(Our forum page readers may grow tired of our frequent admonition to “use a reputable realtor” or “your realtor can recommend a reliable lawyer” but the following story reveals why this is good advice.)

by Rod Hughes
The climate must be healthy in Costa Rica because even the dead do not stay dead, but sometimes arise from their tombs and sally forth.
To sell property.
This unsettling fact was underscored by recent investigative articles in Costa Rica’s respected daily, La Nacion, which checked out 146 cases where persons dead for up to a couple of decades had “appeared” before notaries or lawyers to to sell or donate properties. Or, so National Registry records indicate.
Case in point: Raul Sanchez of Nicoya “appeared” magically before a notary named Rodriguez on Dec. 17, 2002, to nullify a title on land he had owned, despite having died on New Year’s Day, 1982, the newspaper records. Miraculous!
Even more so is the case of Victor Julio Rodriguez, died Dec.12, 1983, but who managed to appear before a notary named Mendez on June 18, 2003, to sell his property, the paper continues. Or so the notary said after “witnessing” his signature.
Of course Costa Rica has laws against such hanky-panky but one with loopholes big enough for crooked lawyers and notaries to slither through. Lawyers or an accused notary’s lawyer can find all manner of wiggle room or delay the prosecution until the prosecutors give it up as a lost cause. “Those sentenced don’t add up to five percent of the prosecutions, since the lawyers are able to exploit loopholes and tie up the process,” says National Registry director Dagoberto Sibaja.
“The lack of control has enouraged some notaries to enter into fraud,” says the country’s Vice president, Minister of Justice Laura Chinchilla, who was, in a past administration, the country’s top cop at Public Security.
Deputy Director of OIJ, the nation’s equivalent to Scotland Yard or the FBI, agrees. “We arrest notaries all the time” he says, “but more appear and commit (frauds).”
Sibaja is even more specific, “Notaries should be well screened. The National Registry does not have the resources to oversee the thousands of notaries nor the legal mechanism to prosecute them.” The Registry has filed accusations on 118 notaries suspected of dubious practices.
The price is high, the paper notes. Between 2003 and this year, 130 properties were fraudulently registered. In 2003 and 2004, 73 properties were sold, transferred or mortgaged by the lively dead of Costa Rica. Last year, 11 notaries were accused and since 2003, 31 lawyers are suspected of this kind of transaction.
Chinchilla terms this situation the cause for “national shame,” and cites the case of a Uruguayan lady whose property was taken over, three times, by two suspects who “resurrected” her deceased parents to sign the paperwork.The sellers eventually left the country after feeling the hot breath of the law on their necks.
One might ask, “Where is the Bar Association?” There is one, called the Colegio de Abogados, but this organization has been likened to a social club and traditionally its officers have shown a marked reluctance to police their own, even in cases of obvious dishonesty.
Nor is real estate the only place where the undead sign legal papers in the presence of notaries or lawyers. This happens when they appear before notaries to solicit the National Registry for replacement of “stolen” or “deteriorated” vehicle license plates. But that is a different story. Still, don’t be surprised to find duplicates of your plate number on a car driven, probably, by a deceased person.
Creepy, though…