How to take over someone else's house, live there for years, and also make him a legend of social networks: a couple from Florida pulled off an unprecedented scam

A Florida couple became famous for decorating their home with unusual holiday lights and props befitting the North Pole. She was allegedly living illegally in a house that once belonged to a Miami Dolphin player. Writes about this New York Post.

Photo: IStock

Mark and Kathy Hyatt paid no rent for 15 years in the exclusive Plantation (Florida) neighborhood, where they turned their home into a “Hyatt Christmas home” every year.

Broward County authorities are seeking the return of $34 in property taxes on the property after a team of real estate detectives spent seven months investigating the family, interviewing neighbors and identifying apparent forged documents used by the Hyatts.

The family was granted a tax exemption when, according to the county, the couple were not eligible because they were not the legal owners of the home.

On the subject: A woman seized someone else's home with a fictitious lease agreement: neither the hostess nor the police can do anything

“Mark Hyatt received a tax exemption or limitation totaling $34 over seven years. The property appraiser found that the taxpayer was not legally entitled to receive the tax exemption because the applicant was not the legal owner,” according to county property appraiser reports.

The investigation was carried out only from 2013, because according to the statute of limitations, the department could only go back 10 years, and the last three years (2020-2022) were not indicated in the set of records, but they were still considered as part of the investigation.

The appraisers' investigation began after Kathy Hyatt was confronted with a 2005 document. It was then that the Hyatts actually began to illegally own the property.

In 2017, Mark and Katie Hyatt divorced. During divorce proceedings involving alimony, Kathy Hyatt was asked to sign a deed for property, after which she learned that they never owned the property and that the deed was fraudulent.

Mark Hyatt died three years later at the age of 56.

The couple moved into the disputed home when a private investor bought $50 of the original mortgage, changed the locks and planned to sell the house after its original owner, former Miami Dolphin player Brett Perryman, failed to pay the $400 mortgage and In 2004, he faced the threat of deprivation of property rights.

The investor was given a quitclaim deed to the home in lieu of an assignment of the mortgage.

At the time, the couple was looking for housing in Florida when they came across an abandoned Plantation Acres house. The Hyatts were told that the original owners had moved to Georgia.

Mark Hyatt, who was involved in mortgage lending at the time, discovered that Perryman did not have a valid title to the house, and accused the investor of unauthorized occupation, even going so far as to call the police.

The couple broke into the house and threw away everything in it so that the investor "wouldn't be able to come back and say he owned the property before they came."

“We broke into the house,” Kathy Hyatt told investigators. - I have never done such a thing in my life. We didn't pay any money to borrow it. We became squatters."

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In 2014, the home decorations became a national hit, and the city of Plantation sued Hyatt after arguing that the popularity of the garlands could lead to accidents due to the volume of traffic.

In 2017, Mark Hyatt ousted a sitting city councilman just weeks after declaring victory over City Hall in legal battles.

The city spent about $427 in legal fees over the case, which Hyatt called during his campaign as an example of fiscal mismanagement, the Sun Sentinel reported at the time.

The house is currently listed on Google Maps as a real estate agency run by Katie Hyatt.

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