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A GRANDMOTHER who bizarrely received an eviction notice for the home she bought has learned the truth about her so-called landlord.
Sheila Gibson, 69, now knows a law loophole led to her pulling up to her Georgia home and finding a note warning her she was about to be on the streets.
Gibson had lived in her property in Sandy Springs, about 25 minutes outside Atlanta, for years when she got the notice from the Fulton County Marshal’s Department in December 2022.
She was speechless at the warning, as her family had bought the home for $480,000 in 2020, so she never owed rent to anyone.
Yet, someone had gone to the Fulton County Clerk’s Office and filed paperwork claiming she was a tenant who hadn’t paid up.
“I don’t understand how the whole thing can happen,” Gibson told CBS affiliate WANF in May 2024.
“It upsets me just to talk about it; I feel so violated.”
The homeowner also uncovered court documents revealing that deputies had already attempted to evict her once in October 2022.
“Had it not been for that gate, we could have come home, and all our possessions would have been on the street,” Gibson said.
After investigating the strange situation, prosecutors believe that they have an answer to what happened.
Michael James Bourff has been arrested and accused of posing as the “agent” of Gibson’s home who filed the eviction documents.
In the docs, Bourff allegedly wrote the unaware lady owed $12,000 in past due rent.
The scammer claimed that Gibson had failed to respond to the initial eviction notice, but he never sent a warning in the first place.
Gibson’s nightmare has lifted the lid on a law loophole that’s allowed some bad actors to take advantage of hardworking homeowners.
It turns out that Georgia law doesn’t require clerks to verify IDs when filing deeds, making it easier for fraudsters to exploit the system.
This means that anyone can file eviction paperwork without proving they own the home in question.
Several property owners in the Atlanta area alone have been victimized by web scams that nearly left them homeless.
Others were forced to pay “rent” to fake landlords.
“This is crazy, someone can just walk into an office, provide no ID, and no one bothers to check if they even own the home,” Gibson said.
Bourff has been arrested and charged with perjury, forgery, and filing a false document.
Authorities first picked him up in a separate county for DUI charges, then transferred him to Fulton County Jail, where he later bonded out on January 1, 2025.
How common is eviction in the US?
Millions of households receive an eviction notice each year.
The Eviction Lab at Princeton University estimated that per 100 renting households, about 7.8 evictions were filed each year.
The Eviction Lab tracks filings across 10 states and 36 cities.
In a typical year, landlords file about 3.6 million eviction cases.
Source: The Eviction Lab
