House-stealing scheme conviction lands ex-Bibb County sheriff’s investigator in prison
A Macon jury this week convicted a former Bibb County sheriff’s investigator for his role in a bizarre and ill-conceived house-stealing scheme.
The ex-cop, Albert Gordon Murray, 60, was arrested in 2015 during an investigation into a ring of alleged real estate thieves who were said to have scoped out vacant or for-sale properties in the area and then filed court papers staking claim to them.
On Tuesday, after a two-day trial in Bibb Superior Court, Murray received a 20-year sentence — 10 of it to be served in prison — for crimes that include violations of the state’s Racketeer-Influenced and Corrupt Organizations law, filing false documents and theft.
In May 2015, Murray was implicated in a ploy to illegally acquire properties after he was seen at a $140,000 house that was for sale in Lizella. Officials at the time said he was trying to have the house’s locks changed and that he had filed bogus liens and possession affidavits.
When a legitimate prospective buyer showed up at the house with a real estate agent, officials said that Murray took the buyer aside and offered to sell the house, which he had no rights to, for $60,000.
Murray, who became a Macon police officer in 2001, was sworn in as a sheriff’s deputy in 2014 when the departments merged. Murray worked primarily as a property crimes investigator. He was fired in the wake of his 2015 arrest.
On Thursday, Murray’s lawyer, Melvin Raines II, said prosecutors had offered Murray a plea deal of five years’ probation that could have been reduced to two years but that before the case went to trial Murray turned it down.
Raines said there was no evidence that Murray ever profited in the property ploys.
Raines said Murray believed that he had not done anything wrong, that Murray had been trying — improperly as it were — to acquire houses using an avenue known as “adverse possession.”
“He lost his entire livelihood over this,” Raines said.
This story was originally published October 28, 2021 at 1:39 PM.