Picture this: you buy a plot of land with the hopes of one day building a home – then somebody beats you to it, building a $1.5 million house on the vacant lot.
Feels like the plot of a movie, but this actually happened to Dr Daniel Kenigsberg.
The endocrinologist is taking the owner of the $1.5 million house to court.
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The cuckoo construction dashed his hopes of building a house next door to his childhood home just outside of New Haven, Connecticut.
Dr Kenigsberg bought the half-acre strip of land at 51 Sky Top Terrace in 1991.
It was close to the house where he spent his childhood, which his father bought for just $5,000 in 1953.
That’s mere peanuts compared to the amount Jeff Bezos spent on his neighboring estates.
And the sentimental connection to the parcel of land runs deep.
His father also bought the lot in 1953, directly from Eleazar Parmly Jr. – the family that settled the area in 1716.
Dr Kenigsberg raised his family in Long Island, after medical school in New York and a residency in Maryland, per Greenwichtime.
Despite leaving the lot vacant for several decades, Dr Kenigsberg never let go of his dream of one day moving back to the area.
“Certainly if one of my children wanted to live in Fairfield, Connecticut, I’d be very happy about that,” Kenigsberg said.
However, on May 31 of this year, he received a call that would shatter that dream.
A friend informed him that a $1.5 million house had cropped up on the vacant land.
Recalling the conversation, he told CT Insider: “I said: ‘I own that and I never sold it’. I was shocked.”
He visited the site and saw an almost completed four-bedroom house that was valued at $1.45 million to be precise.
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Back to Connecticut and, according to its listing, the home was under offer in March.
Official records state that the land was sold to 51 Sky Top Partners LLC for $350,000 in October 2022.
However, Kenigsberg claims he knows nothing about the sale.
He is taking legal action and suing the firm on nine counts.
These cover charges of trespass, statutory theft and unfair trade practices, as well as an additional $2 million in damages.
He hopes the lawsuit will void the sale of the land.
He is demanding that the company involved removes “any structures and/or materials from the Property and restore the Property to the condition that it was in prior to Defendants’ trespass upon it”.
“I’m angry that so many people were so negligent that this could have happened. It’s more than obnoxious – it’s offensive and wrong,” Kenigsberg said.
The same publication was informed by Fairfield Police Lieutenant, Michael Paris, that a criminal probe is underway.
It hopes to discover who received funds from the sale.
It’s been alleged that the power of attorney was granted by Anthony Monelli of Trumbull, Connecticut.
Reports suggest 51 Sky Top Partners have also claimed to be victims of a scam.
The man from Johannesburg, South Africa, allegedly used a fake passport to impersonate the American doctor and sell his property last year.
The passport featured the wrong birthdate, photo, and address.
