someone-place-millions-of-dollars-worth-of-liens-on-homes-they-have-no-affiliation-with/1027827/25 "2026-02-22T01:10:45Z")
> [@Roderick\_Femm](#): > > There are different kinds of liens. You are talking about a mechanic’s lien. If you win a lawsuit against someone who either can’t or refuses to pay the damages, you can slap a lien on any identifiable property – real estate, personal property, bank accounts, etc. The trick usually is to find something owned by the entity that you sued. When I was a kid I delivered advertiser-type newspapers in my neighborhood for a small company that then went bankrupt and failed to pay me. My father won against them (not in attendance) in small claims court, but there was no way to collect, the entity that was supposed to pay me had dissolved itself. So basically a lein must be either (a) work done on the property or (b) a court order for repayment of a debt. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2026, 1:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-scam-why-would-someone-place-millions-of-dollars-worth-of-liens-on-homes-they-have-no-affiliation-with/1027827/26 "2026-02-22T01:23:10Z")
More than once, when I was cashiering, I would hear a kid say, “Just write a check, so we don’t have to pay for it.” Doesn’t work that way either! (My brother once had a roommate who didn’t comprehend that checks needed to be backed by actual money in the bank.) ---
**Author:** ![DesertDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desertdog/32/11503_2.png) [@DesertDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DesertDog)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2026, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-scam-why-would-someone-place-millions-of-dollars-worth-of-liens-on-homes-they-have-no-affiliation-with/1027827/27 "2026-02-22T01:47:53Z")
> [@filmore](#): > > 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. I don’t remember who it was but decades ago when the Discover card was introduced there was a comedian who had a monologue that went something like, > Discover card. Yeah they got that named right. You see, I got one of them and then after a month I Discovered, I’d run up $8,000! > > Then they Discovered, I can’t pay for all that stuff. > > Then I Discovered, they don’t like that. > > So, now they’re trying to Discover where I’ve moved to. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2026, 11:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-scam-why-would-someone-place-millions-of-dollars-worth-of-liens-on-homes-they-have-no-affiliation-with/1027827/28 "2026-04-12T23:13:58Z")
In the early 1990s, my brother and his wife, who weren’t married yet, worked at the Montgomery Ward headquarters in Kansas City one springtime as temporary post-Christmas help. This was back in the day when they would have someone sitting outside the store offering some doodad, usually a plastic iced tea pitcher or a 1-pound bag of M&Ms, that kind of thing, in exchange for signing up for a card. They could both tell that the company was never going to recover because of the default rate on the cards, this I had long known, but I found out recently that they decided to quit on the spot when they figured out that Wards gave higher interest rates to black applicants. We’re talking about things like 40% instead of 18%, that kind of thing. I had not previously known that, and yeah, if they did that, they deserved to go broke. ---
**Author:** ![Isilder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/cc9497/32.png) [@Isilder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isilder)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2026, 4:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-scam-why-would-someone-place-millions-of-dollars-worth-of-liens-on-homes-they-have-no-affiliation-with/1027827/29 "2026-04-13T04:17:18Z")
This will vary by state/province/territory even in Westminster system countries …52 USA + 4 UK + 10 ? Canada.. The subject of the thread just said it was a valid lien. The subject placed a caveat, a lien claim of some sort, they registered an interest, on the property. You know, the court may accept or reject the claim of lien depending on _who you are_. They put it down to “gut feeling probabilities” , show me a precedent , that precedent is /isn’t similar enough, but there’s a precedent for everything which ever way you want it, its really classist zip code stuff .. thats why they are KEEN to know who the attorney is … they want to know who the JUDGE was … ( the better system would be the court officer hearing the case at hand should really see all precedents and opinions and facts with the attorneys, judges, even location details redacted. eg those details can be verified by the court workers and then redact them before it goes ot the court . ) ---
