Casablanca Police Probe Major Real Estate Fraud Ring Targeting Abandoned Properties

A network specializing in the misappropriation of real estate and land properties located on the outskirts of Casablanca, particularly in the Sidi Massaoud area and its surroundings, and left abandoned by their owners, is in the sights of justice. Its members are suspected of having appropriated these properties using dubious contracts, titles, and certificates, followed by registration procedures based on these documents, reports Assabah, adding that they exploit "the ignorance of the original owners or the abandoned status of these properties, which have not been subjected to legal procedures to declare them as state or private property."

They allegedly falsified or fabricated hundreds of documents and certificates in order to "create a fictitious situation of new owners to obtain land titles, with the aim of transferring the targeted properties, due to the urban expansion the city is experiencing." An individual is at the head of the network. He acted with the complicity of officials, copyists of property titles and various documents extracted from old notarial registers, kept at the Casablanca Family and Social Affairs Court. His modus operandi consists of using authentic administrative certificates, previously used for the registration of land belonging to his grandfather, certificates that became obsolete after this use. Then, he proceeds to reproduce fictitious property titles from the court registers, which he inserts into the incorporation registers.

This method allowed him to integrate falsified titles into the incorporation registers, in collusion with certain copyists, to continue the appropriation procedure. Then, he opens registration requests.

He was identified during the Covid-19 pandemic, precisely at the end of 2021, after the arrest of an official working in an administrative annex of Sidi Massaoud. This official was involved in the falsification of administrative certificates – official documents specifying the nature of the property, its owners, and distinguishing it from state lands – used in land registration procedures.