A 69-year-old grandmother who bizarrely received an eviction notice for a home she owned has finally uncovered the truth about her so-called landlord.
Sheila Gibson, from Sandy Springs, Georgia, was shocked to find a notice from the Fulton County Marshal’s Department in December 2022, warning her that she was about to be evicted.
She had lived in the home, located about 25 minutes from Atlanta, for years after her family purchased it for $480,000 in 2020.
Since she owned the house outright, she had never owed rent to anyone.
However, someone had filed paperwork with the Fulton County Clerk’s Office, falsely claiming that Gibson was a tenant who owed unpaid rent.
“I don’t understand how this could even happen,” Gibson told CBS affiliate WANF in May 2024. “It upsets me just to talk about it; I feel violated.”
Court records revealed that deputies had already tried to evict her once in October 2022. “If it weren’t for that gate, we could have come home to find all our belongings on the street,” Gibson said.
After looking into the situation, prosecutors believe they’ve figured out what happened. Michael James Bourff was arrested and accused of posing as the “agent” of Gibson’s home.
He allegedly filed eviction documents claiming that Gibson owed $12,000 in unpaid rent.
Bourff also claimed that Gibson failed to respond to the initial eviction notice — but no such notice was ever sent.
Gibson’s experience has exposed a loophole in Georgia law that allows this type of fraud to happen.
Clerks are not required to verify IDs when someone files deeds or eviction paperwork, making it easy for scammers to exploit the system.
Several homeowners in the Atlanta area have fallen victim to similar scams, with some nearly losing their homes and others being forced to pay “rent” to fake landlords.
“This is crazy,” Gibson said. “Someone can just walk into an office, provide no ID, and no one bothers to check if they even own the home.”
Bourff was charged with perjury, forgery, and filing a false document. He was initially arrested on DUI charges in another county and later transferred to Fulton County Jail, where he bonded out on January 1, 2025.
Similar scams have targeted other homeowners. In one case, criminals sold an Atlanta man’s vacation home in Charlotte, North Carolina, worth $300,000, for just $9,000 — and even managed to produce a deed for the property.
How Common Is Eviction in The US?
Millions of households receive eviction notices each year. The Eviction Lab at Princeton University estimates that about 7.8 eviction cases are filed for every 100 renting households annually.
On average, landlords file around 3.6 million eviction cases each year across the 10 states and 36 cities tracked by the Eviction Lab.
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