Oooops, Michigan.Michigan county treasurer rebuked for seizing retiree's home over $8 tax debt

[2Far ★]

Officials in one Michigan county are demanding answers from their treasurer amid concerns that the county could be on the hook for millions of dollars in payments to former homeowners whose properties were seized under a tough forfeiture practice.

[JerrySTL ★]

"There are 14 other states in the U.S. that have statutes on the books similar to Michigan, and five of those states – Arizona, Colorado, Illinois, Massachusetts and Nebraska – allow private investors to make money off the sale of foreclosed homes."

I worked on a database for a couple who did this in Illinois. They had to do multiple things to contact and warn the owner and usually took a couple of years to do before they owned the property. However they wouldn't work in one local county as the bidding was fixed and many people knew it. If you gave money to the county tax collector, you won the bid. He and a couple of cronies were finally caught and served a lot of jail time.

[Randomguy]

This is horrible!  Poor guy, $8 and your house gets taken!  There should be plenty of people in jail over this one.

 

[Johnny Come Lately Name]

"they are forming special investigative committee"

[Razors Edge ★]

14 hours ago, 2Far said:

Officials in one Michigan county are demanding answers from their treasurer amid concerns that the county could be on the hook for millions of dollars in payments to former homeowners whose properties were seized under a tough forfeiture practice.

We have a LOT of unintended - and intended - consequences from various laws on the books.  Often ones that are actually routinely used by folks to screw over other folks.  The powerful taking more from the powerless (or less powerful).  It's sort of "the way of the world", and a whack-a-mole process if we bother at all trying to sort it out.

[The_Karen_Cooper_Incident]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Meisner

Mudkipz