Home63-year-old Lyubomila Topchieva from Sofia suffers from paranoid schizophrenia. She lives alone in her apartment in the Mladost district of the capital, without electricity or water. The apartment was inherited by her parents, as well as another apartment in the center of Sofia, on William Gladstone Street.
Jacqueline Danailova is her niece and only relative.
She saw her aunt for the first time a few years ago.
"In 2016 or 2017, I received a call from a police officer on duty from Peshtera, who said that my aunt was in town and doing some unusual things.
She probably had a mental illness.
I was very surprised why they were calling me, as I had never been in contact with her, had never seen her live until this moment.
However, the policeman told me: "From the inquiry it was established that only you are her relative."
They took her to a psychiatric clinic," says Jacqueline Dimitrova.
After realizing that she has an aunt, she goes several times to her apartment in "Mladost" to see her and bring her food, until one day Lyubomila disappears.
Her niece filed a police report.
“An operative entered Ciela.
We saw that he owns an apartment on Gladstone Street, which was sold at auction.
Her own apartment in Mladost, where I used to visit her, was also taken with a promissory note and execution is pending," said Jacqueline Danailova.
She files a report with the police and the prosecutor's office to find out what is happening to her aunt's apartments.
From the decree of the Sofia District Prosecutor's Office, it can be seen that in 2017, Lyubomila met a man named Milen Kirilov.
He explained to the investigators that he and the sick woman met by chance, gradually became close and Kirilov went to live with her.
He also decided to lend her BGN 98,000 to renovate her home.
"He knew she had deviations.
After he gives her the money, she signs a promissory note that she owes it to him," explains Jacqueline.
Milen Kirilov - the man who claims that in 2017 he entered into an intimate relationship with the mentally ill Lyubomila, is 47 years old and lives in the city of Slivnitsa.
He says he works as an international driver and can't meet the NOVA team.
That's why we talk on the phone.
He claims that he gave BGN 98,000 not to Lyubomila, but to a construction contractor who was supposed to carry out the repairs.
However, the investigators do not mention such a person, and Kirilov says that he does not remember his name.
"We met in Mladost.
One day she stopped me and asked me for money, she said she was hungry.
She was well dressed - hat, boots, I became interested.
Then we talked, she said that she was alone, she had no relatives, her mother and father had died, and little by little we started seeing each other", says Milen Kirilov and confirms that he fell in love.
The two lived together and began making plans for a major renovation of Lyubomila's apartment.
"There was no electricity, no water, nothing," says Kirilov.
However, he never found out if the repair was done because the woman started avoiding him, they became estranged and separated.
The man demands the amount given by him by court order.
He claims that at the time of signing the loan document, Lyubomila was in contact and understood absolutely everything.
Lachezar Kirilov - Milen's father, for whom the prosecutor's decree states that he lived with Lyubomila, is adamant that his son has no way of having BGN 98,000 at his disposal. The son explained to the investigators that he got the money from the sale of his apartment in 2015. However, the father is adamant that Milen does not have his own home.
Milen Kirilov's former landlord says that to this day he receives summonses and notices of obligations from companies for quick loans, because his tenant has not yet changed his permanent address.
"We constantly receive summonses from the Second District.
People to whom he owes money have filed complaints," says the former landlord.
Lyubomila's neighbor Nadezhda Mishkova also spoke to NOVA.
He claims that the woman's apartment is in a state of disrepair and has never been repaired.
Since Lyubomila's parents died, the woman lived completely alone.
Then a man appeared who probably gave her money.
These are the first real estate frauds of Marto Notarius, says his former lawyer
"A few years ago, a man came who presented himself as a lawyer.
He said they took her apartments but they are offering her to sign and they will put her in a home.
She lives alone, roams the streets.
She is not aggressive, but has behavioral changes.
Since I live under it, I am a victim.
At 3:00 a.m. he starts singing or marching.
He goes out into the street, starts shouting, shouting, dancing.
Her apartment is dilapidated.
That someone claims to have done repairs is a complete fabrication.
2 years ago she started leaking in my bathroom and with her permission my husband and I went in.
The tiles are worn, the furniture is worn.
In the bathroom, everything was clogged with excrement - bathtub, toilet bowl," says Mishkova.
