A SHENZHEN resident, who paid 16.8 million yuan (US$2.44 million) for dozens of apartments in Longgang District, recently found that the apartments had been mortgaged by the previous owner for bank loans, the Southern Metropolis Daily reported yesterday.

    The resident, surnamed Luo, said that she had bought these apartments in a residential building located in Bantian, Longgang District, in late 2015 from the previous owner, Li Hongbo. However, she said that Li hadn’t shown up during the transaction process, but had entrusted another man, Lin Xiaochi, to sign the contracts with her.

    A Shenzhen-based law firm issued attestations from several lawyers certifying Li’s entrustment of Lin and the housing sales contracts signed between Lin and Luo.

    However, when Luo met Li in Shenzhen by chance a few days ago, Li denied that he had sold his apartments to Luo and refused to acknowledge the contracts signed by Lin and Luo. “Li said he hadn’t signed those contracts,” Luo said.

    As Luo has already sold more than 20 of the apartments that she bought from Li, she is afraid that a larger problem will be triggered if Li denies selling the apartments to her.

    Another homeowner in the same building said the he had also bought several apartments from Li by signing contracts with Lin, which cost him 5.5 million yuan in total. He said the transaction was attested by the same law firm as in Luo’s case, which was designated by Lin, so he believed the law firm might have been colluding with Lin.

    A search on a mortgage app shows that the residential building still belongs to Li, and it was mortgaged to a commercial bank on Nov. 4 last year, after the homebuyers had already bought the apartments from him.

    Luo said that Li had apparently sold the apartments but then mortgaged the building. She said that Lin had told her that these apartments only had limited property rights without official property ownership certificates.

    Luo believes that these apartments must have a certain type of property ownership certificates, since Li was able to get mortgages on them. However, some small banks in rural areas gave mortgages for houses with limited property rights. She also believes that Lin and Li worked together to scam homebuyers.

    Both Lin and the law firm refused to be interviewed. The person who picked up Li’s phone said he wasn’t Li, even though Luo confirmed that the phone number belonged to Li, according to the report.

    The police said that the case is a financial dispute and wasn’t deemed criminal fraud due to the lack of evidence.

    Bantian Subdistrict Office has hired a lawyer to provide legal aid for Luo. The lawyer said Luo can file a lawsuit against Lin and Li.  (Zhang Yang)