A lawsuit claiming fraud by a Boston city employee against her 89-year-old great-uncle, who suffers from dementia, is one of a growing trend of cases that could rip homes away from their owners, authorities say.
Marie Theodat, an employee of the Boston Water and Sewer Commission, and two family members are accused in a Suffolk Superior Court civil lawsuit filed in August of tricking Rodolphe St. Cloud into signing away his longtime home at 144 Fuller St. in Dorchester.
Since that case and others in Massachusetts made headlines, the Federal Bureau of Investigation issued a warning about what it calls “home title theft” or “quitclaim deed fraud,” referring to the legal document used to transfer property from one owner to another.
And a Western Massachusetts registrar of deeds has proposed new security protocols to protect property owners.
In a recent Western Massachusetts case, a man is accused, while serving time in a Florida prison, of filing fraudulent deeds for a number of Enfield, Connecticut, and Springfield-area properties, transferring them to himself without the knowledge of the property owners.
While Springfield police did not bring charges against him, saying it was a civil matter, the man was charged criminally, extradited and convicted of forgery in Connecticut in 2021.
These types of quitclaim fraud cases have become more common in the years since the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the FBI.
“More and more people have grown accustomed to conducting real estate transactions through email and over the phone,” the agency wrote in a recent news release. “The remote nature of these sales is a benefit to bad actors.”
Boston man claims relative took his home
In the civil lawsuit, an attorney for Rodolphe St. Cloud claimed that in November 2022, Theodat asked him to sign documents that she said were related to his MassHealth insurance coverage. St. Cloud, who speaks only Haitian Creole, signed the papers, unknowingly signing over his home to a company Theodat had started about a month previously, 144 Fuller LLC, in return for “less than $100.”
In addition, the attorney claims, Theodat forged the signature of Marthe Jeudi, Cloud’s life partner, who owned the home with him but now lives at a care facility because she has Alzheimer’s disease.
St. Cloud and Jeudi had lived in the home since the 1980s and had paid off the mortgage on the property, according to court documents.
The same day St Cloud signed the papers, according to court documents, Theodat took out a $2 million mortgage from Boston Trust, using the Fuller Street home as collateral. She used this money to purchase a Newton home previously owned by her accused co-conspirators, her sister, Danny Theodat Levy, and Levy’s husband, Wayne, at a foreclosure auction.
“The Defendants conspired and designed an elaborate scheme to defraud and take advantage of an elderly couple and rob them of their property,” attorney Ricardo Arroyo, a former Boston City Councilor, wrote in the complaint.
Since then, Boston Trust has foreclosed on the Fuller Street property and attempted to evict St. Cloud, though the courts stopped the eviction to allow the case to play out.
The sisters and Wayne Levy denied all of the claims against them in court documents.
Theodat is chief human resource officer of the Boston Water and Sewer Commission, though she is currently on paid administrative leave, according to the Boston Herald. Danny Theodat Levy works as chief customer experience officer at the MBTA. According to public records, Theodat was paid $202,873.84 in 2024 and Theodat Levy was paid $162,992.
The lawsuit initially also named another relative, Harcher Batrival, as a defendant, but the claims against Batrival were dismissed earlier this month.
A trial in the case has not been scheduled.
How common is quitclaim deed fraud?
According to the Boston division of the FBI, between 2019 and 2023, 1,576 people in Massachusetts reported cases of real estate fraud, totaling more than $46.2 million in losses (these numbers also include other types of fraud beyond title theft). Nationwide, there were 58,141 victims in that time period, totaling $1.3 billion in losses.
Though the FBI did not reference specific cases like St. Cloud’s or the Springfield case, the agency did list examples of common forms of quitclaim deed fraud, including older people being targeted by relatives and so-called “title pirates” who file forged deeds to take over property ownership.
People who commit this type of fraud typically then sell or rent out the property or take out a mortgage on it.
“Folks across the region are having their roots literally pulled out from under them and are being left with no place to call home. They’re suffering deeply personal losses that have inflicted a significant financial and emotional toll, including shock, anger and even embarrassment,” said Jodi Cohen, special agent in charge of the FBI Boston Division, in a statement.
Property owners should take “proactive steps” to avoid losing their property and report fraud cases to the authorities, Cohen added.
What is being done to protect consumers?
Right now, homeowners anywhere in Massachusetts can set up a title alert through their local Registry of Deeds, which will notify them if any document is filed related to their property.
The FBI recommends that anyone who doesn’t live at their property to drive by it regularly or have a management company do so. They should also ask neighbors to let them know if they see anything suspicious.
Homeowners should also take action if they stop receiving utility or property tax bills or if utility bills suddenly increase at vacant properties, the agency said.
However, most of these precautions will only help after the fact, instead of stopping quitclaim deed fraud from occurring.
Hampden County Register of Deeds Cheryl Coakley-Rivera told the Springfield Republican in December that she wants registries in Massachusetts to set up new security protocols to verify that only the true property owners can make changes to records, such as a passcode or other type of secondary authentication.
This year, Coakley-Rivera is leading a statewide task force with other registers of deeds to develop those safety nets.
Laura Marino, land court technical assistant register in Coakley-Rivera’s office, told MassLive that the task force was still in the early stages, in large part because the registry in each county uses different record-keeping software, and they will have to find a system that works for everyone.
The task force is also evaluating how such a system could be implemented and if it would need legislative approval at the state level, as they believe is likely.
The ideal system, she said, would work similarly to those in place at many medical or financial institutions, where after signing in, consumers receive a message with a numerical code that they must provide to verify their identity.
In this case, when the registry receives new documents — especially deeds or mortgages, which most fraud cases involve — the property owner will receive an authentication request to be sure the transaction is legal.
“We’re not in the 1950s anymore, where people are walking in and signing in front of multiple witnesses and everything is slowed down,” Marino said. “Everything is so high-tech, electronic, fast turnaround. We need to update how we do business to protect the consumer.”
