OMEMEE, N.D. - Nearly 150 people from 28 states, Canada, Australia and New Zealand have been buying lots in this prairie town 25 miles south of the Canadian border over the past two years. Many of them have never laid eyes on it.

Bottineau County Commission Chairman Fred Tyler says most of the lots are unfit for development, even though they are described as "gorgeous" and "a great retirement home site and a superb investment."

"It's a total misrepresentation," he said.

The primary seller of the property is Finance All LLC of Tehachapi, Calif. Paul Amato, who runs the company with Chief Executive Officer Paul Sabesky, said customers get as much accurate information as possible about the property and many are satisfied. They bid for the property on Web sites such as eBay, governmentauction.com and bid4assets.com.

"You do need to do your due diligence and look into it and make sure that's what you want," Amato advised potential property buyers.

Online bidders have paid as little as $100 and more than $1,000 for the lots, valued by the county tax assessor at $30 apiece.

The annual tax on each lot is so low - 59 cents in 2004 - that it actually costs the county more in postage to mail out the tax notice and a receipt, said county Treasurer Evelyn Kalk.

For prospectors such as Kevin Wall of Auckland, New Zealand, the chance to acquire cheap land in America is both a gamble and a good buy.

"They're being a bit creative," Wall said of Finance All's marketing. Looking at the dollar value, he said "you could spend that on tires on your vehicle."

Total sales of Omemee property by Finance All amount to more than $55,000 since July 25, 2003, The Forum reported Sunday.

The buying spree bothers some residents in the area, where families take pride in having farmed, ranched and hunted the same land for generations.

"It just makes my blood boil, because I was raised three miles from there," said Janet Sanderson Erdman, 75, a volunteer at the Bottineau County Historical Museum.

The online auction sites that sold Omemee lots typically didn't picture the property, only a plat map of the town.

"To tell you the truth, I don't really know what I was buying," said Rogelio Urbi of Kapolei, Hawaii. "I found it on the map, and that's the most I know about it."

The 55-year-old safety engineer paid $621 for a lot in September 2003, putting the deed in his wife's name. He still hasn't told her about it, he said recently.

Urbi said he bought the property for fun and because it was cheap compared to Kapolei, where the median new home price was about $260,000 last year.

Judging by the price, "I didn't really expect it to look like a city," he said.

Urbi said he has no plans to develop the property or move to North Dakota.

"It's just an investment," he said.

Other Omemee owners contacted by The Forum shared similar stories. Wall, 49, the semi-retired saw filer from New Zealand, said he has purchased 13 U.S. properties through online auctions and hopes to visit them in a couple of months.

"I hope I haven't bought some nuclear waste site or something," he said. "That's what scares me. I could have bought liability."

Francis Kreais wasn't pleased to see his purchase when he visited his Omemee lot in May. He eventually filed a complaint with the North Dakota attorney general's office.

The 45-year-old retired general contractor bought a 25-by-140-foot lot from Finance All for $1,000 last August. Kreais , who has a business office in Las Vegas, said he wanted to build a small house on the property to have a place to stay as he travels the country.

The online property description said the buyer of the "gorgeous lot" would have to install his own septic system when building. However, the public health unit serving Bottineau County requires at least one acre of land to install a septic system in towns without their own systems, said county Tax Director Lisa Peterson.

It takes 13 Omemee lots to equal one acre. Kreais said he was told he would have to hire a surveyor to find his property boundaries because there are no legal descriptions of the lots in Omemee.

Even if Kreais still wanted to build a house on the lot, he couldn't: In platted areas such as Omemee, the county says buildings must be set back at least 25 feet from lot lines.

"Of course, the lots are only 25 feet wide," Peterson said.

Kreais claims Finance All misled him by showing pictures on the Web of nearby Bottineau and North Dakota's prime tourist destinations, and not the actual lot. The county also should have disclosed the true nature of the lot, he said.

"It's a scam," he said

Kreais said he spoke with Finance All about the property.

"They simply told me it was my responsibility to do the due diligence, and you got exactly what you paid for, and there's no refunds," he said.

Amato said the company offers refunds or property swaps to customers dissatisfied with their land purchases. He said he knew of no complaints from people who had bought land in North Dakota.

The attorney general's office found no misrepresentations to prosecute, spokeswoman Liz Brocker said.

There are no road signs proclaiming Omemee, pronounced Oh-MEE'-mee, a variation of an Ojibwa word that means either "pigeon river" or "turtledove," according to conflicting historical accounts.

Dirt roads and decrepit buildings are the only traces of the once-thriving railroad hub. Established as a post office in 1890, the town reached its population peak in 1906, boasting 650 people, two banks, four hotels, three lumber yards and seven grain elevators. The 1990 census listed its population as zero.

Charles Kippen, who takes care of the Omemee cemetery near his farm a mile to the east, is kicking himself for not buying the town from former owner Charles Beckedahl.

"I could have bought the whole thing for $5,000," Kippen said.

Instead, the late Beckedahl sold 85 lots in fall 2002 to Lester L. Larson of Sioux Falls, S.D. The lots were conveyed to Larson via quitclaim deeds, meaning Beckedahl didn't make any guarantees about the property. Quitclaim deeds don't have to list the sale price.

Larson, a 68-year-old real estate investor, had bought 34 lots in Omemee and six lots in nearby Russell for $221 at a county tax sale earlier that year, property records show. He sold 169 Bottineau County lots to Finance All in spring 2003.

The two parties became acquainted through one of Larson's land advertisements, Amato said. Those lots also were conveyed through quitclaim deeds.

Larson said the Omemee sales were profitable for everyone involved. "There was no loser," he said.