SEMINOLE COUNTY, Fla. — This girl is going around, attaching herself to properties with a Quit Claim Deed? A Quit Claim Deed can attach you to somebody else’s property? Really?” Tara Dumas said in frustration.
Dumas says a share of her grandparents’ property was taken through a fraudulent deed, filed by a woman 9 Investigates has reported on before.
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Investigative Reporter Karla Ray first exposed the issue that’s under investigation by the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office, and found out the woman accused in two separate cases tried to take full control of the second property in question.
The home on Merritt Street in Altamonte Springs was split five ways and left to the heirs of the original owner. Those heirs have since passed, and the next generation of family members have been going through the probate process; but a woman named Karen Bobb who claims to run a nonprofit that fixes up distressed properties sent an email to the Seminole County Property Appraiser, trying to move the ownership into her name.
“I was going to get the house fixed up and move in there until this happened,” Dumas said.
To Dumas, the home represents the hard work of her grandparents and her entire childhood.
“My grandmama used to take care of us, cook for us, we’d have Thanksgiving dinner here, everything,” Dumas said. “Everything revolved around this property and my grandmama… it’s not just a property, it’s something sacred to me.”
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The home has been boarded up and no trespassing signs clearly warn to stay away after Dumas and her relatives learned a stranger had taken over a share of the ownership through what they say is a fraudulent deed.
Property records show The Home Fund, managed by a woman named Karen Bobb, filed a deed in December of 2021 transferring Tara’s cousin Gary Chestnut’s portion of the property into her name.
“I never signed anything. My signature is not on anything,” Chestnut said.
9 Investigates first spoke to Gary last year, when he discovered Bobb and The Home Fund had done the same thing to his property on Leonard Street a few blocks away. The Seminole County Sheriff’s Office agreed the signature on that deed does not match the one on Gary’s license; it’s nearly identical to the filing on the Merritt Street property record, too.
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“The most frustrating thing is the lack of assistance,” real estate agent Sharisse Walton said.
Walton has been trying to help the family get the properties out of the control of The Home Fund; a process that comes at a cost in more ways than one.
“It’s very unfortunate that people have to take their time, their money, their resources, and just their overall energy and stress, to fight something that should never have happened,” Walton said.
9 Investigates has made several attempts to speak to Bobb, but we have never gotten an answer at her home in Orlando or by phone.
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