She thinks that her neighbor does not take medicine.
"If he had been drinking, he would have been in a somewhat adequate state," says Mishkova.
According to documents, Lyubomila is also a partner in a company with Milen Kirilov.
He clarified to our team that the company in question has no activity.
"I guess she doesn't even have valid identity documents," says Mishkova.
In addition to BGN 98,000, which were allegedly given for the repair of her apartment in "Mladost", Lyubomila also signed a second promissory note for the sum of BGN 46,000, for which it is not clear what the alleged that they were given to the sick woman.
In the decree of the Sofia District Prosecutor's Office, it is written that Lyubomila received the money from lawyer Violeta Gerova.
However, they were not hers, but belonged to her client Nikolay Voinov, who left them in her office for safekeeping after the lawyer assisted in the sale of real estate to his parents.
According to publicly available information, lawyer Gerova works in a company that deals with the collection of receivables from debtors.
We do not find her in her office in Sofia.
We are also looking for Nikolay Voinov, who was the owner of the sum of BGN 46,000, which was allegedly given to the mentally ill Lyubomila.
He is also a lawyer and has worked in debt collection firms.
Nikolay lives in Bankya.
We find his mother.
However, she states that she cannot say anything.
"I don't know about apartments or about this person, he hardly took anything.
He is not a racketeer", declared Nikolay Voinov's mother.
We are also looking for him at the address of the company "Solomon Consult Group", of which he is said to be the manager.
However, it turns out that such a company does not exist there.
After the mentally ill woman did not pay the sums of BGN 98,000 and BGN 46,000, which she guaranteed to return by signing two promissory notes, proceedings were initiated and two writs of execution were issued.
An enforcement case has been filed against them.
Thus, at the end of November 2018, Lyubomila's apartment on Gladstone Street in Sofia was taken out and sold at an auction for public sale.
And in order to get there, Milen Kirilov, who claims that he had a relationship with the mentally ill woman, transfers with an assignment contract his claim of BGN 98,000 to another woman from Sofia - Anna Georgieva Dilova, who we have not been able to find.
Graphical examinations have established that the signature in the assignment agreement is not Milen Kirilov's.
In April 2018, Anna Dilova and Nikolay Voinov, who was allegedly the owner of the sum of BGN 46,000 given to Lyubomila, transferred their claims to Diana Lyubomirova Dimitrova from Sofia.
The investigators established that Nikolay Voinov's signature in the cession agreement was not his either.
The decree of the prosecutor's office specifies that Voinov's signature was also forged in a contract for legal protection and assistance and a power of attorney in favor of lawyer Gerova, who allegedly gave 46,000 to Lyubomila.
"They shift their debts so that responsibility can be diluted.
This is a characteristic scheme", believes Jacqueline Danailova.
Currently, the mentally ill woman lives in her apartment in Mladost.
However, the home has been foreclosed upon.
Her other flat on Gladstone Street now has a new owner.
"So in the end, we find that for some 98,000 and for one repair, which we don't know if it took place at all, from the rapprochement between the two, these 2 apartments, one in "Gladoston", the other in "Mladost", are subject to judicial enforcement.
One is sold because it is more appetizing, the other is further from the center.
As far as I know from the recording, she doesn't know the Gladstone flat is up for auction, she thinks it's hers.
He doesn't even know there was an affair.
She hardly realized what she was signing, what they told her, and we don't know with what methods they worked with her, because this is a single, sick woman," says Jacqueline Danailova.
At the end of last year, a prosecutor from the Sofia District Prosecutor's Office refused to initiate pre-trial proceedings, despite the presence of forged signatures and the clarification made by the same prosecutor in the decree that Lyubomila Topchieva suffers from paranoid schizophrenia and the signatures she put on the two promissory notes, with in which one of her apartments was sold at auction and the other was foreclosed, should be questioned because of the "mental capacity of a mentally ill woman".
A fact specified in the prosecutor's decree as an "independent basis for the annulment of every single contract".
In the meantime, the lawyer of the niece, Jacqueline Danailova, files an appeal against the decree of refusal to initiate pre-trial proceedings in connection with the two apartments.
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property fraud
paranoid schizophrenia
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