A 74 Leon County, # 8 74 ER Bull Survey, Deorconellas Well F8 B (?P8 B?), operator Comstock.
Family member receiving bizarre offer from Dove Creek Investments accompanied by a check for $17,000+ to purchase property in the A74 ER Bull survey. Family has no record of ownership of this property. BUT the offer also states, all property owned in Leon County, Fearful of the legality of this offer, any and all advice appreciated.
First, the phrase means exactly what it says - you will sign away all real property (surface, minerals, house, etc) owned in the county, whether or not you are aware of any ownership rights. Sometimes the language will have verbiage that include all future acquisitions. Second, are you in pay on this well? If not, then there may be money in suspense. There are 2 producing wells in A-74 with horizontal wellbores which also go through A-567 (SC Mayfield survey) and A-40 (R Raines survey). You can find these on the RRC GIS viewer.
Those guys love to try to flash cash and get you to sign something quick. In reality, they’re trying to obtain valuable acreage you own that you may be unaware of. They are one of the most disreputable companies I’ve ever seen.
Mark through that check with a big black marker VOID right now! Many offers by various companies come with that language and they are quite dangerous. They mean what they say and they are generally quite lowball. Contact the operator of the wells on the surveys and find out what their title opinion says. Worth it to do the legwork.
The (what I consider to be) sad part of this is that that language is “legal”, according to statutory law in TX, (someone else I’m sure can name cite the case law) b/c I know it was litigated in the past. However, it is true that there are many, and I’d almost say the majority of the mass mail letter writing mineral buyers attempt to get this language into deeds, so that they can scoop up - for FREE - minerals that the seller doesn’t even know they own. It’s a terrible thing in my opinion. I would not deal at all with anyone proposing this, period.
Thank you for the response, the mineral property was not owned but was an error in P& A’s records filed for Leon County. P&A is contracted to hanle Leon County’s Mineral recordings. Dove did return the conveyance document upon threat of “Mail Fraud” which requires Federal inprisonment.
Also interesting that the check draft was from a Trust that could not be verified via Google search but AI via Microsoft 365 gave extensive information.
Dangerous, tricky world out there.