Fraud Alert Utah Land Surveyor Scams

 

 

There are many types of land survey fraud as there are land surveyors.

Probably the most common fraud is when a neighbor hires a land surveyor and pays them to wrongly survey his property to include some of yours! Free Property for the cost of a survey for your neighbor!

Since the engineering work involved in a survey and the terms and equipment is far beyond the scope of what a layman could do, have or know, and most people assume the land surveyor or engineer must be honest to be licensed, they don’t suspect this fraud.

It’s real and it has happened to me, but I caught it in time before I lost some of my front yard.

This is what I experienced, and also my opinion about what happened: A surveyor posted survey flags all along with my property and other neighbors in our culdesac. Some he placed very close to my home inside what would have been required for a city legal setback to make it appear my home was not legal in the city and I could not sell it and it no longer held market value. Because of the laws about removing stakes, I had nightmares for three weeks worrying I’d never be able to sell my home. It was humiliating for me that all the neighbors and visitors here for three weeks saw that and inquired about my “situation”. Then that Surveyor came to my home and told me if I signed an agreement with my neighbor’s lawyer which set the survey boundaries on his survey, the neighbor would give me the part of the land within the required set back for the city for my home to become legal.

Instead of stewing about it I arranged an appointment with my County Surveyor and he showed me an enlarged map of my yard and the boundaries without question. My yard boundaries go to the paved lane and were nowhere near where the Surveyor had placed his flags! If I had signed that agreement letting my neighbor have part of my front yard according to the measurements outlined in the survey I would have lost significant value and land. I’m sure my neighbor’s tricky lawyer would of worded it carefully so that if the wrong placement of the flags were discovered, the agreement would still be valid.

Fortunately, my county surveyor enlightened me about the true boundaries before I signed any agreement. The Surveyor never produced a survey or provided it to me, as I looked him up and found out that he was not even licensed! He had not been licensed for over a year! But that was not disclosed to me.

I complained to The Division of Occupational and Professional Licensing, also known as DOPL, which is one of seven agencies within the Utah Department of Commerce about the fraud. They said they would give him a ticket for doing survey work without a license. It was a small fraction of what he earns in doing just one survey while he may have done a hundred or more of them in the year he was unlicensed! I suspect penalties for the types of frauds he does are worse for licensed surveyors than for unlicensed, so I suspect he let his license expire and was working without one in the case he got caught.

I also complained to the Utah Consumer Protection that states they stop unfair, deceptive, and fraudulent business practices by reviewing complaints and conducting investigations, and educating consumers. They said they wouldn’t look into it because I was not the consumer, my neighbor was paying for the fraudulent survey so he was the “consumer”.

He was NO small-time crook surveyor, I saw online where he was given industry awards in the state in the past. I found out he was the founder of a large engineering firm of over 30 engineers. It may well be one of the largest firms in Utah.

I hope my very difficult experience is a helpful warning to others. Don’t assume they are honest, no matter how big a company they own.

While I’m deeply disappointed in DOPL that they would not investigate the fraud aspect of this, I have contacted the Utah leading professional organization that has an ethics committee, and they have promised me a thorough investigation of this matter and will report their findings to DOPL for further action. Once more information is available I’ll update this page.

Anytime you hire a professional or work with a contractor, or one becomes involved with you or your company or property, look them up in this link below to make sure they are currently licensed. I wish I had done so the day he knowingly put the survey flags in my yard. I had believed the laws below the link and thought I was powerless to do anything about it. I would have realized he was a phony, and a fraud, and would have made him remove the flags immediately.

Don’t assume when you do a look-up at the for a professional at Division of Occupational and Professional Licensing, also known as DOPL, that they can be trusted, all DOPL did was give him a little ticket for working unlicensed and refused to investigate his fraud!

He got licensed in the same week after DOPL reviewed my fraud complaint and this is what DOPL says when you look him up today:

 

NO DISCIPLINARY ACTIONS OR NO DISCIPLINARY ACTIONS

WITHIN THE TIME FRAME ESTABLISHED IN UTAH CODE 63G-4-106 AND 107 

 

I guess DOPL doesn’t think their little ticket for doing hundreds of surveys without a license and a serious complaint about fraud by him matters at all. It is my opinion that they are NOT informing and protecting consumers to any reasonable level. In fact, I believe their existence and rubber stamp statement about the “No Disciplinary Actions” is deceptive to consumers.

Fortunately, his state industry ethics committee is taking it very seriously. But without Consumers Financial Protection Advocacy (this website) I would not have learned about this industry group to carry it further and be able to share this experience to forwarn others to be careful of fraudulent land surveyors like him.

The Utah Land Surveyor Law

 

How does a homeowner know if an authorized person placed the survey flags as government survey
monument, corner, or witness corner? Best practices seem to indicate in the absence of that information one must leave the markers or survey flags alone or face possible severe penalties.

This gives crooked land surveyors a deep advantage over innocent landowners.

 

Utah Surveyor Law

17-23-15 Removal, destruction, or defacement of monuments or corners as infraction —
Costs.
(1) A person may not willfully or negligently remove, destroy, or deface any government survey
monument, corner, or witness corner.
(2) Any person who violates this section is guilty of an infraction and is additionally responsible for:
(a) the costs of any necessary legal action;
(b) the costs of reestablishing the survey monument, corner, or witness corner; and
(c) any civil penalty that the county establishes for a violation of:
(i) any provision of this section; or
(ii) any ordinance that the county adopts under Section 17-23-14.