Real Estate Fraud and Deceit

[Account Closed]

My family was in a tenant in common situation at the cousins level now. We had a cousin sell his 1/8 interest to a firm that is a licensed real estate brokerage firm but also bills itself as a developer.

The local board of education made it clear that they were looking for land to build a new middle school and the identified our area as in the desired location.

They started the process by advertising an RFP. We didn’t respond because we could not get everyone to agree to list and because we can only see our interest then we couldn’t go into a contract to sell the property with the board. We just assumed if our area was identified then they would approach us for negotiations and take it from there.

Months and months passed and no contact so we assumed they chose another site. The firm made us an offer and the tenants accepted since we didn’t was to face a possible partition suit and the school never reached out.

Two months after we sold they announced that the school would go on our property.

I since did open records requests and found that the firm’s unlicensed president put the entire farm up for sale 3 weeks before the company took 1/8 title to the farm. They also were negotiating price despite not being full owner and even had the board of education sign a non disclosure agreement.

This sure seems like fraud, deceipt, unlicensed brokerage since the president is unlicensed and offering property for sale on others’ behalf without all owners’ consent and I assume the principal broker and managing broker could be looking at possible revocation for allowing this to occur.

Thoughts? Is this legal? I have been told that anyone can sell property as long as they get title before closing.