After the convictions, a team of civil lawyers from the Georgia Legal Services Program and a civil rights firm in Atlanta filed suit on behalf of the families who’d lost property to Pinecrest Holdings. Their case was built on the FBI’s evidence and the criminal convictions. They argued that the tax deed sales were void, because the notices had been deliberately sent to wrong addresses, and that the estate purchases had been obtained through fraud.
Eleven families and 640 acres were involved.
It took another eighteen months. But in the end, Pell County settled. The county attorney, facing the federal convictions and a stack of evidence two feet tall, recommended that the commission agree to set aside every tax deed sale where notice had been fraudulently misdirected. Under the settlement, nine of the eleven parcels were returned to the original families or their heirs.
For the two parcels that couldn’t be returned, because Pinecrest had sold them to third parties who knew nothing about the fraud, the county paid compensation at current appraised value. The total came to $1.94 million.
