Tag: deed fraud
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Follow That Land Rover! Deed Thieves in California Brought to Justice
Imagine someone gaining control of your home title through deed theft. Then they take a loan out against your home. Someone you don’t know. A loan never heard about. Then, the scoundrel went out and bought a Land Rover with your property value, and used it to start their own winery. The Land Rover deed…
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Selling a Home, But Not Your Own: The Dramatic Rise of Seller Impersonation Fraud
The American Land Title Association surveyed hundreds of title companies — 783, to be precise — and found seller impersonation fraud rising year over year. More than 20% of the firms reported recent instances of this bizarre activity. Crafting elaborate hoaxes, these con artists pretend to be ordinary real estate owners. They are masters of…
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Seniors’ Advocates Urge States to Ban Predatory ‘Cash for Listing’ Contracts
States are outlawing listing agreements that bind homeowners to specific companies to sell their homes in the future. In the last two years, 30 states have acted to prevent businesses from taking control of people’s property by recording brokers’ contracts against their deeds. The agreements can result in restrictions, liens, or even stealth mortgages recorded…
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Deed Theft Should Not Exist
What Does It Take to Safeguard a Title? If you hold the deed, you can’t be evicted, right? True — except if your deed is pulled out from under you by a nasty actor. It shouldn’t happen, but it does. Just ask Dada, a homeowner in Oklahoma City. Someone recorded a quitclaim on Dada’s deed,…
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Now They’re Holding Titles for Ransom? Here’s How Real Estate Scammers Target Floridians (and the Rest of Us)
St. Johns County, which includes St. Augustine Beach, has plenty of attractive real estate. Just beware the trickster who holds a deed for ransom. One of the seniors who lives in St. Johns sounded the alarm. Some shady firm told her to pay $20K to get her title back. It’s a trend in which local…
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Register of Deeds Blasts Crooks Who Steal Homes Out From Under Owners’ Funerals
The Register of Deeds of Shelby County, Tennessee recently took to a live television newscast to warn the public about scammers scouring funeral listings and obituaries. They’re looking for dead people whose homes they can steal. They forge deeds. They record bogus title transfers. Once they have control over their ill-gotten homes, criminals sell them,…
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Ahoy There, Matey! Look Out for the Title Pirates
We all know about porch pirates… but look out for title pirates. They’ll take your whole porch. Title piracy is deed fraud. It happens when someone uses a deed to deliberately take over someone else’s real estate. It’s an unusual crime, but according to the National Association of REALTORS® (which cites FBI figures), it’s been…
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Guilty Pleas in Long Island: Heirs Recover Their Stolen Deeds
Two New Yorkers — and one is a former lawyer and a licensed notary — have pleaded guilty to deed fraud charges in New York. The charges involve first-degree scheming to defraud, and additional counts related to forging and filing false documents to take deceased people’s titles in Nassau and Queens. A company run by…
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Deed Theft Crackdown: New York’s on a Roll
New York State Attorney General Letitia James is championing a cause near and dear to our hearts: safe and secure deeds. On the last day of July 2023, the A.G. announced an indictment of a Long Island resident for deed theft. Joseph Makhani faces two counts of criminal possession of stolen property and one count…
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Quitclaim Forgery Is Snatching Florida Homes From Seniors and Dead People
Some people will steal their own mothers’ homes. In a stunning case of deed fraud, a woman named Wanda donned a wig and pretended to be her own elderly mother, then tried to steal her home in Hillsborough County, Florida. A video recording shows Wanda using the Notarize computer-based notary service, signing a quitclaim deed.…
