A group claiming to belong to the Moorish Science Temple of America is filing paperwork in Charlotte, N.C., area courthouses claiming the right to seize foreclosed property, investigators report. The Mecklenburg Times reported that at least 200 deeds and other documents have been filed in Mecklenburg County in the name of the Moorish Science Temple, which the register of deeds believes are "outright fraud." In one incident, a real estate sales associate was showing a couple a $700,000 foreclosed home when two men approached them, presenting a deed that claimed the home was “to have and to hold, forever” and owned by the Moorish Science Temple, a religious sect that was founded in the 1920s with beliefs loosely connected to Islam. Investigators also found personal items inside the home. Christopher Bennet-Bey, the grand sheik of the Moorish Science Temple in Charlotte, said his group is not affiliated with any effort to seize vacant properties and that anyone doing so is misrepresenting the religion. Real estate professionals in Virginia and California are being warned about similar incidents of false deeds being presented at foreclosed homes there too.
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