Owner of vacant CT land discovers $1.5M home built on it

The “Nightmare on Sky Top Terrace” in Fairfield, Connecticut, is no horror movie. It’s playing out in real life.

Long Island resident Dr. Daniel Kenigsberg discovered that the vacant parcel of land he owned in Fairfield next to his childhood home had been fraudulently sold and developed without his knowledge, columnist Dan Haar of CTInsider wrote.

The situation came to light when a childhood friend — while on a call to discuss a friend in hospice — informed Kenigsberg of a house being built on his property on Sky Top Terrace, near Sacred Heart University.

A firm called 51 Sky Top Partners LLC purchased the lot from a Daniel Kenigsberg in South Africa for $350,000 in October 2022, according to the Haar, citing town records. 

The purchase was facilitated by a power of attorney granted by someone claiming to be Kenigsberg to a Trumbull lawyer named Anthony Monelli. The 4,000-square-foot, four-bedroom house that is still under construction is currently listed for sale at $1.5 million.

Kenigsberg filed a lawsuit in federal court seeking to void the 2022 sale and demanding damages and compensation up to $2 million.

The lawsuit names Sky Top Partners, owned by Gina Leto and Greg Bugaj, and attorney Anthony Monelli as defendants. It alleges that Kenigsberg never authorized the sale and claims the defendants should have known that a fraud was taking place.

A criminal probe is also underway, led by the Fairfield Police, to determine who received money from the buyers, the outlet said. The alleged fraud involves impersonation and sophisticated land transactions, making it a somewhat rare case in real estate law — but artificial intelligence is making it easier for such transactions to happen.

Kenigsberg — the real one who has owned the parcel since 2011 — values the property beyond its financial worth, as it has been in his family for decades. He paid taxes on it as a buildable lot and had never planned to sell or develop it. The incident has left him angered and frustrated, as the property holds sentimental value and a significant history.

“You know when you go back to your old neighborhood…it still more or less looks the same,” Kenigsberg told Haar. “That was this family’s house and that was that family’s house. … I’m angry that so many people were so negligent that this could have happened….It wasn’t for sale…It’s more than obnoxious, it’s offensive and wrong.”

— Ted Glanzer