Justices to get Vegas home possession case

A former real estate agent accused of breaking into homes he didn’t own and renting them out to unsuspecting tenants wants the Nevada Supreme Court to throw out the charges against him.

Even in the years before his arrest in 2009, Eric Alpert staked claim to what he believed to be abandoned houses and defended his actions under what’s known as adverse possession, a centuries-old method of obtaining title to property.

Nevada law allows someone who maintains and pays taxes on property for at least five years to claim ownership.

“This defense is not a legal fiction,” his attorney, Josh Tomsheck, wrote in court documents filed this month.

But prosecutors said Alpert did not follow Nevada’s adverse possession statutes before he started renting out four North Las Vegas homes.

Alpert faces four counts of burglary, four counts of theft, seven counts of obtaining money under false pretenses and seven counts of forgery.

Earlier this month, District Judge Douglas Herndon denied a motion to dismiss the charges against Alpert. But on the eve of the sixth trial setting, Herndon granted a stay in the case to allow Tomsheck time to petition the higher court this week.

“Alpert, after taking possession of the abandoned properties, even if originally as a trespasser, had a legal right, as a statutory adverse possessor, to place tenants on the properties and collect rents,” Tomsheck wrote in the motion to dismiss, which he said would be reflected in his request with the Supreme Court. “To put it most simply, this is simply not a criminal matter.

“The remedy here is clearly a civil action by the owners of these properties.”

Tomsheck said charges in a case like this are unprecedented, and no one facing similar allegations in Nevada has been convicted criminally. But prosecutors argue that Alpert should have known he was doing something wrong after he was fined and had his license revoked by the Nevada Real Estate Division in 2004.

“If you don’t bring a case like this, think about the implications,” Chief Deputy District Attorney Michael Staudaher said.

“If you had another housing market bust, people could just come in and take over properties that people were having difficulties with.”

Court documents named several victims who paid Alpert rent and deposits, only to have the owner or an agent from the bank show up to evict them.

Tomsheck wrote that the charges are equivalent to a property owner requesting the arrest of a neighbor over a property line dispute.

In April 2009, a North Las Vegas homeowner called police after he found his place occupied by someone who had signed a lease with Alpert.

Alpert told authorities that when he found homes that appeared to be abandoned or in foreclosure, he would post a notice on the door, giving the owner 15 days to contact him.

If he did not receive a response, he would change the locks.

“I go in and clean up the house, take pictures of the house, and then I basically rent out the house,” he said, according to court records. The neighbors appreciated his efforts, he said, “because it’s an eyesore, so I do a good thing for the neighborhood.”

He admitted to taking over houses for six years, even though prosecutors said that the 2004 real estate sanction should have ended his enterprise.

“It is clear that he was on notice that this type of action, or at least the way he was attempting to do it, was illegal,” Staudaher wrote in the state’s opposition to dismiss charges against Alpert.

Alpert, who has been free on bail since 2009, believes he followed the “letter of the law” in regards to adverse possession, and his attorney said he even paid taxes on the properties in question.

“Alpert was under notice that his actions were specifically recognized and allowed under Nevada law,” Tomsheck wrote.

But prosecutors said that is flat-out wrong. There is no record that Alpert ever paid taxes, and he never has offered paperwork to prove it, according to Staudaher, who called the claim “puzzling,” adding that the liens Alpert filed were phony, and he never contacted banks about the North Las Vegas properties.

Tomsheck said Alpert paid taxes on dozens of other properties for years.

“The picture that the state has painted of this guy is that he went out and stole stuff,” Tomsheck said. “He did it with the direction of counsel. He has homes that he has obtained title to that have never been challenged.”

If Alpert didn’t pay taxes on the properties, as prosecutors allege, he misconstrued adverse possession, according to JC Melvin, a longtime Las Vegas real estate broker who specializes in short sales with Keller Williams Realty Southwest.

“In my humble opinion, Eric’s a crook,” Melvin said. “Crooks get smarter as things change in the real estate market. The fact that they came along willy-nilly and stuck a sign in the window, that doesn’t remove the people that have a security interest in the property. They’re basically just trying to steal the property.”

Adverse possession claims on houses are uncommon in the valley. The law is more typically applied in rural areas where someone maintains a parcel of land for an extended length of time, and even that doesn’t happen often, Melvin said.

Alpert would abandon properties if homeowners confronted him, Tomsheck said.

But that didn’t happen in at least one case, according to Staudaher.

Alpert ultimately put the tenants in a sticky situation, and they faced eviction when the real homeowners returned.

Melvin suggested renters utilize properly licensed agents or research property records in order to verify homeowners.

“It’s unfortunate that we have to do that nowadays, but the world has gotten crazy,” Melvin said, “especially with the economy taking a dive back in 2007.”

Adverse possession laws, which differ from state to state, are in place to ensure that privately owned land remains productive, and typically it takes years of occupation before the title legally changes hands. That protects people who have trouble making mortgage payments, as well as those who take extended vacations, from coming home to find their home occupied by a stranger.

“That’s essentially what he was doing,” Staudaher said. “It’s just an incredible scam.”

Alpert would not have a right to the North Las Vegas homes unless he met each of Nevada’s requirements, and Staudaher said Alpert cannot be absolved from criminal liability because he misinterpreted the statute.

Alpert was “simply attempting to use Nevada’s adverse possession statutes as a shield by which he could argue that he did not have the intent to commit a crime,” Staudaher said. “The paramount element is the intent to commit that crime, which means that he knows what he is doing is not right.”

Contact David Ferrara at 702-380-1039 or dferrara@reviewjournal.com. Find him on Twitter: @randompoker.