Marco Velazquez owns a South Side home in Chicago that he was trying sell. One day earlier this month, his realtor went by the home to show it to a potential buyer and discovered a couple had already moved in and claimed they were the rightful owners. Velazquez called the police.

"I couldn't believe it. It was like a nightmare," Velazquez said.

Velazquez says a woman named Shermaine and her boyfriend, Codarro, moved in, claiming they recently purchased the property...

Velazquez's realtor recorded a video as the couple explained to police that they had a right to be there.

"The worst thing happened, when police told me they couldn't do anything. It needs to go to a civil court," Velazquez said.

The couple who'd moved in showed police a fake sale document. No such sale had been registered with Cook County, but police saw it as a problem for the courts to sort out. Marco Velazquez decided to try something unexpected. He and his wife refused to leave their home.

"I said, 'I'm not going to leave.' Called a couple friends, stayed overnight and I knew they were not going to like that," Marco Velazquez, owner of the house, told ABC 7 Chicago...

Soon after spending the night in the living room, watching the alleged squatters hide out in a bedroom, Velazquez said he came to realize the individuals wouldn’t be pressured to leave and that a court-ordered eviction could take months.

The squatters, later identified as Shermaine Powell and Codarro Dorsey weren't willing to leave but neither was owner Marco Velazquez. At some point the next day, the squatters came to him with a proposal. They would leave if he agreed to pay them $8,000, money they claimed to have spent buying his house. Velazquez knew this was extortion but started thinking about how long this battle could drag on in the courts while he was neither able to sell or rent out the property. He decided to negotiate. Eventually they settled on $4,300. Both sides signed a contract. The squatters agreed to leave and hand over the keys for the payout.

"We didn't want to give them money, but we heard really bad stories about squatters taking over properties for six, eight, 10 months, even a year," Velazquez told the station.

Just a few weeks earlier there was a similar case at another home in Chicago, this one involved a homeowner named Marcia Lee.

Marcia said she came by her property last week to show it to a prospective buyer. To her surprise, she said a family of three and their dog had moved in.

"I have a realtor on the sidewalk waiting to see this property. The buyer is across the street," Marcia said. "I had to apologize, like, 'I can't show you this house right now.'"

She and her husband came back with police. They said a woman, who identified herself as "Stacey," claimed that she bought the home in February and was the new owner.

'They said, 'We've been here for a month.' I said, 'No you haven't. I just showed this property two days ago,'" Marcia said.

Once again, the woman inside showed police a document claiming to be the owner, but the document was obviously fraudulent and had the wrong property ID number. The squatters offered Marcia Lee and her husband a deal, saying they would vacate the home for $8,000. Marcia Lee refused to pay and, fortunately, after about a month "Stacey" was arrested and identified as Shermaine Powell, the same person who ran this scam on Marco Velazquez.

"I knew the ID was fake," Marcia Lee said. I knew the documentation was fake. I'm just super excited that they finally got her out."

The woman, whose real name is Shermaine Powell-Gillard, was arrested and charged with forgery and burglary, two felonies.

She was also charged with obstructing identification and criminal residential trespassing.

Despite the charges, it was less than a week later that Marco Velazquez found Shermaine Powell squatting in his house. Clearly, the law is not keeping up with what some have dubbed "next-level squatting."

The state of Illinois is currently considering a new law which, if passed, would make it easier for owners to have squatters removed by police.

The proposed law would make it easier for police officers to remove squatters from someone's home, bypassing the months-long eviction process. It was passed in the Illinois Senate and is heading to the House for review...

Illinois State Senator Lakesia Collins of the 5th District is the author of the bill. She believes it'll give property owners in Illinois the protection they need and deserve.

"Senate Bill 1563 will give clarity for law enforcement to go in and remove trespassers," Collins said. "Squatters currently have to go through the legal process, which is sometimes long and lengthy, and it's a burden for someone trying to remove them from their property."

Hopefully that bill will pass and it won't be as easy in the near future for squatters to pull off this sort of scam. Here's a local news report on what happened to Marco Velasquez.