My neighbors and have come across what looks like cases of house title fraud in DC.

For example, where neighbors know a house has been abandoned (e.g. they know owners who fled the US due to legal/criminal issues, or abandoned the home for another reason). The house that has no mortgage, abandoned in the '80s/'90s and been sitting vacant and boarded up.

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Then DC Real Estate property records start changing; for example, the address (not the name of the owner) changes with a "C/o [New person with another address]" in the address field, then property tax history payments in arrears disappear (Yes, homes with decades of unpaid taxes, which ostensibly should have been auctioned off) and a couple of months/years later a new owner is listed. No listed sales records per DC law, no mention of any type of court auction/sales, etc. Real estate agents with substantial DC sales history we asked cannot determine what happened.

Then somebody moves in and doesn't talk much to neighbors or ANC commissioner who pops in to welcome them (not accusatory questions; questions like "Welcome to the neighborhood, are you the new owner?" are non-answered when neighbors ask him). Person starts bare renovations on the cheap himself.

A neighbor starts becoming inquisitive, gets the new neighbors name and looks up DC and MD court records and finds out that the person has 9 or so cases of illegally squatting in abandoned homes around DC and renting out rooms, most of them court-ordered to vacate, but he still appears to be doing it.

After basic renovations (talking about sub-standard housing renovations in neighborhoods where homes are $1M+), person rents out rooms (no advertisement we know of online or at property). Roommates, who are friendly, say they barely meet that person (other than paying monthly cash to him in person) and he doesn't want a lease, doesn't accept checks for rent and hasn't even had them fill out a rental application or subject them to background checks.

Said person appears to be well off, based on cars he drives, where he lives (yes, we are that nosey and found his $2.5M home in VA and other areas).

I know DCRA/Recorder of Deeds have had employees charged with helping those who commit title fraud in the past. If this sound suspect, are there many cases like this these days? Or is this shit we shouldn't be asking about, given how DC is a cloak and dagger town (JK...though there have been intelligence agency covert ops' homes accidentally outed in the past...no lie).