Not if your stuff was within the borders of a government that exercised eminent domain powers upon it. ‘Theft’ is defined by law, and the law incorporates many competing priorities regarding property rights, and sometimes also incorporates due process for compulsory seizure and reimbursement. ‘Taken against your will’? Absolutely. ‘Taken without due process’? No, in this article’s case there were decades of due process. ‘Stolen’? No, legal execution of of eminent domain is not theft: it is an act of power committed upon individuals by a government, ideally to prioritize that region’s needs over the few individual liberties it costs. Notably, though, this hinges on reimbursement; seizure without repayment is much more plausibly labeled theft. No repayment will ever be viewed as adequate by those who seek vengeance for their lost dreams, but in the absence of any repayment, it would not qualify as eminent domain at all.

Always understand the property seizure laws for any region when purchasing property, and especially determine whether seizure processes are already in progress, lest the story end up highlighting a catastrophic failure to perform (or, more likely, respect the outcomes of) due diligence. Someone did do an excellent job with this grift, but that’s not theft, that’s fraud.

(Sadly, this lesson has a tech parallel: review of the dependencies of a project or of a curl | bash script. Most don’t, and the occasional grim reminders do nothing whatsoever to influence an individual’s risk-taking behaviors when the alternative is further delays and effort of reaching one’s goals.)

I wasn't calling eminent domain theft, I was drawing an analogy to rebut more_corn's statement. Eminent domain is definitely seizure, and that the owner of the property being seized is compensated doesn't change that, just as if I compensate you for stealing all your stuff, that doesn't change the fact that I stole from you.