Ms. Susan Coons, generally a resident of Carpio, North Dakota, is currently incarcerated in the Ward County Jail. They caught her swindling an innocent family out of $1,048,000 worth of land in Ward and Mountrail Counties. The rightful owners had no idea. The scheme seemed to be going well for the grifter, until they slapped cuffs on her and hauled her away to jail.
Caught in the act
The Ward County Jail in Minot has another guest and 52-year-old Susan Coons will be staying with them for quite a while. A multi-agency investigation had been quietly going on when officials got wind she might be defrauding a family by stealing their land right out from under their noses, over a million dollars worth.
Some rob folks with a six-gun, others use a ballpoint. Sooner or later almost all of them get caught.
Prosecutors are charging her with several forgery related crimes in two separate counties. The Ward County Sheriff’s Department advises that getting caught for forgery is a Class A felony, with some B- and C-grade felonies thrown in for “deceptive writings, and running a fraudulent website.”
The scary part is that she “used the personal information of the alleged victims to transfer real estate to herself.”
As laid out in the official complaint, Coons was caught forging and creating “false deeds,” which she “registered with the Ward County Recorder’s Office to take possession of land to which she was not entitled.”
Acting like she owned the place, she “used the web site to advertise land for rent.” That way she could milk the cash cow again and again.
More charges in Mountrail County
Because Coons was caught running a scheme that crossed county lines, she’ll face charges in both of them. She also seems to have a history with law enforcement in neighboring Mountrail County.
Over there, she’s charged with two counts of Class A felony forgery and two counts of Class B felony deceptive writings on the land fraud scheme. She also got tagged with a “Class A misdemeanor violation of a disorderly conduct restraining order.”
Back in 2019, Coons was caught and hauled into court, where she “pleaded guilty to Class A misdemeanor harassment.” The judge was nice enough to give her two years of unsupervised probation. She blew it. That judge won’t be happy to see her again in his courtroom.
The last time she was there, prosecutors wanted to throw the book at her with a Class C felony. She was accused of “terrorizing” and “threatening to kill a Mountrail County woman in a text message.” Coons had an ax to grind, accusing “the other woman of destroying a farm.”
After someone came to the conclusion that the land which Coons was renting out might have some questionable ownership, it was turned over to authorities.
Before she was caught and jailed for her “misdeeds,” Coons was the “target of an investigation by the Ward County Sheriff’s Department, the North Dakota Bureau of Criminal Investigations and the Mountrail County Sheriff’s Department.”