A man accused of living illegally in Arizona’s Tonto National Forest allegedly left behind more than a campsite — rangers found a half-acre mess of tires, cans, plastic, household trash and a wood-burning fire in a protected landscape.
Mark Aaron Gatz, 65, was found at the illegal site in June, with ABC News-obtained documents laying out what rangers had uncovered in the central Arizona forest.
Authorities described a long-term setup that included an SUV parked beneath a homemade canopy, an illegal campfire and about 1,000 pounds of garbage spread through the area.
Gatz told officers he had spent eight years living in the forest, including two years at that specific location.
The garbage was not just ugly, according to WCNC-TV. It was damaging the forest itself, with tires, aluminum cans, plastic bags, trash bags and other debris scattered across Forest Service land.
One responding officer was stunned by the scene. “I was flabbergasted by the amount of debris in the area,” the officer reportedly wrote.
The June encounter was not Gatz’s first problem with forest officials. Authorities soon learned he had six outstanding federal warrants tied to earlier forest-related violations.
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Gatz’s earlier forest trouble dated back to May 2025, when a dirt path led officials to another campsite where clothes, tools, plastic and trash had apparently been sitting for weeks.
By early July 2025, officers were responding to complaints about a “large messy campsite” packed with years’ worth of garbage. One officer described that case as “one of the worst residential cases” he had seen anywhere in the forest.
Gatz was cited then for unsanitary conditions after household trash was found spread across the land.
The pattern allegedly continued into February 2026, when officers tied Gatz to a red-and-white trailer camp where tarps and makeshift clotheslines had turned the forest into something closer to a long-term yard.
That site also allegedly had a 3-foot campfire built from stone and clay.
The kind of stay Gatz described was far outside federal limits. USDA rules cap national forest camping at 14 days in a 30-day stretch and 30 days across a year.
The case ended with a guilty plea to fire-restriction and unauthorized-residential-use violations, ABC News reported, and a three-year probation sentence for Gatz.
In Nevada, another alleged squatting case came to light only after a Lake Tahoe homeowner returned from three weeks away and found signs that someone else had been treating the house as home.
The homeowner called the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office on June 5 after discovering that someone appeared to have stayed in the residence while he was gone.
Investigators said the person had apparently eaten the homeowner’s food and worn his clothes. The homeowner also reported that his birth certificate was missing.
Inside, deputies recovered two clues with a name and a trail: a wallet containing a Visa debit card issued to Clarence Zillman and a Safeway receipt for two packs of Camel cigarettes.
That receipt sent investigators to the Safeway at the Round Hill Shopping Center, where surveillance video showed the person who made the purchase linked to the receipt, according to the sheriff’s office.
The homeowner recognized more than the house. He told deputies the person in the footage was wearing his shirt and hat.
Deputies later found the shirt back inside the residence. The hat had not been recovered.
Authorities have not tied the missing birth certificate to any alleged identity theft or document-fraud scheme, and no purpose for its disappearance has been made public.
The strangest property fight unfolded in San Francisco, where alleged squatters moved into a home owned by a man who had been murdered months earlier, according to the family’s attorney.
The property belonged to Przemyslaw Jeziorski, 43, whose death came months earlier in Athens, Greece, when a masked gunman killed him on July 4, 2025.
After the killing, his brother, Łukasz Jeziorski, checked the home and found it “in order.” By December, neighbors were calling police about a suspected robbery at the 2,167-square-foot property.
The first police call came before dawn Dec. 4, 2025, when four masked suspects allegedly broke through the front door around 2:30 a.m., Berkeley Police Department official Byron White told SFGATE. They were gone by the time officers arrived, and an attempted traffic stop did not catch them.
Later that morning, a woman believed to be one of the alleged squatters returned to the home and told officers she was renting a room from the landlord, according to White.
She claimed she had been out of town when the break-in happened and told police she tried calling the “landlord,” but the call “wasn’t going through.”
The woman said she had toured the home in August with someone she believed was the owner, moved in Oct. 1 and paid $30,000 for a one-year lease, plus a $500 deposit, SFGATE reported.
Family attorney Stratte accused the alleged squatters of reporting their own robbery as a way “to establish their occupancy,” saying they are now shielded by tenant laws “even though they gained entry criminally.”
The family found more signs of trouble in January, when someone discovered “evidence that people had been there,” Stratte told the outlet.
By Jan. 29, someone acting for the homeowners had gone to police with concerns about squatters. Officers then found a man and woman inside who insisted they were renters, White told SFGATE.
Investigators determined the dispute would have to play out in civil court.
Eviction notices were filed April 21 against the woman and another occupant, according to SFGATE.
One suspected squatter was arrested for other crimes the same day police found them, the lawyer said.