**Author:** ![Isilder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/cc9497/32.png) [@Isilder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isilder)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2026, 4:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-scam-why-would-someone-place-millions-of-dollars-worth-of-liens-on-homes-they-have-no-affiliation-with/1027827/30 "2026-04-13T04:26:11Z")
… Maybe the court accepted the possibly random shooting approach. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2026, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-scam-why-would-someone-place-millions-of-dollars-worth-of-liens-on-homes-they-have-no-affiliation-with/1027827/31 "2026-04-13T17:41:49Z")
You needed mail in photo ID to get a card? Or were they only taking in-person applications? ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2026, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-scam-why-would-someone-place-millions-of-dollars-worth-of-liens-on-homes-they-have-no-affiliation-with/1027827/32 "2026-04-13T22:51:42Z")
Good question. ---
**Author:** ![outlierrn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/outlierrn/32/3005_2.png) [@outlierrn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/outlierrn)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2026, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-scam-why-would-someone-place-millions-of-dollars-worth-of-liens-on-homes-they-have-no-affiliation-with/1027827/33 "2026-04-18T19:39:01Z")
Is there any time limit to contest liens like these? Or maybe her brain works the same way as the judge who sued a drycleaners for 54mil$. ---
**Author:** ![Chessic\_Sense](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/7c8e57/32.png) [@Chessic\_Sense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chessic_Sense)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2026, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-scam-why-would-someone-place-millions-of-dollars-worth-of-liens-on-homes-they-have-no-affiliation-with/1027827/34 "2026-04-18T19:45:57Z")
> [@filmore](#): > > 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. When I was 4 or 5, I thought you could just go to the bank and get whatever money you wanted. My mom said there was a limit on how much you could get, so I devised the bulletproof plot to simply change into a disguise and just keep looping through the line. They’d never know it was me again! This was going to be my profession. ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2026, 9:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-scam-why-would-someone-place-millions-of-dollars-worth-of-liens-on-homes-they-have-no-affiliation-with/1027827/35 "2026-05-01T09:40:44Z")
I’m not sure I would use “works” as a word to describe what the brain of the judge who sued a drycleaners for $54M does. ---
**Author:** ![bob\_2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bob_2/32/3341_2.png) [@bob\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bob_2)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2026, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-scam-why-would-someone-place-millions-of-dollars-worth-of-liens-on-homes-they-have-no-affiliation-with/1027827/36 "2026-05-06T20:16:55Z")
They experimented with putting photos on CCs here in the UL. The trial was abandoned when it was established that salespeople generally made no attempt to cross-check the customer with the pic on the card. I saw a report where a white woman was using a card with a pic of a Black man on it and no one challenged her. ---
**Author:** ![HeyHomie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heyhomie/32/207_2.png) [@HeyHomie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HeyHomie)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2026, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-scam-why-would-someone-place-millions-of-dollars-worth-of-liens-on-homes-they-have-no-affiliation-with/1027827/37 "2026-05-06T20:20:36Z")
Back in like 1996, when I was 26 and my younger half sister 10 (same dad, different moms), the three of us stopped by Barnes & Noble one day before Christmas to finish some last-minute shopping. There’s a huge line at the cash register. After waiting for a bit, PappaHomie has to pee, so he gives me his credit card and says, if he’s not back in time, to just sign his name, NBD. So of course when we get to the cash register he’s not back, and I sign the credit card slip (this was when it was done on paper). SissieHomie shouts out “That’s not how Daddy signs his name!!!” The cashier just chuckled. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2026, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-scam-why-would-someone-place-millions-of-dollars-worth-of-liens-on-homes-they-have-no-affiliation-with/1027827/38 "2026-05-06T20:40:56Z")
Now the cashier often never handles the credit card at all so they don’t have the opportunity to compare the photo on the card to the person. And actually, when visiting my parents, I will take their credit card to the supermarket to shop for them or to a restaurant to get take-out for the family. No one even cares. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-scam-why-would-someone-place-millions-of-dollars-worth-of-liens-on-homes-they-have-no-affiliation-with/1027827.md?page=1)