When Garland Baker agreed to look into changes in the Costa Rican property laws, he did not anticipate that he would be embarking on a career.

Baker, a business consultant, took on the job to research and write articles about property law because he has been here 32 years and has had experience in this area.

A.M. Costa Rica asked him to do that because editors are constantly receiving e-mails from readers who have complex problems with land titles and ownership.

What Baker found was an eye-opener. He has documented a change in the law that actually encourages lawyers and other professionals to steal their clients’ properties by not doing their work correctly.

He has outlined a clearly unconstitutional tax system that penalizes new owners and rewards those who do not change property title.

Baker also has touched on the problems absentee owners might have if some uninvited guest just happens to move on to the property and sets up housekeeping.

More recently, he has documented how two branches of the Costa Rican high court maintain two different and conflicting theories of property ownership. The criminal appeals court says the original owner should be protected even if some fly-by-night con man forges deeds and sells the property to an innocent third party.

The civil appeals court would give the property to the third party and leave the original owner holding the empty bag.

Such flimflam with deeds is common and some employees at the Registro Nacional where important papers are filed have been known to participate in such illegal acts.

In his work, Baker, who is an accountant and not a lawyer, has been assisted in concepts and research by Allan Garro, who is a Costa Rican lawyer.

Monday Baker outlined the powerful and little-used Costa Rican consumer protection law which can benefit foreigners living here.

Coincidental with writing articles, Baker realized that more and more North Americans needed his consultant services in the area of property ownership, so his business, now Costa Rica Expertise, began to change to accommodate the need.

Where is this journalistic series headed? The available information is only growing more complex. Each day editors receive more tips about possible scams and scammers and pitfalls and loopholes in the civil code.

Some people have signed over their properties to friends who said they could help them sell the real estate and then the friend moved in. Others are losing their ownership to squatters.

Some readers said that Baker’s revelations scare them away from property ownership. But that is not the point of the series. The idea is that knowledge is the best defense and that foreigners in Costa Rica have to prepare themselves for business.

The goal of Baker and A.M. Costa Rica is to give them the tools to do that.