4 September 11 - 17, 2025 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents A booming knock at the door raised Cristo Mendoza from the old and tattered couch in his father’s living room on a day in March. Inside the craftsman bungalow on Fairway Avenue in Southeast Dallas, the one that peeks through gaps in the foliage of sprawling and overgrown oaks, down at the end of the cul-de-sac, he watched his nieces and nephews play in the center of the living room of his home. At the door, Mendoza met two strange women and an inspector, insistent on examining the bargain house they said they had just purchased, his house, the only one his family has ever known, and a house that hasn’t been on the market since 1998. But the women insist they had bought it, fair and square. Cristo called his father, Martin Mendoza Sr., who had just slipped off to the grocery store, who insisted the house couldn’t have been purchased be- cause he never tried to sell it. When he got back to the house, the women didn’t rec- ognize the older man. This wasn’t the Martin Mendoza who sold them the home. The women told Cristo they had spoken with someone much younger, who had tattoos, a shaved head and a perpetual grimace. That description matches Martin Mendoza Jr, or just Junior, Cristo’s older half-brother, who has bounced between couches, the home on Fairway Avenue and prison his entire life. The Mendozas were used to getting spam offer letters in the mail from gentri- fiers chasing a quick buck. Many of their neighbors have been bought out and their homes converted to short-term rentals, but the Mendozas have remained; they don’t have any intention of leaving the neighborhood they’ve called home for more than 25 years. They waved the women off, chalking the strange interac- tion up to some clerical error or a fraudu- lent quick cash grab from the oldest Mendoza son, who, up until January, was in prison for assault. Then in May, there was another knock on the door. Cristo remembers a man rep- resenting Duke Real Estate & Asset Man- agement insisted his company had purchased the Mendoza home for $100,000, less than half of what it’s worth. He was much less nice than the two women. He threatened to call the police and have the family forcibly removed from the property if they didn’t leave immedi- ately. The police were never called, but the Mendozas, fearing the loss of their home, quickly phoned a lawyer, believing their wayward son had transferred the deed of their home in a case of fraud. They needed to move quickly, knowing the next knock on the door could be the constable bearing an eviction order to force the family out. The Mendoza home, which Dallas County property records say has been owned by a company licensed as Konikoff Connection since May, is in the middle of ongoing litigation. The family, who were served with eviction papers in June, lost in court, and any day now, they will have to seek shelter at an extended stay hotel or scour the housing market, while strangers move into their beloved and thought-to-be forever home. It may sound improbable, but deed fraud is common, and worse, it’s exceptionally easy for those willing to par- ticipate. Or at least it was, until a set of lo- cal lawmakers decided to crack down on the crime, passing a bill this year in the Legislature’s second special session that fillsthe gaps in the legal system that al- lowed for families like the Mendozas to lose everything they had ever worked for, seemingly overnight. Home Sweet Home M artin Mendoza Sr. came to the United States from Mexico in 1996, chasing the white picket- fenced American dream. With a down pay- ment less than today’s average monthly rent for the standard cookie-cutter two-bedroom apartment, he achieved it. Martin Sr., 60, and nearing retirement, works as a demolition project manager, and his wife works as a maid. Their house is small and aging, but it’s the Mendoza family’s sanctuary. “It was my dream, become a citizen, buy a house,” Martin Sr. said. “It was hard work.” Cristo imagined one day serving dinner to his own children in the same olive green kitchen with paint chipping at the corners, where he ate every meal. He envisioned etching growth spurts on the same door frame where his mother chronicled his. He pictured his future children walking the same path he took to the elementary school around the corner. But now he can’t see any of that; all he can think about is the real pos- sibility of homelessness. “I hear a knock on the door, and my heart just starts racing,” Cristo said. “I answer the door, it’s the church people. I want to yell at them, slam the door because I’m thinking it’s a constable saying, ‘Hey, time to get out. Time to go.’ It’s very difficult. The fact that I can’t do anything just hurts.” After the man from Duke Real Estate , an- other showed up , this time representing Konikoff Connection, came to their door a few weeks later in May, claiming to own the house. The man insisted the family leave, threatening to call the police while a carload of contractors waited outside, looking ready to work, Cristo said. But the police never came, and the man and his fleet of workers eventually left. By this time, the family had contacted a lawyer, and by late June, they had filed a lawsuit and an application for a temporary restraining order against Junior, Duke Real Estate & Asset Management and the newly listed owner of the home, Koni- koff Connection. The lawsuit claims Junior forged his fa- ther’s signature on a general warranty deed dated in December, transferring the prop- erty to himself. He then attempted to trans- fer the property to Duke Real Estate in May, which then transferred the property via an- other general warranty deed to Konikoff Connection. The family is seeking $250,000 in monetary relief, roughly the value of the home, but the Mendoza men say keeping their home and putting the legal battle be- hind them would be enough. “[Lawyers] have to put some type of mon- etary value on that lawsuit,” Cristo said. “We know that my brother doesn’t have any money. We don’t want any money from him. We just want our house back.” The family, with few options but to fol- low standard legal procedures, went to evic- tion court in July, hoping a judge would clearly see the fraud and return the home to the rightful owners. But Cristo says that within minutes, they lost their case, despite his name being spelled wrong in the initial eviction notice that falsely identified him as the primary tenant of the house. “I thought, ‘The judge will see.’ Hearing the judge say that, ‘I rule for plaintiff,’ it’s like everything turned upside down,” Cristo said. “I was angry. Do something, judge. What are you doing? All the years of my dad working, my mom, my sisters, all those years of them working. And for what? For some- one just to take the house that easy? And then for it to be this difficult for us to get it back? It’s not fair.” The Mendozas are scraping together every spare dime for legal fees, | UNFAIR PARK | HOME WRECKER A family confronting deed fraud fights to keep their house. Time and the law aren’t on their side. BY ALYSSA FIELDS Illustration by Alex Nabaum >> p6
