A Nova Scotia woman is warning others to beware after she paid $4,000 for a barn she planned to move to her own property, only to discover it had been sold to someone else a month before.

Mary Jewers spotted the building for sale this spring on Kijiji and later visited the site near Elmsdale. She met with the seller, Marty Kaelble, who wanted someone to buy the six-stall barn, dismantle it, and transport it to their own property for reassembly.

Jewers sent her first payment of $3,000 by email on April 17. Two days later, Kaelble contacted Jewers via text, writing: "Just a gentle reminder concerning the balance. If you would be kind enough to send it. Cheers!!" Jewers sent the final $1,000 the next day.

But the barn never made it to her property in Ellershouse. And she's not seen a penny back from Kaelble.

"The worst part of this is knowing that he's probably going to get away with this," Jewers said.

"We are never going to see our money, and the worst that might happen is that he has a fraud charge on his file. So it's frustrating."

Another buyer

The barn has six stalls. (Mary Jewers)

Jewers wasn't the only buyer, a fact she only learned after discussing the deal with a friend. That friend had heard a similar story about an Elmsdale-area barn deal hitting a few snags from Victoria Newman-Jones.

Jewers and Newman-Jones connected by phone, and soon understood the predicament.

Newman-Jones had also seen the same online ad for the barn and went to view it in March.

Three days later she sent by email the first of three payments totalling $4,000, plus $500 for an adjacent run-in. Newman-Jones also paid two contractors more than $10,000 to dismantle the barn and transport it to her property.

Foreclosure

What she didn't know at the time was the land on which the barn sat was under foreclosure, and was sold at auction to the Royal Bank of Canada on April 15.

On the day a contractor was set move the barn to Newman-Jones's property this month, RCMP showed up and told the work crew to stop. Only later did they get the final OK from the bank because she had bought it before the foreclosure date.

Newman-Jones may now finally have the barn she wanted, but she says it is "unacceptable" how Jewers and her husband were treated by Kaelble.

"I was just appalled at the fact that somebody would go ahead and sell something for so much money and thousands of dollars and deliberately put somebody else in financial hardship just out of what seems to be greed," said Newman-Jones.

RCMP investigate

Mary Jewers excavated a piece of her property in preparation for the barn. (Mary Jewers)

Jewers subsequently learned another unsettling fact: she had made her first payment on the barn two days after the land was sold back to RBC.

She called RCMP, and a spokesperson confirmed the detachment in East Hants is investigating.

"The file is moving forward, although no charges laid yet," said Cpl. Jennifer Clarke.

The CBC was unable to contact Kaelble, although attempts were made via email, text and phone.

Not only is Jewers out $4,000, she and her husband both took a week off work to excavate their property to prepare it for the barn's arrival.

She says if Kaelble doesn't pay her back, she plans to take him to court.