When you’re buying or renting in an area hit hard by foreclosures, you have to do your due diligence. Ask to see the records, deeds, and have a lawyer check all the paper work. This is why:

Imagine going to a house or condo you own and finding a stranger living there who claims the property no longer belongs to you.

It’s happening across Florida and other parts of the country through what authorities say is abuse of a centuries-old concept known as adverse possession.

Dating back to Renaissance England, adverse possession allowed people to take over abandoned cottages and farmland, provided they were willing to live there and pay the taxes. These days, officials say, the legal doctrine is being misused by squatters, trespassers and swindlers to claim ownership of vacant or foreclosed homes.

In Broward and Palm Beach counties alone, adverse possession claims have been filed on some 200 homes in recent months. Three of the four people behind the claims have been arrested, and police are investigating the fourth man, who along with his father, a convicted mobster, tried to take over properties in Hollywood.

“We look at this as another con job, another get-rich-quick scheme,” said Don TenBrook, a Broward state prosecutor of economic crimes. “You’re starting to see them pop up all over the place. It’s been spawned by the real estate crisis.”

This part of the story should make your blood boil:

Antonio Vurro owned an empty rental home in Sunrise  that he was trying to sell when he discovered in February that someone had moved in, changed the locks and was trying to open a utility account.

“There were boxes all over the place and a mattress in each room,” Vurro said in a recent interview. “This is not right. It’s my house.”

The occupant, Fitzroy Ellis, told Vurro he was entitled to take over the home because it was abandoned. Police disagreed, and Ellis, 64, is now in the Broward County Jail charged with six counts of grand theft.

Ellis tried to claim a total of 48 properties in Broward, including a $1 million house in Coral Springs, through a company he formed called Helping Hands Properties Inc., county official records show. He told a Plantation police detective he planned to rent out the houses and condos and could offer tenants a good price “since he didn’t have to pay anything for the homes,” according to a police report.

Ellis, who is representing himself, wrote in court documents that the allegations against him are “false and an abuse of power.”

Disgusting. You must be prepared to ensure you’re dealing with the actual owners of nay property you buy. Especially in Florida.