An elderly Florida woman says she lost her family home after a neighbor tricked her into signing a blank piece of paper that actually helped him take over the property. Susan Eatman, 80, says her Hillsborough County house, which is worth more than $260,000, was stolen from her by Mark Oliver, a neighbor who runs a farm next to her home, per Fox News. Now, she’s fighting to get it back.
Mark Oliver had Susan Eatman sign a blank piece of paper.
According to Eatman, she was just about to go to a friend’s birthday party in April 2023 when Oliver turned up at her door asking her to sign “a plain piece of paper.”
She said she’d never laid eyes on the man before but mentioned that he was her sister Jackie’s neighbor, which made her feel a little more at ease.
In the end, Eatman signed the paper, with her signature eventually ending up on documents that gave Oliver a quitclaim deed on her home.
Oliver had already taken advantage of Eatman’s sister, Jackie.
According to Eatman, her sister, Jackie Smith, lives at the home that was stolen from her but he needed both women’s signatures to take over the house.
Previous to this, he already managed to get White to agree to let him “put his animals on her property.”
“The property has been my parents’ property for many years, and it is left for Jackie to live there as long as she lives because she’s not very competent to see after herself,” Eatman said.
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Eatman initially refused to sign Oliver’s paper.
However, he showed up at the Cracker Barrel where she was celebrating her friend’s birthday and he brought a woman named Gaeby Doherty, who he claimed was his banker.
She said that Oliver “went on to just be loud and obnoxious and wanted me to sign the paper. And I kept saying, ‘I don’t even know you. I’m not going to sign anything.’”
She continually asked him to leave but he refused, so she eventually signed to get rid of him.
“There was nothing to do. I put my name on this … blank piece of paper.”
Oliver claimed he’d been taking care of White.
He told police he gave her a check for $10,000, gave her food and clothes, and looked after the property, per a Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Report.
He also said that Doherty was present with him when he had White sign a similar blank piece of paper. However, he still claims his takeover of the property is totally legit (because, you know, people get others to sign over the houses for free on a blank white sheet of paper all the time).
“The deed is not fraudulent and was not signed under fraudulent terms,” he said in response to Eatman’s lawsuit against him per WFLA.
The Hillsborough County State Attorney’s Office is not investigating, though no charges have been filed just yet.
