Is this a new land scam?

If you want to look at this, go to the South West corner of the Masocado sim, and look at the map with "for sale" turned on. Look just over the sim border. If you don't want to see it (trust me, it's ugly) it's basically a "normal" looking parcel with a house on it, but the parcel is surrounded on 2 sides by 64 sq m plots all for sale.

My neighbor just over the sim border has lived in that same house for a long time. When I saw this, I IM'ed him and just politely said, "Hey [so and so], just curious, what happened to your land?" He wrote back and just said "I've sold the land and moved somewhere else." I responded, "Oh, okay, because it is cut up in a very strange way." He didn't write back. But he's still the owner of the plot inside (not for sale), and the house is still there.

So, can someone help me understand why he would have done this to his own land? I assume that this current owner is the one who did it. Is the idea to sell the inside parcel to an unsuspecting sucker, and then grief them into buying the small plots? This just looks suspiciously like the "hole in the 512" scam we started seeing around the time the ad farm ban was announced.

It's currently not really affecting me, but if the place gets trashed, that tenant in the rental home there will probably want to leave. I'm more concerned that there's a new type of scam going on, and that people are finding new ways to circumvent the ad farm ban. I'm also just generally pissed off whenever I see someone deliberately trashing SL.

I think Admiral Ackbar said it best.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dddAi8FF3F4

It's not funny; Many Bothans died to bring us this information.

What I see there is a string of 64s along the boundaries.
Most are priced at L$570 - which is not outrageous as a general price/m

The 8960 inside shows a Claimed date of March 29th
The 64m parcels (including the GM plot) show a Claimed date of April 9th


One has been picked up by a well known GM and repriced at 1500. (April 9th)
A YY has repriced at 4999 (April 14th)

The inner parcel is not for sale. Its build encroaches on the 64m parcels



My theory:
A lover's parting.
Has one of the owners decamped and left a parting gift for the other owner?
One might think that selling the entire parcel for a song would be putting the knife in.
However, if the money didn't matter, then doing *this* would be to really twist the knife when it's in.

Not a trap. Just a gigantic kick in the something?




Off topic:
Looking for the parcel boundaries reminded me how much I HATE the way parcel boundaries shine through everything in the latest RCs.
Well, everything except the water plane!!!! So turn off the water plane, and the ground can't be seen any more!!
It's become really difficult to check the boundaries in watery plots.

Turn off atmospheric shaders to stop the land mesh from getting occluded and you'll be able to see property lines with water turned off.

Or additionally turn off basic shaders as well to see the properly lines through water.