Real Estate scam

[barretcreek]

Spoke to the reporting LE agency about this; very little info available. Feds now in charge.

ID of property owner stolen and vacant lot sold to out of state buyer. Sale recorded and property transferred, owner didn't find out until HOA dues returned "you don't own this lot".

Does anyone know of a similar scam occurring without at least two parties being involved? Lady at the S&L said a small line of credit attached to a property would be a good tripwire.

[lyman]

heard of it, in fact, there were some advertising on the radio of a title protection service kinda like lifelock, (for your CC's etc)

apparently someone can hack into your accounts at the local courthouse?

[barretcreek]

apparently someone can hack into your accounts at the local courthouse?[/QUOTE]

Don't know. Still trying to find out who, how, when. Have asked a real estate agent and S&L official about it.

Buyer is in MD so there may be something in your local news. Probably a cash sale. Bye bye.

[Allen]

This is just another reason that public records reveal way too much info, there's no hack needed, the info is available for anyone. A person has a right to privacy. What a person owns, how much the paid, etc, etc is no one's concern.

[Art]

This does happen, and if it happens to you it can obviously be a big deal. The line of credit sounds like a good idea.

[Former Cav]

when in the hell is the gov't going to start enforcing laws like they did in the old days?

[Mark in Ottawa]

For a while we had a really nasty scam going on in Ontario. Scammers would check the real estate records and find a property with no mortgage registered on it. They would then go to the bank and take out a large mortgage on the property. They money would then be transferred offshore. The banks, being banks would then contact the owner and tell him that he had missed the first mortgage payment but when informed by the owner that he did not have a mortgage, the banks would try to seize the property for mortgage arrears. It turned out however that the banks had not been making any effort to confirm the identity of the person applying for the mortgage. Eventually, the government stepped in and directed the banks to absorb the loss and directed all lawyers in the province to require government ID before executing any real estate transaction. What made this so idiotic was that apparently some of the scammers were from Nigeria and nobody at the bank thought to question why a Nigerian would have a name that was obviously not African.