In 2006, Carl Echols Jr. paid his cousin, Edwin Lewis, cash for land near Garfield. Recently, Echols discovered it wasn't his nor his cousin's land after all.
Josh Duggar is back in the news, kind of.
A 5-acre tract currently owned by the former reality TV celebrity is the subject of a lawsuit filed by a Garfield man, who believes the land should be his.
A lawsuit filed in Benton County Circuit Court by Bentonville attorney Kesha Chiappinelli of Mostyn & Prettyman lays out allegations of fraud and breach of contract — but not by Duggar.
On Jan. 6, 2006, Carl Echols Jr. said, he paid $17,500 cash for the property on Mahurin Loop in Garfield. The seller and owner of the land — or so Echols thought — was his cousin, Edwin L. Lewis.
The suit says Lewis told Echols to not file the deed, just keep a copy of the bill of sale and pay the annual property taxes. Echols moved into a mobile home on the property and paid the tax bills addressed to Lewis in care of Echols.
The land and mobile home were recently appraised at $13,950. When Echols recently tried to pay the property taxes, he learned that Josh Duggar’s ALB Investments LLC bought the acreage for $1,000 on Sept. 30, 2016.
The suit alleges that Lewis committed fraud by selling Echols land he didn’t own. Lewis actually bought the property from the Bradford Family Trust for $12,000 on Jan. 30, 2006 — weeks after selling it to his cousin.
The suit alleges that Lewis used Echols’ money to buy the land and then told Echols not to file a deed so Lewis coud register his own ownership.
Echols is asking for a quiet title to be enacted to award him ownership. The suit says that a full title search would have revealed his bill of sale and interest in the property; the suit also assumed Duggar never visited the property and didn’t know it was occupied.
Sign up for Daily E-news
