The Empire State Building Is Stolen!
In 2008, one of the biggest heists in American history took place and most of you never heard about it. On that day the Empire State Building was stolen. Worth about $2 billion, the famous skyscraper’s theft made it four times larger than the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist of 1990, the largest private property theft to occur in the United States.
I know what you are all thinking, “You’re pulling my leg, right?” Nope, it actually happened. Here are the details. New York City had a loophole (actually a major process cavern) for recording deeds, mortgages, and other property transactions. The “system,” managed by the Office of the City Register, didn’t require clerks to verify the information on the documents.
So, brazen swindlers would forge transfer deeds, getting ownership of properties transferred to themselves. Then, once they had obtained the deed, they would take out a mortgage on the property often disappearing with the cash. One creative crook transferred ten dilapidated buildings to himself, took out mortgages on the properties, fixed-up one property turning it into an apartment complex, and rented out the apartments for a whole two years before finally getting caught.
As for the Empire State Building it was actually pilfered by the Daily News in order to demonstrate how easy the fraud was to pull off. The information on the bogus deed included some comical allusions. The “witness” to the event was Fay Wray, the actress who starred in the original King Kong movie. The notary was Willie Sutton, the famous bank robber of “Slick Willie” fame. And ninety minutes after the fake transfer deed was submitted, the ownership of the building was promptly transferred from the Empire State Land Associates to Nelots Properties LLC. In case you don’t get it, Nelots is “stolen” spelled backwards. To their credit, the Daily News returned the building to its rightful owners the next day. (I wonder if they were forced to pay a day’s worth of property taxes on the building?)
There are several lessons we can learn from this event, but I will mention two. First, we must be diligent, as Jude says, in “contending for the faith.” If we aren’t careful we can allow a slow erosion of our faith to the culture. Sins which once grieved us, we are now only apathetic about. Sin is rubber stamped all around us and we don’t seem to notice or care. Doctrine is disregarded in hopes of achieving a false unity under the guise of love. Our faith will not be ripped from us, but it will slowly sneak away unnoticed as we go through the motions of Christianity without any fire or vigilance.
Second, false teachers surround us deceiving people with a prosperity gospel, heretical doctrines, and a watered-down ecumenism. Paul warns us to not be “children tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine by the sleight of men.” He also cautions us to beware of “false teachers who have crept in unawares.” It is important WHAT you believe. The content of your faith is just as precious as the object of your faith. So, guard your faith. If they can steal the Empire State Building, then the false teachers can steal our faith if we aren’t vigilant.
