Great deal or grave scam?: Hilton Head family says lawyer who committed suicide swindled them
For generations the Allen family has owned 38 acres of valuable waterfront property on Hilton Head Island. But now some of the land's heirs fear the land -- worth millions of dollars -- could be sold out from under them because of the tactics of their former lawyer.
The lawyer, Horace Jones Jr., was found dead last month of an apparent suicide on the day of his trial in Jasper County, where he was accused of swindling three elderly sisters out of 77 acres in the Levy area that had been in their family since 1870, authorities say.
Katrina Coleman, an Allen family heir who lives in Alabama, became alarmed at the news about Jones, who had been retained by her family to trace its genealogy. She began contacting her fellow heirs of the Hilton Head property, which straddles Marshland Road between the Broad Creek and the back of Indigo Run.
To her surprise, she learned a lawsuit initiated by Jones appeared to be leading to a partition sale of the land by the court, with the proceeds to be divided among the heirs. The property has been in her family since it was bought by Dennis Allen, a descendant of freed slaves, between 1897 and 1906 for $375.
And equally alarming, heirs listed as plaintiffs in the lawsuit told Coleman they had never agreed to be Jones' clients.
"They never signed one piece of document with Horace Jones," Coleman said. "If there are no plaintiffs, there's really no case."
But on Monday, a hearing is scheduled before Beaufort County Master in Equity Marvin Dukes that Coleman and other heirs fear could lead to a court-ordered sale of the property. A few heirs still live on the property on Allen Road, and they would have to move if the land is sold.
Two offers totaling $4.5 million have been made on the property by Indigo Run developer, Melrose Commercial Real Estate, according to Bluffton lawyer Terry Finger, who represents some of the defendants in the case.
The company has offered $3.5 million for the 27 acres on the creek side of Marshland Road to build multi-family "workforce housing" for teachers, nurses and other such professionals, Finger said. Another proposal calls for the remaining 11 acres to be purchased for $1 million. The property would be annexed into Indigo Run, pending that gated community's approval, Finger said.
Melrose broker-in-charge Jeff Barbic said the company has been interested in the property for a couple of years, but wouldn't comment further on its plans because it does not own the property.
Coleman and other heirs want the case dismissed so the family can decide what to do with the land outside of the courts. They fear the family will become the next native-island family to lose their ancestral property.
Much of the heirs property in Beaufort County, especially waterfront land, has been gobbled up by development in recent decades. As little as 750 acres of it remain on Hilton Head Island.
"They've kept it since the 1890s," said Theresa White, whose nonprofit Pan-African Family Empowerment & Land Preservation Network has been assisting Coleman in her efforts to prevent the sale. "I think they ought to be able to continue to keep it."
NO PLAINTIFFS?
Since the Allen family began discussions about what to do with its property, confusion has reigned. There are 75 or so heirs, some spread across the country, and at least five lawyers involved in the legal maneuvering that began in 2009 with a lawsuit filed by Rock Hill lawyer Horace Jones.
Coleman said the family hired Jones to track its genealogy, which is one of the first steps in getting clear title to the land.
Jones, however, went further and filed a lawsuit on behalf of Bruce King of Los Angeles against the heirs to seek a quiet title and partition sale, Coleman said.
King, however, was not an heir, and he died in 2014. His mother, Sadie King of Charleston, is an heir and was added as a plaintiff in the suit, but has early onset dementia and had not signed on as a plaintiff, according to family members.
Ann King of Charleston said Thursday that her brother, Bruce King, had power of attorney over his mother, but he knew their mother did not want to sell the land and that he would not have gone against her wishes.
Some of her brother's signatures on documents, including the power of attorney, did not appear to be his handwriting, she added. And none of her aunts, whom Jones had also listed as plaintiffs, had ever signed up with Jones either, she said.
"My mother and her sisters never committed with anyone to say we wanted to sell the property," she said. Some of the sisters have died.
One sister, Queen Davis of Bluffton, said Thursday she was falsely listed as a plaintiff.
"I don't know how my signature or my name could be associated with him because I didn't even know him," Davis said.
LAND THEFT ALLEGATIONS
Coleman and other Allen family members' suspicions about Jones seemed to be confirmed when they read news accounts of his body being found in Rock Hill with a single gunshot wound Oct. 12, the day he was scheduled to be tried on a fraud charge for a land deal in Jasper County.
In the Jasper County case, Jones had created two fictitious heirs and sold 77 acres off S.C. 170 near Levy worth $10 million for $600,000 and kept the money, according to the 14th Circuit Solicitor's Office, which was set to prosecute Jones.
Leanora Nelson, a retired school teacher who lives in New York, said she and her two sisters had hired Jones in 2005 only to clear the title to the land after they inherited the property from their father. The land was heirs property, which had been passed down through the generations without a will from their ancestors who were former slaves.
But in 2011, they learned Jones had actually sold the land in 2005.
He had forged the sisters' signatures on documents, and with the fictitious heirs, he sold the property to the Levy Center, the Solicitor's Office said. Jones had put $350,000 into an account with a limited liability corporation he had formed in the heirs' names, and $250,000 into an account with Gateway Development LLC, of which he was vice president, according to the solicitor's office.
After becoming suspicious in 2011 of Jones, Nelson began to investigate. She said she broke down and cried in the Jasper County Tax Assessor's Office when she discovered Jones' paper trail and figured out what he had done.
"This is land that has been in our family since 1870," she said last week. "My great-great grandparents bought it. I was not going to walk away."
She reported Jones, 45, to the Jasper County Sheriff's Office, which charged him May 22, 2014, with breach of trust with fraudulent intent. She also filed suit in 2011 against Jones and the Levy Center, which bought the property. A federal judge in the case has recommended it be dismissed partly because the statute of limitations has expired.
But Nelson said she's planning to continue to fight.
"I think they just thought we would go away, and we didn't choose to do that," she said.
WHAT'S NEXT?
Some Allen family members say the land is worth much more than the $4.5 million offer that is on the table.
They listed the property on the market about six years ago for $18 million, with a sale contingent on agreement among the heirs. The asking price was dropped to $16 million in the past month, according to the listing agreement.
It will be up to the courts to decide whether the pending $4.5 million offer will be accepted, said Willie Heyward, a Charleston lawyer who was assigned to the Allen case after Jones' law license was suspended in 2013. Without an investigation, Heyward said it's impossible to say if Jones has broken any laws in handling the lawsuit.
Meanwhile, Heyward said he has tried to track down the listed plaintiffs in the case, but, so far, none had re-retained him.
Coleman and other Allen heirs say they plan to attend Monday's hearing and continue to fight the offer to sell the property. They have sent letters to state and federal officials to request an investigation and set up a hotline for African-American families who believe they have had their land taken from them.
"We're trying to start a movement so we can save our heritage," Coleman said whose goal is to have the case dismissed. "We just want to take this out of the courts so that we can sit down and do this as a family and make decisions for ourselves."
Follow city editor Don McLoud at twitter.com/IPBG_Don.
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- Bidders step aside so heirs win property at Beaufort County tax sale
- PUTTING THE LAND TO WORK: Beaufort County heirs are growing trees, planting crops, leasing land to afford to keep ancestral land
This story was originally published November 21, 2015 at 6:56 PM with the headline "Great deal or grave scam?: Hilton Head family says lawyer who committed suicide swindled them."