Squatters accused of terrorizing ultra-exclusive SF neighborhood, ‘stealing’ $4M mansion — as wild criminal history revealed

A $4 million San Francisco mansion has become ground zero for what neighbors and officials say is wild squatter takeover — with the bizarre saga unfolding for over a year while the city failed to act.

The home on 32nd Avenue in the Sea Cliff neighborhood, one of the most elite, affluent, and visually stunning neighborhoods the City by the Bay has to offer, has apparently become a revolving door of unfamiliar faces, with neighbors reporting unwelcome activity at all hours.

“I go to bed nervous. I wake up nervous,” one neighbor told ABC.

“It really has been a 24-hour surveillance that’s going on,” another neighbor said. “People are at a breaking point.”

And the midnight madness isn’t just talk.

Neighbors say surveillance footage captured unknown people at around 4 a.m. loading suitcases into a car, another claims her scooter was also stolen. The neighborhood is so panicked they’ve organized into a WhatsApp group named “watch 250” to fight back and collect surveillance footage.

Luxury vehicles have also been spotted outside the property, with some appearing to have no license plates. Apparent break-ins, theft, sketchy characters and a major flooding incident have plagued the incredibly well-to-do neighborhood where Robin Williams once lived since around May 2025. Though the house has set empty since 2019.

What’s happening inside the house remains a mystery, but the how the squatters came to be there is a crazy story involving a convicted fraudster, allegedly dodgy property deeds and an absent wealthy Chinese owner, reports the San Francisco Standard.

Property records show the deed bounced between two people, convicted fraudster Brandon Aadee and a felon named Diana Peng, at least seven times over the past year, including four times since July. Each now claim the other person is not the legitimate owner. Aaadee even tried to sell off the home, but failed when the realtor smelled a rat.

Aadee’s criminal past stunned neighbors when they found out the accused squatter’s name and began looking him up online. He was federally charged in 2008 with stealing more than $48,000 in Hurricane Katrina relief, though he wasn’t a New Orleans resident or a victim. FEMA paid him out over $34,000 and the Red Cross covered $13,000 for his hotel stays.

He was also charged with credit card fraud, after lifting a Visa from an envelope in an SF apartment hallway and running up more than $11,000 over six months, much of it at Aladdin Bail Bonds locations in Marin and San Mateo, the Standard reported.

Aadee pleaded guilty to both federal charges in 2009 and was sentenced to a year and a day in federal prison, roughly $60,000 in liens, before being in and out of custody on probation violations through 2012.

In September last year, San Mateo County charged him with five felonies, including identity theft and possession of a forged driver’s license, over an alleged August incident. The arrest warrant is still active.

Peng is no stranger to a courtroom either. She was convicted of felony perjury in San Mateo County in March 2008 and sentenced to three years’ probation and 90 days in jail. In 2012, facing five felonies including forgery and using another person’s ID, she pleaded to identity theft and commercial burglary and served seven months.

Three years later, charged with four more counts including forging a driver’s license, she was sentenced to two years.

Neighbors say the property appeared to have been abandoned by its owner in 2020. But over the past year, a group of roughly a dozen people began showing up at the house, with some apparently moving in.

“Then one day the front door of the house was broken down…” a neighbor told ABC. “Then a deed was recorded in an individual’s name and that started this whole process.”

Peng and Aadee both used allegedly forged documents to fool police on several occassions when they were detained trying to gain access to the home.

The San Francisco Police Department said the District Attorney’s Office is investigating the case.

And now, after neighbors say they complained to the city over the past year and a damaged water main outside the disputed mansion caused huge flooding, the City Attorney’s Office has finally gone to court.

The office filed a lawsuit against both alleged squatters, accusing them of an “unlawful scheme to obtain ownership of a property located at 250 32nd Avenue… through the recording of forged deeds with the San Francisco Assessor’s office that were fraudulently notarized.”

“Defendants are effectively trying to steal a house and sell it to make millions in profit. That is fraud, and they are trying to profit off that crime,” City Attorney David Chiu said when announcing the lawsuit.

The alleged deed scheme has also raised concerns about notaries being caught up in fraud.

“It’s tragic,” Bill Anderson, vice president of Government Affairs of the National Notary Association, told ABC, adding that the notary becomes a victim in these alleged deed frauds.

“What we’re finding at the National Notary Association… 12% of our $100,000 insurance claims since 2023, those have been seal fraud cases,” Anderson said.

The property belongs to Wei Wang, an absentee Chinese owner, according to what investigators say is the legitimate deed. Wang has apparently been struggling to enter the US to secure the property and is years behind on taxes for it.

San Francisco’s Board of Supervisor’s were asked on Tuesday by the city’s tax collector to auction off the home as it is more than five years behind on property taxes — the opening bid would start at a relatively cheap $500,000, but if someone, anyone, pays off the more than $324,000 taxes, then the auction gets canned. The board also has to approve the auction, leaving stressed out neighbors in limbo for now.

Meanwhile, California’s soft-on-crime laws prevent police from immediately removing trespassers, leaving homeowners trapped in lengthy court processes.

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