 reform law in 2010. The measure required the deeds office to demand ID from filers. Clerks must also photocopy the identification and ask to photograph the filers.
People who say they are heirs must prove it with records from the city register of deeds, such as letters of administration for an estate.
Asked about Tonya Bell's house, Mike Dunn, a spokesperson for Mayor Kenney, said the Records Department had no photograph or ID on file for Braheem Hart. He added: "This matter is under investigation."
Dunn acknowledged that no one asked Hart for proof that he was an heir. At first, Dunn said the law didn't require any because Hart was a "sole heir" and as such needed no approvals from the register of wills' office. After the register of wills' legal staff disputed this, Dunn backtracked.
He said, "We recognize that the failure to request supporting documentation in the case of so-called'sole heir' deeds is a flaw in the deed-recording review process."
In the future, he said, the city will demand evidence, "such as a death certificate, proof of familial relationship, and documents relating to estate administration."
As Bell pored over the records, she absorbed shock after shock.
She had no idea who Braheem Hart was. What she did know was he was no relative. Bell is an only child. She never married and has no children and, aside from her mother, all her relatives are in Virginia.
Bell thinks Hart was a made-up name. "I think that's a fictitious person," she said.
Moreover, Bell learned something else: Hart himself lost control of the house shortly after stealing it.
As it happens, Hart had targeted a property with overdue taxes. After paying off the tax debts of Penny, the previous owner, and then staying current, Bell fell behind by about 2008.
In 2014, even while Hart was working his scheme, the city took the Greene Street property to sheriff's sale for back taxes. The sheriff's sale paperwork listed Hart as the owner.
Perhaps because Hart was now controlling her property, Bell said she never saw any of the letters sent to the Greene Street address warning of the impending sheriff's sale. Nor, she said, did she see the notices posted there.
In the end, her Greene Street house sold for $40,500 to Affordable Homes Group Inc., a New Hope-based company whose owners have bought and resold numerous homes in Philadelphia in recent years.
The following year, Bell would suffer one more blow.
Concerned about the provenance of its new asset, Affordable Homes filed suit in 2015, asking a judge to declare that an array of past owners of the Greene Street house had no stake in the property. It asked the court to wipe out any claims by Braheem Hart, "all unknown heirs of Tonya Bell, deceased," and even Linda Penny, the woman who had sold it to Bell 13 years before.
The firm never won the court order. After eight months, it gave up and dropped the suit. It quit after a judge warned that the case would be dismissed unless the company could find Hart, any other Bell "heirs," and others. Bell, for her part, was listed in public city voting records at her Portico Street address, but no one contacted her.
Then Affordable Homes tried something else — a maneuver that other real estate experts said in interviews they found troubling. Lawyer Lawrence Avallone, a veteran in the real estate area, called it "weird" and "baloney."
In late 2015, the company filed a new deed declaring that Bell's original purchase of the house in 2002 "appears to have been fraudulent" and was "void and of no effect."
Its evidence? Affordable Homes cited its own unsuccessful lawsuit — the one it had dropped.
In the new document, Affordable Homes struck a deal with the two grown daughters of Linda Penny, who had died in 2007. The daughters signed paperwork declaring they were the true last owners of the Greene Street property before the sheriff's sale, but for $1 they were giving up any right to the property. It is unclear why they did so. They could not be reached for comment.
Virginijus Anusauskas, president of Affordable Homes, said in an email that he had little information to share, but recalled that after buying the house at sheriff's sale, his firm found a "mess with previous title transfers so we hired the attorney to resolve it." Laurence Mester, the Philadelphia lawyer who filed the 2015 lawsuit, could not be reached for comment. Stuart Graff, of Assurance Abstract Corp., which worked with Affordable Homes regarding the property, declined to answer questions.
Tonya Bell is a fighter. And the kind of careful strategist who keeps files, documents, and a spreadsheet with dates of every contact she has had with officialdom.
Her records are dispiriting.
When she called the District Attorney's Office, she said, an office staffer told her that Hart had committed no crime and that prosecutors could not assist her.
"There is a crime because this person is referring to me being dead, and I'm not dead," Bell replied.
Asked about that recently, the DA's Office confirmed that an office paralegal had offered no help from the agency but had rather urged Bell to call the police.
Waxman, the DA's spokesperson, said one reason prosecutors hadn't pursued the complaint was that Bell had lost the property at a sheriff's sale. It was unclear why that would matter.
Waxman also said one theft alone was not enough to trigger an inquiry.
"This case was properly referred to the Philadelphia Police Department for investigation as there were no other deeds recorded in the name Braheem Hart and the notary was not on our radar as a problem notary," he said. "An isolated one-house fraudulent transfer is not the type of complaint that would be handled by the investigations division."
City Councilman William K. Greenlee, who spearheaded the 2010 city reforms, said he had heard rumors that prosecutors would not investigate a single instance of house theft, but was troubled to see that confirmed.
"I have to admit I don't understand that," Greenlee said. "You don't wait for people to steal three cars."
Waxman later expanded the office statement to say the office was beefing up its efforts to combat house theft and stood ready to prosecute even a single rip-off.
Bell also reached out to the state secretary of state, who regulates notaries. Her complaint triggered an investigation of Lelia Hilliard, who had attested to the existence of Braheem Hart. In May, the office completed a protracted probe by filing civil charges against Hilliard over the Greene Street property. She faces a $1,500 fine and possible loss of her license.
In the charging document, the agency wrote that Hilliard a year ago "admitted that she notarized the deed, signed by Braheem Hart, without the individual appearing before her" and that she had "admitted she notarized this document as a favor to her cousin." The cousin was not named in the document.
Hilliard, 61, a notary for 16 years, declined comment when reached at her Center City workplace.
Bell took another step. She called into a radio station where Sheriff Jewell Williams fielded questions on the air. Williams put her in touch with his DART squad — the Defendant Asset Recovery Team. Its job is to track down people whose properties were sold at sheriff's sales and to return any excess money to them, once back taxes and mortgage bills are paid. Williams has touted its work, though his office admits that, due to accounting issues, it has no idea how much surplus money it has collected but has been unable to distribute.
After an initial contact with the DART staff, Bell did not hear from the Sheriff's Office for a year, and then not until a reporter asked the office about how it had responded to her case.
Last month, a black car pulled up at Bell's Portico Street home. The driver explained it was Sheriff Williams' vehicle. The driver was there to hand-deliver a check for the surplus money from the sale. At last, the Sheriff's Office was satisfied that Bell had been an owner of the Greene Street house.
Bell's tax debt was $13,000 in taxes, interests, and fees. Affordable Homes had bid the $40,500. But before cutting a check for Bell, the Sheriff's Office, as is standard policy, dipped into the proceeds to pay off thousands of dollars in other charges — liens for repairs by city crews when Penny owned the house 23 years ago, money for newspaper ads for the sheriff's sale, money for the auctioneer, money for transfer taxes, and more. The office refused to explain all the charges.
In the end, Bell received $2,213.07.
As for the Greene Street house, the place was extensively renovated, city records show — and resold by Affordable Homes for $299,900.
As for Braheem Hart, he's in the wind.
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