Squatters refused to leave a Chicago man’s property - so he just moved in with them

An Illinois man took a dramatic step earlier this year when a pair of alleged squatters occupied a home he owns on Chicago’s South Side, temporarily moving in with the pair to deter them from staying.

"I said, 'I'm not going to leave.' Called a couple friends, stayed overnight and I knew they were not going to like that," Marco Velazquez, owner of the house, told ABC 7 Chicago.

Velazquez found out about the individuals, whom he identified as Shermaine C. Powell and Codarro T. Dorsey, when his realtor visited the property and allegedly discovered the pair inside.

The realtor captured video of the couple telling police they paid into a mortgage on the property and had a right to be there, according to Velazquez.

Soon after spending the night in the living room, watching the alleged squatters hide out in a bedroom, Velazquez said he came to realize the individuals wouldn’t be pressured to leave and that a court-ordered eviction could take months.

Velazquez says Powell and Dorsey presented police with a mortgage document not found on record with Cook County, and that he later reached a legal agreement to pay the pair $4,300 to leave the property by March 5.

The property owner said Chicago police are working on the case and told him Powell was the same individual arrested earlier this month and accused of a similar Chicago-area squatting scheme featuring a mortgage document.

"We didn't want to give them money, but we heard really bad stories about squatters taking over properties for six, eight, 10 months, even a year," Velazquez told the station.

Powell, for her part, told ABC 7 she is "innocent until proven guilty."

The Independent has contacted the Chicago Police Department for comment, and was unable to reach Dorsey for comment.

Earlier this month, Illinois Senate Bill 1563, known as the Squatter Bill, advanced out of a state House of Representatives committee to head to the full chamber for approval.

"We are so much closer than we have ever been," state representative La Shawn Ford told local media of the effort.

Real estate agents have long warned of squatter scams in the Chicago area.

"They flipped over the sign. The Coldwell Banker sign it says, 'sold.' And then they changed the locks. They installed a Ring doorbell," real estate agent Airian McDuffy told Fox 32 Chicago last year of one such alleged incident.

When McDuffy approached the alleged squatters, she said they told her to “Get off our property.”