Derek Achong

A T&T na­tion­al re­sid­ing in the Unit­ed States, whose iden­ti­ty was stolen to sell a prop­er­ty he in­her­it­ed from his moth­er, will have to wait al­most two months to learn the out­come of his law­suit seek­ing to re­verse the sale.

Af­ter pre­sid­ing over the tri­al be­tween Mon­day and yes­ter­day, Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad re­served June 20 to de­liv­er his judg­ment in the case brought by Robert John against soft­ware de­vel­op­er Kee­lan Aaron Hunte, who pur­chased the prop­er­ty, and First Cit­i­zen Bank (FCB), that fi­nanced the deal.

In his court fil­ings, John claimed that af­ter his moth­er died in 2008 he be­came the sole ten­ant of the ap­prox­i­mate­ly 5,000-square-foot par­cel of land lo­cat­ed along the East­ern Main Road, Barataria. In 2014, John pur­chased the prop­er­ty from Aranguez Es­tates Lim­it­ed and it was trans­ferred un­der a deed of con­veyance.

Five years lat­er, John ex­pressed in­ter­est in sell­ing the prop­er­ty and re­tained re­al es­tate agent Jil­lian Jones-Smith, of Step-by-Step Prop­er­ty Con­sul­tan­cy and Man­age­ment Lim­it­ed, to as­sist with the sale. He claimed Jones-Smith told him she had been ap­proached by a buy­er who was will­ing to pur­chase the prop­er­ty for $1.5 mil­lion.

John, who lives in Min­neso­ta, came to Trinidad to com­plete the trans­ac­tion but was un­able to as the po­ten­tial buy­er al­leged­ly gave Jones-Smith nu­mer­ous ex­cus­es why he could not close the deal. Af­ter he re­turned to the Unit­ed States, Jones-Smith al­leged­ly in­formed him that she had sus­pi­cions about the buy­er as the lawyer he claimed to be us­ing to con­duct the trans­ac­tion de­nied know­ing him.

Jones-Smith did a ti­tle search through the Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Le­gal Af­fairs and found out that the land had been pur­port­ed­ly sold for $840,000 and trans­ferred to Hunte. The prop­er­ty was al­so the sub­ject of a mort­gage which Hunte ob­tained from FCB.

Through the law­suit, John is seek­ing to in­val­i­date the deed of con­veyance and deed of mort­gage re­lat­ed to the prop­er­ty.

In their de­fence, Hunte and FCB de­nied any wrong­do­ing as they con­tend­ed that they did not know the per­son who con­duct­ed the trans­ac­tion was im­per­son­at­ing John.

Hunte and FCB filed an an­cil­lary claim against The Law Con­sul­tan­cy, the Bel­mont-based law firm that pre­pared the le­gal doc­u­ments. Through the an­cil­lary claim, Hunte and FCB are con­tend­ing that the law firm was neg­li­gent in the deal by al­leged­ly fail­ing to do prop­er due dili­gence on the doc­u­ments pro­vid­ed by the pur­port­ed sell­er.

Hunte is seek­ing fees as­so­ci­at­ed with the mort­gage in­clud­ing the month­ly in­stal­ments he has made thus far, while the bank is seek­ing to re­coup the $650,000 it loaned Hunte to com­plete the trans­ac­tion.

John was rep­re­sent­ed by Tara Thomp­son and Justin Le­ung. Hunte was rep­re­sent­ed by Justin Junkere, Jean-Louis Kel­ly and Dante Sel­man-Car­ring­ton rep­re­sent­ed FCB. The Law Con­sul­tan­cy was rep­re­sent­ed by Shiv Shar­ma.