What puzzles me, why would the victim need to undo it? Can't the victim not simply go to the police, or a court, report the crime, ask for an injunction that all involved parties need to undo the fraud on their own costs immediately. And WHY has NO court so far decided that the administration needs to fix the problem within x months or be held in contempt?
I think it is because it is considered a civil matter rather than a criminal one. Someone breaking into your house is a criminal matter and someone squatting in your house is a civil matter.
Because that's the way the system is rigged. The individual has to jump through a thousand hoops to fix something that wasn't even their fault. Credit card fraud, bank fraud, identity theft, etc. The onus is 100% on YOU to fix it. The government and businesses don't want to help you unless you force them to, and even then they drag their feet to the point in can take years to fix what should be a simple clerical correction.
It really is amazing how little effort goes into verifying documents that transfer land ownership. I guess Title Insurers and financial institutions aren’t losing enough money yet …
problem is they just rely on title insurance to cover the costs involved. So they have little incentive to work harder at finding fraud when they know it's all insured and will cost them nothing but premiums.
@@SirStanleytheStumbler After a point the title company would either be uninsurable, or their insurance company would demand various precautions be taken to remain insured. That may actually be what happened in this case.
In 1974, my wife and I bought a building lot and built a house. We had a title search and got title insurance. In 1977, I received a letter from a lawyer stating his client owned the lot and demanded $1000 a month rent. I turned the matter over to the title insurance company. I never heard anything more about it. Turned out that the “new owner” bought the property from someone who didn’t own it. Crooks have been around for ever.
So they bought something from someone who did not own it. Property has to be conveyed y true owner. So..buyer is screwed correct? What was the outcome? I hope you did not get screwed.
My wife and I were OK. No cost, no hassle, only a big scare. The title insurance company handled the matter. I would hope that the “new buyer” sued the fraudulent seller.
Some counties are now offering to a program to notify you by email when a document is recorded an the owner’s name or business name. It's after the recording is done, but you can catch the theft & hopefully the thief pretty quickly.
This makes a good argument for creating a new ID theft company called Death Lock. Death Lock would use former CIA/KGB hit men to hunt down ID scammers and rub them out!
They should continue to be thrifty. A .22LR is much less expensive than a lawyer. Since the DOJ is busy with their own stuff, is anybody watching how strong organized crime is getting again?
Maybe we should bring back the old drop and stop, I know a lot of corpo rat executives would be getting their necks measured and I'm okay with that, they've certainly done enough damage to society and the country, they shouldn't be allowed to simply pay a fine then keep on breaking the law like nothing happened.
The problem is that the police and prosecutors do not investigate these fraudulent transactions. So there is no consequence to the person committing the fraud. It would not be that difficult to investigate.
A lot of this is done by RON(remote online notary). I have been a notary for 3 years and refuse to do REMOTE notary work. In person, wet ink signatures only. ANYONE can order a notary stamp from online venders. Alabama just made changes to the notary law in the state. Training, higher insurance, and higher bond. I have refused several notary jobs because the ID was bad. You would not know with remote signing.
Are you a Notary Signing Agent? I am one too, in Oklahoma. I avoid RON like the plague because I know that in a case like this, no matter how legitimate the signer’s forged ID seemed to be, I would end up being on the hook for this transaction in some way and that would cause me too many problems for my business. In Oklahoma, you need to have car titles notarized but nobody understands how the process works so people bring me car titles signed by the seller and they are the buyer. I notarize the seller’s signature.
@@barnabusdoyle4930How are you legally able to notarize the seller’s signature if they are not there in person? I always thought that Notaries had to witness the signature actually being made as it was happening AND verify their ID. (I’ve only had a few things notarized in my life and it’s also been at least ten years since.). Also, I thought Notaries only used embossing stamps, not flat ink. (I don’t know the proper name for them - the leave a raised seal on the paper.) Is that only in some states?
Without a wet signature and an examination of ID I fail to see how they can claim it was legitimately notarized. This sounds like "let's all pretend it was notarized so I can collect my fee."
@@synnove1046 RON (remote online notary) has been authorized due to the pandemic. Embossing stamps have dropped out of favor due to the fact they are very hard to show up when copies are made.
Nah, the courts and law enforcement will just miraculously find the resources and motivation to resolve it in record time and the criminal gets max sentencing. Until people stop thinking politics is something external to how the society in general thinks and behaves ain't nothing changing.
Imagine if a victim loses, so they retaliate by doing the same thing to everyone that made them lose their home? I bet that would make it a lot harder to commit this kind of fraud in the future, when corporations suddenly lose their property.
The bank with the US$9000 outstanding loan *should* have reached out to the original landowner to confirm *before* any sale went through. The bank my parents use actually offers this as a service: since my parents own their house outright, the bank gave them a C$1 perpetual 'mortgage'. If anyone does a pre-sale check for leans on the property, that will trigger the bank to immediately alert them. I don't see why other banks can't do the same. (This same bank also won't allow other people to give you money without your approval. So secretly paying off an outstanding lean would not be possible.) I understand banks are only 3rd parties here, but these simple procedural changes would help reduce this type of fraud and protect the bank's customers.
