Suit: Social Service Volunteer Used Forged Deed To Steal Title To Financially Distressed Owner's Home, Then Flipped It For Big Buck$

In Lakewood, New Jersey, The Associated Press reports:

• Not so long ago, he was a successful carpenter and handyman, with a lagoon-front home at the Jersey shore, a small fishing boat that was the lifelong dream of his and his wife, and a solid middle class existence.
  
  Now he lives in a teepee made of plastic tarpaulins atop a plywood platform, deep in muddy, mosquito-infested woods. He has no money and no belt; a length of thin red rope holds his pants up.
  
  Hardman is suing a volunteer with a homeless assistance program, and a real estate company, accusing them of cheating him out of his home, selling it without giving him any of the proceeds.
  
  "I worked my ass off all my life; I never stole a thing," he said. "Everything was stolen from me, right down to my underpants. It all went straight to hell."
  
  When his wife died of cancer, Hardman started drinking to escape the pain, and soon developed a drinking problem. He fell behind on the payments on his Bayville house, and it went into foreclosure.
  
  While living in temporary housing in 2010, he met two real estate investors and agreed to sell his house to them for $115,000, even though it was worth far more. Soon afterward, he ended up at Tent City, an encampment of homeless people in the woods of Lakewood that township officials have tried for years to shut down.
  
  Hardman's troubles worsened at Tent City; it was there that he met Wallace Doman III, a Jackson Township man who volunteered as housing director with a social service agency that works to help the homeless. Doman is also a real estate investor who buys distressed properties, fixes them up and re-sells them.
  
  At issue is an April 6, 2010, deed that purports to transfer title to Hardman's house to a company Doman owns, Platinum Home Management, for the sale price of $50. Hardman swears he never signed it. But in court papers, Doman insists that's exactly what happened, and that he has witnesses to the transaction.
  
  Doman returned a call seeking comment but hung up as soon as a reporter identified himself. He did not answer subsequent calls.
  
  In court papers filed in response to the lawsuit, Doman maintains Hardman signed the house over to him of his own free will. Doman also claims he tried to end the deal and sign the house back to Hardman once he found out that Hardman had already signed a contract to sell the house to the two real estate investors, but that Hardman refused to take it back.
  
  The house was sold for $215,000 to the two investors, who are not named as defendants in the lawsuit. They later sold it to a third party for $355,400. Hardman and his lawyer, Benjamin Dash, say not a penny of that went to Hardman.

For the story, see N.J. homeless man claims he lost house after volunteer forged his signature.