Broke C. Fla Man Unable To Mount Defense To Charges Of Hijacking, Renting Out 100+ Vacant F'closures Under Claim Of Adverse Possession Commits Suicide

In Sarasota, Florida, the Sarasota Herald Tribune reports:

• When Joel McNair committed suicide last week, he left behind a broken management company and a string of legal issues that threatened to land him in prison. For some time, McNair found vacant homes, many of them in foreclosure, and rented them out — even though he did not own the homes. McNair moved more than 100 people into foreclosed homes along Florida's Gulf Coast.
• He was arrested in November on charges of fraud and grand theft and was awaiting trial. McNair contended that renting empty properties was legal under Florida's adverse possession statute, which was created in 1869. The law allows someone to occupy an abandoned property as long as that person takes care of the property and pays the taxes, said Bob Hurt, an Internet blogger who had become fascinated with McNair's program of occupying foreclosed homes. And McNair was doing just that.
• But law enforcement officials and legal experts say McNair was simply a con man stealing money from people down on their luck.

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• [A]cquaintances said the thought of going back to prison and having no money to mount a defense also was difficult for McNair to deal with. He spent seven years in Sumter County and Zephyrhills prisons from 1987 through 1993 after being convicted of racketeering and 52 counts of grand theft for collecting millions in commissions on more than 100 bogus time-share sales.
• "He saw himself spending the rest of his life and dying in prison," said Hurt, the Internet blogger. "He was broke," he said. "It cost him $12,000 to get out of jail in November and he had to pay an attorney on to of that. His trial was coming up and he saw his life disappearing."(1)

For more, see Landlord left messy legal issues behind in suicide.

(1) See The Lord of Squat: Mark Guerette Got Busted for Putting Families in Foreclosed Homes for another example of an individual who got into the vacant home hijacking business and who, when faced with criminal charges, pleaded "no contest" to organized fraud, a felony. According to that story, "His lawyer was willing to fight the charges, but Mark said he didn't want to risk ending up in jail and leaving his wife and kids stranded without a husband and father."