The business of stolen property in Mexico City has become a millionaire booty.
Lawyers, notaries, politicians, civil servants and criminal groups are part of a huge network that is responsible for stripping people of their homes or land and selling them at lower prices on a black market.
It is a well-oiled structure that consists of locating real estate, studying the victim and then taking the property away in judicial instances to which they go with falsified documentation with the help of corrupt officials.
The illegal networks, which transcend different administrations and political colors, have left thousands of people without their properties.
According to data from the Executive Secretariat of the National Public Security System, only in 2022 about 4 were opened in Mexico City.
Héctor Alonso falls within those thousands of victims.
A builder by profession, Alonso's father bought a 9,065-square-meter piece of land in the 1990s on the Peripheral Ring of Mexico City, one of the busiest roads in the capital and surrounding the metropolis.
His father's idea was to build a 10-story hotel, but between the crisis and other projects, he delayed construction and, in 2000 when he divorced, the land with the foundations for the construction remained in the hands of the mother of him
The following year, the woman put the property into a trust to eventually continue construction.
It was not until a decade later, when the civil works had not yet been reactivated, that the problems began.
Next to the property there is a settlement that had been expropriated and regularized in the eighties.
Almost 30 years later, in 2011, an official from the then Commission for the Regularization of Land Tenure (Corett), belonging to the Ministry of Agrarian, Territorial and Urban Development, decided to include in that expropriation 3,000 square meters that belonged to the Alonso's land and sold that part, illegally, to his own aunt.
Alonso, 66, did not find out until he discovered that in the public registry of the property there were supposedly two owners of the same piece of land.
There were files that determined in parallel that both his mother and a third party, whom he did not know, owned the same piece of land, as EL PAÍS learned through the ruling in the case.
Alonso assures that the official who planned to steal that property was acting in partnership with notaries and lawyers who helped him regularize the false sales before public bodies.
“What they do is see that they have adjoining land, and they say: 'Let's see, go to the public registry.
Whose is it?
Well, look at a lady who is 70 years old.
Well, she is very well, why won't she develop it?
She must not have wool ”.
That leads them to the conclusion that it will be easier to take ownership of her,
The elderly are the perfect victims of the networks that take care of offal.
As recently reported by the newspaper
El Universal
, the Mexico City Prosecutor's Office issued a report for the local Congress detailing how these networks operate.
Older adults with a property in which they do not reside or to which they rarely visit represent the most vulnerable group to the actions of these criminal groups, which pay special attention to properties located in areas of high purchasing power, which will later be easier to sell.
All of these ingredients were fulfilled in an extreme way recently.
The so-called
case of the Tirado brothers
ended with three people murdered in a Porfirian mansion with two floors in the Roma neighborhood, one of the most expensive in the capital.
The motive for the crime was precisely the dispossession of the property after the death of its owner, an old man who had left the house to his heirs.
The property located in Anillo Periférico, in the Pueblo Quieto neighborhood of Mexico City. Nayeli Cruz
The fights over the properties then turn to the courts, where the two parties to the scam—victim and perpetrator—spend years trying to prove who the property really belongs to.
On this thorny path, many of the victims decide to give up their home or land to avoid the time and money spent in court.
Other victims have told this newspaper that those who sought to take away their property offered them a truce in exchange for a price.
The latter is the case of Alonso, who was asked for five million pesos to return the 3,000 square meters that he had stolen.
“We cannot access extortion because that is how it never ends.
In other words, as businessmen we cannot get involved in this, because for the people we invite to invest, everything must be perfectly clear”, points out the construction businessman.
Some 12 years after starting the legal dispute, Alonso has been able to prove in court that the land belongs to his family.
The official who had taken it from him was sanctioned with a disqualification from holding public office for 10 years and a fine of 37.9 million pesos, according to a document from the Corett Internal Control Body that this newspaper accessed.
Despite this, the businessman has not yet recovered his land, which is currently under the protection of the capital authorities.
Forged signatures and illegal contracts
Another of the victims of the dispossession networks was María Eugenia Casillas.
The woman lived in a family home in the Escandón neighborhood when on October 6, 2017, around seven in the morning, she woke up to noises inside the property.
Some 14 men had entered her home and were taking her furniture and belongings out onto the street.
Frightened by what was happening, Casillas called her brother and asked some neighbors for help to get the men out of the place, then decided out of fear to withdraw and stay with some relatives for a few days, according to the complaint filed with the Prosecutor's Office, to the who had access to this newspaper.
When Casillas went to the Public Ministry to find out what was happening, he found out that someone had submitted a sales contract for the house to the authorities, with his signature on the document, so the property had alleged new owners.
But she hadn't sold it.
“Either they forged her signature or they tricked her and told her: 'Sign here,'” says Roberto Casillas, María Eugenia's brother.
They then began a long legal battle to recover the property.
The Casillas family believes that María Eugenia was identified as a possible victim of the dispossession networks when she went to do some registration.
She was an 87-year-old woman who appeared alone and after that day they began to spy on her, they say.
“That property belonged to our brothers,” says Roberto, “my parents were the owners, they were the ones who built that house, when they died they left it to us.
There is a document that [says that] we were legally the owners.”
Property of the Casillas family, located in the Escandón neighborhood, which remains in the custody of the authorities.
The Prosecutor's Office confirmed that this sale had been fraudulent, then went to the property to remove the supposed new owners.
But the nightmare did not end there: when they were able to clarify what had happened, the house had already been sold once again by those who had taken it.
“The scoundrels who took my sister's house, those who said they were the owners, sold it to a woman.
That name also appeared in the Public Registry of Property”, remembers Roberto.
"They had everything organized, it is a very well orchestrated mafia."
For the fraud to happen, as in many other cases, he had to count on the complicity of notaries, lawyers and public officials who allowed not one, but two irregular sales to be recorded.
“At the time the investigations were being carried out, the house was sold again.
How do you explain that?” says Roberto.
Five years later, the family has still not been able to recover the house due to various bureaucratic obstacles, they say.
“We are already suspicious of everyone, because so much time has passed and they have not returned our house.
It's five years already.
And they come up with some arguments...".
Stolen properties for sale by catalog
At least two sources told this newspaper how a group of businessmen has set up a business selling stolen properties that are offered by catalogues.
A beautiful and well-dressed woman arrived at Alonso's construction company about eight years ago with a great offer under her arm, she recalls.
She offered the businessman to acquire properties in areas where even then it was difficult to get free places due to overconstruction, such as in the Roma or Polanco neighborhoods.
"I start to ask him questions and he tells me: 'Look, I can't explain all that to him, but if he wants to we can make an appointment for the lawyers to come and explain it to him."
Alonso said yes, the prices were well below what the properties cost at that time, and a few days later he met with the graduates, who arrived well dressed, in expensive cars driven by chauffeurs and with their sales catalogs in hand. .
“After five questions they told me: 'We are not going to waste your time.
We quickly explained to him, these are abandoned lands, that property taxes have not been paid, that the lady died, that she had no heirs, we recovered them, regularized them and sold them”.
The businessman rejected them, he was not willing to acquire land that was not totally neat, but he reflects: “It is an industry, so that all those people can live that way.
How is it possible that they keep turning the other way?
How much does that cost?
Who pays all that money?
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