The alleged scheme is as complicated as it was bold: Find vacant houses and steal them.

A local cop, a veteran property crimes investigator no less, was one of four men who Bibb County authorities say conspired to cash in.

Last week at a $140,000 house on Academy Lane in Lizella, the cop was reportedly seen trying to have the home’s locks changed after allegedly filing false liens and possession affidavits for the property.

A real estate agent showed up with a prospective buyer and confronted the deputy who, according to Sheriff David Davis, pulled the buyer aside and offered the house for $60,000.

Someone there wrote down the tag number of the deputy’s unmarked car and reported the encounter.

The cop, Albert Gordon Murray, 53, who lives in a $110,000 house on Crestwood Trail near Lake Tobesofkee, was jailed Wednesday and also fired.

Murray became a Macon police officer in 2001 and had been a sheriff’s deputy since the departments merged in January 2014.

He and three other men are charged with making false statements and writings, and Murray is charged with violating his oath as a lawman.

The four may be affiliates of a radical group called the Sovereign Citizens Movement, whose beliefs, according a law enforcement source, include the notion that the government is unjust, that they are not bound by U.S. law and that banks are a sham.

Murray, according to investigators, had ties to the locally notorious Nuwaubian Nation of Moors when he was a city police officer.

Investigators began working on the case less than a week ago and have found at least four houses in Bibb County that the quartet have allegedly staked claim to.

There are indications, authorities said, that the men accused have been filing fictitious liens on properties since last fall in Jones and Houston counties. There could be upward of two dozen properties involved, possibly more.

What isn’t known is how -- or if -- the suspects profited.

“It’s kind of like a theft by conversion,” Davis said. “We’re just really scratching the surface. One of the guys arrested was filing a lien at the courthouse when he was arrested.”

The other Macon men jailed in the case are Dimitrious Antoine Brown, 33; Clifford Delaney Greene, 58, and Lemroyal James, 51.

Davis said it is possible that investigators will be flooded by calls from victims of the alleged scam.

“How you would conduct a transaction in all this is murky,” the sheriff said, “because first you have a person who doesn’t have clear title to the property.”

To contact writer Joe Kovac Jr., call 744-4397.