Well, I am experienced with a lot of company formations around the world and international tax structures, and know it's definitely possible to have a company (in this case a Trust) which owns and has specific sets of rules to follow, ie. the trustee has the obligation to do X with the coin and since the only part that gets 'tokenized' is the contract in form of 'you get the coin and our trustee will promise you X and is bound by law Y to honor it' and it can be made legally water proof - not in all jurisdictions, tho, as it is some kind of giving out bonds/securities and in many countries that is only allowed with a license. But it does not matter that this would be f. ex. illegal in Austria to sell 'unlicensed' bonds, what matters is the jurisdictation of the Trust and also the location of the actual property (however there's definitly a loophole for that).
To put it simply, if I promise someone with a contract to give him my rental income vs. promise someone to give him my rental if he owns coins, it has the same effect and if I wouldnt honor it, I would be liable. The scam comes from some random dudes putting up fake 'who are we' pictures and scamming the shit out of the ICO hype.
What I'm saying is that when the owner of the token is in a jurisdiction where it is illegal to sell securities without a license (outside of the jurisdiction of the trust):
1. It might have been a crime for you/the trust to sell them the token and you might be liable especially in jurisdictions with robust long arm statues;
2. They have no legal recourse to make you liable to pay them out the rental income as the contract is not legal in their jurisdiction and thus void;
3. The owner of the token might have committed a crime in their jurisdiction.
And another important thing that I wanted to point out - in the trust situation, most of the important contractual stuff (a binding and enforceable promise for you to pay them their share of the rental income) needs to happen off-chain. And I'm not sure there are any jurisdictions where trading a token is a robust, legally recognized and enforceable way to transfer that contractual promise to a third party. You can check it legally, but unless the trust jurisdiction has robust legislation that specifically recognizes block chain transactions as a legitimate way to transfer contractual obligations and benefits from one party to another, the trust promising a payout might be in a grey area of enforceability after the tokens start to be traded freely. Maybe there are such jurisdictions, I don't know. But it certainly becomes grey as soon as the tokens start to be traded freely internationally for some of the traders. Even if the owner ends up from a jurisdiction that allows this, what happens if an intermediary owners was from a jurisdiction where this is illegal, unenforceable or simply not covered by a specific law. That contract might still be void and it might still have been illegal for the final owner to purchase it as he purchased it from a jurisdiction where it is illegal. There are a ton of wrinkles and all of them might be loopholes for you to exploit in order to avoid paying out the promised shares of the rental income of the property.
On top of this, the trust can simply go bankrupt after you have syphoned out all the cash out of it in one way or another. Maybe the piece of real estate might have to be left stuck in the trust, but it could still be a huge loss for the token owners and a huge win for the token and trust founder.
As the legality of it all is so complicated and uncertain, you could just stop paying out what you have promised and welcome the eventual litigation when and if it comes expecting that very few token owners would have a viable case and even fewer would have the resources and desire to pursue it. If you made enough money to begin with, it might actually still be a very profitable strategy for you even after you pay your lawyers to fight incoming litigation and settle the litigation you can't win, dismiss or escape.
I'm in the EU and if I invested in such a token, it would be because I trust you personally to keep your promise because of the value of your reputation that is on the line, not because I would be truly convinced that there would be a legal way for me to enforce the payout.
