Facing Prospect Of Expensive Costs To Raze Or Rehab, Sneaky Chicago Real Estate Operator Wiggles Way Out Of City Lawsuit By Unloading Title To Six Dilapidated Homes Bought At Tax Sale To Unwitting Homeless Man

In Chicago, Illinois, the Chicago Tribune reports:

• Abana Tabb carries a small cardboard sheet hand-printed with the words "Help Please Homeless" while he panhandles in downtown Chicago, often near the Metra station at Millennium Park.
  
  His homelessness is something of a contradiction, though. Cook County land records show that Tabb owns six properties in the Chicago area, thanks to an investment corporation that passed deeds to him.
  
  "I feel like Donald Trump with all them houses," Tabb said, laughing on a rainy afternoon in the Burger King at the Millennium Park station.
  
  But the run-down properties owned by Tabb — who was subsequently named in several lawsuits — wouldn't likely be holdings in Trump's portfolio. [...] Those holdings are what real estate agents call distressed properties, and they were transferred to Tabb by Z Financial Illinois G Properties LLC, a property investment firm with offices on LaSalle Street in the Loop, where Tabb occasionally panhandles.
  
  Tabb said he never lived in them and until recently didn't know he was their owner.
  
  Records show that the company deeded the majority of the properties to Tabb shortly after the city of Chicago filed suit seeking to force the firm to rehab, demolish or allow the city to charge the firm for the cost of tearing down the decrepit structures.
  
  In nearly every case, records show that the company was dismissed from the lawsuit and Tabb was added as a defendant after the transfers occurred.
  
  The practice of transferring properties is legal but raises ethical questions, experts and law enforcement officials say. This summer, the Cook County sheriff's office investigated the transfers but closed the case without filing charges.
  
  "It might not be illegal, but ... a good property owner doesn't do that," said Lindsay Thompson, an associate professor at Johns Hopkins University who runs an urban redevelopment lab and teaches about character in business.
  
  But Keith Moll, a principal in the LaSalle Street company, defended the decision to transfer the properties to Tabb as acts of charity toward a man in need. "I tried to give Abana every opportunity to own a home and get back on his feet," Moll said in an email response to the Tribune.
  
  
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  6 homes for homeless man
  
  Moll, one of Z Financial Illinois G Properties' managers, established a relationship with Tabb about six years ago, according to public records from the Cook County sheriff's police, which opened a probe into the transactions and interviewed Tabb and Moll this summer.
  
  Sheriff's spokeswoman Cara Smith said the office was researching titles of buildings scheduled to be torn down in Dixmoor, and "we came upon this problem of these scavenger businesses and their role in entrenched blight" in the south suburb.
  
  "What the solution to this problem is and how to hold these scavenger companies accountable is what we're focused on now," she said. "While we have conduct here that is tremendously concerning and unethical, we have not found the right criminal law to hang on this problem."
  
  What Tabb and Moll told the Tribune about their relationship and the property transfers largely mirrors what they told authorities. Both accounts indicate that Moll and Tabb struck up a relationship and Moll occasionally gave cash to Tabb.
  
  Their relationship evolved in July 2009, when Tabb said Moll offered him a chance to make a few bucks.
  
  "(He said) 'I wanna dump a couple of houses on you. Don't worry about it. You're not gonna get in trouble, blah, blah, blah ... sign here,'" Tabb told the Tribune.
  
  In his email, Moll said Tabb "expressed a desire to acquire one of these homes" and restore it.
  
  
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  'He wanted to dump the houses'
  
  At the Burger King last month, Tabb recalled signing documents in Moll's office and being paid "25, 30, 40, 50 dollars" in cash each time. Weeks earlier he had told sheriff's investigators he was paid $20 each for signing the documents.
  
  Tabb, 56, has a police record showing arrests for public intoxication, possession of drug paraphernalia, panhandling, trespassing and other minor offenses. He told the Tribune he's trying to kick his heroin addiction and has been seeking treatment at a methadone clinic on the West Side.
  
  He said he didn't ask many questions when given the chance to make some cash.
  
  "I knew that he wanted to dump the houses," Tabb told the Tribune, "but I didn't know what did he need my name for. I was like, 'Well, can I move in 'em?' He was like, 'No, I just need you to help me so I can get rid of 'em.'"
  
  Tabb said he thought the documents were insignificant and procedural, requiring signatures merely to clear the way for demolition or to provide a contact if police were called to the buildings.
  
  
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  Court records for at least three of the properties indicate they were uninhabitable by the time Tabb took ownership. Documents also show that Z Financial Illinois G Properties deeded each Chicago property to Tabb after the city initiated legal action seeking to have the buildings repaired or razed.
  
  
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  After the company transferred one of the Chicago properties to Tabb, its attorney filed documents with the court asking to be removed as defendants in the lawsuit because it no longer owned the building. Included in the filing was a copy of the deed showing Tabb as the new owner. Z Financial Illinois G Properties was subsequently dismissed from the case, and Tabb was added as a defendant. The city subsequently foreclosed on the property and can recoup costs through its sale.
  
  "He was real slick about it," Tabb said. "So I ran with it 'cause I needed the money."
  
  
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  Looking back on his odyssey, Tabb said he now believes he may have been used by Moll.
  
  "Why would a man who has so much ... pull that on somebody?" Tabb said. "I mean, basically, he could have said something, you know?"
  
  But Tabb said he wasn't angry.
  
  Shortly before trudging up the steps to resume his panhandling position at Michigan Avenue and Randolph Street, Tabb recalled how Moll "helped me out through thick and thin" over the years, adding, "If I was in a crunch, he was there for me."
  
  Tabb said he and Moll are still friendly and that he saw Moll on the street in early September. Asked what they discussed, Tabb said: "Nothing, I just hit him up for 20 bucks."
  
  And Moll gave it to him.

For the whole story, see Tax buyer deeds abandoned properties to homeless man ('I feel like Donald Trump with all them houses,' homeless man says after tax buyer transfers six homes to him).