This. it was probably the only non available lot in the development and would hold them up for services if they had to skip one, and figued they'd take it and let the court figure things out later. We have had develooers take deposits and new condos and then just spend it all on personal stuff and non devwlopment purchases and then declare bankrupcy, screwing over every person that pre paid, they are unscrupulous
I saw something similar happen in rural Georgia. It was about 15 years ago, so some of the details are a little fuzzy.
Basically a county official owned a shitty undeveloped lot across the street from a nice developed lot owned by the county.
The county needed some kind of storage facility, so they built one. Unfortunately the county "accidentally" built the storage facility on the shitty undeveloped lot owned by the county official. No one noticed the mistake until the building was nearly complete.
Luckily the county official was a stand up guy and offered to just switch lots with the county and call it even. What a nice guy, he sure saved the county a lot of embarrassment.