When Dr Daniel Kenigsberg was one year old his parents bought a house on Sky Top Terrace, Fairfield, Connecticut and the place became his childhood home.

His dad had bought the house for $5,000 back in 1953 and in 1991 Dr Kenigsberg bought a half-acre plot of land next door along with his brother which he’d held onto ever since, becoming the sole owner after his brother died in 2011.

He’d planned to keep hold of the land and pass it down to younger generations of the family, having rebuffed previous attempts to buy the land for $400,000 (£314,000) in 2022, but instead a wrench was thrown into those plans.

According to CT Insider, he last year got a call from one of his old friends who delivered a double-whammy of bad news.

Daniel Kenigsberg

First was that his best friend growing up was in a hospice and the second was that somebody was building a house on the land he owned.

After rushing over to visit his friend, Dr Kenigsberg swung by the site of his childhood home and found himself staring at an almost-constructed four bedroom house.

It turns out that the land had apparently been ‘sold’ to 51 Sky Top Partners LLC for $350,000 (£275,000) back in October 2022.

According to a lawsuit filed by Dr Kenigsberg, the supposed sale of the land and subsequent construction of a house had been done without his knowledge.

He sued 51 Sky Top Partners LLC on nine counts, and was seeking damages and compensation of up to $2 million (£1.57 million), with the lawsuit ordering the company to clear off his land and restore it to how it was before they thought they bought it.

CT Insider later reported that Gina Leto and Greg Bugaj of 51 Sky Top Partners LLC claimed they had fallen victim to a scam, instead ‘buying’ the plot of land from someone who had impersonated Dr Kenigsberg.

Google Maps

As for how this could have happened, consumer protection lawyer Kevin Kneupper suggested that someone had forged documents which claimed they had a legal right to sell the land on Dr Kenigsberg’s behalf.

He said: “It’s really easy to go find who owns land. If you’ve never done searches on this, in most counties, you can actually just go, it depends on your state.

“But in many places, you just search online, they’ll have databases, so they could find out real easily who’s the actual owner and then just pretend to be him.

“Now, to be clear, his attorney and Mr. Kenigsberg, they are not accusing the people who bought it of being involved.

“They think that they sort of didn’t know what was going on, and that someone in South Africa did this.

“And that’s who the police are trying to go after to find where the money actually went to when they paid for it.”