Danish Man Loses $100,000 in Real Estate Scam in Colombia

Listen and learn how Patrick, manager of FAR International Cali, got scammed out of $100,000 in a real estate deal in Cali, Colombia.

Patrick’s story and how he lost $100,000

Patrick got fed up with sub-urbian life in Denmark and decided to buy himself a motorbike to ride it from the US to Brazil. On his last night in Cali, Colombia, he met a beautiful brown-eyed girl. Fast forward a few years, they settled down in Cali together.

Patrick purchased a nice plot of land where he planned to build 18 apartments. The land was situated in an earth-quake zone, which meant he had to take soil samples before starting the construction. Shortly after he began digging, a man came running over claiming the land belonged to his family.

Patrick called his lawyers and the police in order to sort out the situation. It turned out that the land indeed used to belong to the man, but now it was in Patrick’s name. However, the person who sold the land to Patrick used a fake ID and took the money. Both Patrick and the land owner got scammed by this person.

A legal process has been going on for four years in order to decide who owns the land. The first prosecutor died, the second one got re-assigned and the third one doesn’t have an assistant or an investigator and she has 450 cases open, so Patrick doesn’t expect a ruling to come any time soon, even though the scammer and the transaction have both been identified. He hasn’t recovered a single penny of the $100,000 he invested, which was all of his life savings.

After recovering from the shock, Patrick applied for a job at FAR International and soon became a partner in the business, running the Cali department.

Other topics

* Process of buying real estate in Colombia as a foreigner

* Learning lessons from the experience

* The “Clinton List”

* Due diligence Patrick did before buying the land

* How the scammer got away with it

* How the introduction of finger prints makes these type of scams almost impossible now

* Why Cali is an attractive place to invest

* Short term rental regulations in Colombia

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