@@Mr.BluemaskIt's RBC (Royal Bank of Canada). I don't know if this service is a Canadian thing or just RBC, but as I said, I don't see why other banks (including US) can't do the same.
@@rjf9418 It's RBC (Royal Bank of Canada). I don't know if this service is a Canadian thing or just RBC, but as I said, I don't see why other banks (including US) can't do the same.
But the state should not accept/permit the new issue of a title, because the state should still have a lean on file and that would be a block to a title transfer, period. He shouldn't have to even fight about it..... It just shouldn't be able to forward.
Sounds like a land theft ring is more than likely doing this . Everyone involved in this deal should be deeply investigated to see how bad this situation is . Thanks for bringing these stories to light Steve .
You can't sell what you don't own. And if you buy something that somebody doesn't own, you got nothing. But it will cause the true owner a bunch of trouble, true. The world is full of crooks now, so few people have any ethical integrity any longer.
@@OneWildTurkeyintegrity? We used to buy and own humans! We are getting better…. It’s just 2 steps forward, one step back…. This is an example of a backwards step
You don't own what you don't maintain. Neighbors buy a plot and build a house, they don't have to put up with some terrorist plotting with enemy forces to redistrict their ownership. If some Nerd wants to build a Siege platform to raid your house complete with tanks and catapults aimed at your window. Eventually that ownership does not mean shit and they should stand down before the locals RIP them a new one.
When I entered the real estate market in 1979 as a sales person or “ realtor’, I recognized that things like this were very possible. I’m not surprised in the least bit. It’s actually quite easy under the right set of circumstances. Absentee owners are the easiest.
It sound to me like the bank may have stolen $9000 as well. They were paid this to pay off the loan and later just decided to reverse it because they could get more money by holding this property hostage against the owner. Unless they gave the original money back to the fradulent sellers, in which case the police should be looking at this bank and what they did closely, they may have just kept that first payment for themselves. The story doesn't explain this.
Even if the bank had to give the money back, that is not the problem of the owner. That's the bank's problem. They should be going after the title agency for reimbursement.
@@Gypsygirl9 The title insurance company guarantees the validity of the title to the person who bought the coverage. It is in no way liable to anyone else. The real estate brokerage could be sued, but that probably won't be worth the legal cost and bother.
@@suedenim9208then maybe it's time to hold them liable for shit like this, maybe when they become on the hook directly for fraud, they will start doing their due diligence which will reduce frauds like this.
My grandfather once told me if I ever bought land, put a structure on it and visit at least twice a year. Seems something like this incident happened in his family back in the 30’s. So not new by a long shot.
@@nodak81bought a piece of land for 104 thousand and sold it 7 years later for 350 thousand dollars, that's why you buy land, they aren't making any more land 🤔🤔
We need to be able to freeze our titles from transfer sale of assets like we can freeze our credit reports. This is complete insanity that someone can get away with this !!
Since this occurred, our county tax assessor has provided a process where I'm notified of any actions against my title/deed to my property. The problem is some county tax assessors have up to 90 days to record the transaction. I hope it doesn't become legal until it's recorded.
@@danburch9989 A step in the right direction but ideally it should never get this far from the fraudsters. It can cost a lot of money to "undo" this and typically the fraudsters are uncollectible once all is said and done and the legit homeowner is stuck with attorney fees. The municipalities should be more forward thinking and allow us to freeze our titles from title transfers, like our credit reports.
No coincidence that the fraud has spiked with the discovery of this loophole. Reminds me of people exploiting a bug in a video game before it gets patched!
In California, the title insurance company I worked with employs their own notaries. Either they will drive out and meet the seller in person for a fee, or the seller will have to go to the title company's office to close the deal. They will not accept notarized documents not notarized by their staff.
County recorders need to setup a notification system. You enter a parcel I'd and email. If any document is recorded against that parcel you get an email or text alert. There are a few counties with this system.
We have an "Alert Me" system in our county records department that is an optional alert system. It is so chock full of caveats, I haven't signed up for it. It only alerts you when someone files a document with your name on it. One problem with it is it is a third party app which means it is another avenue for your private info to be peddled to others while pretending to offer some sort of protection. Then there's Lifelock. We have that but not sure it helps us with pragmatic protection of our title more than just telling us after the fact that we got screwed.
County Recorders record hundreds of different document types. Land related one are a VERY VERY small percentage of the work they do. You obviously have NO IDEA what their actual job is. Every construction or repair job that needs a permit is recorded. I bet you have a lot more people doing that then buying houses. Businesses make up the vast amount of recordings.
Several counties in my area (TX) will notify by email on recordings in your name, but not on a property. Its not practical to go by property description. However the fraud has already occurred at that point, it just gives you a head start on dealing with it. If there is a title co involved, you might be able to trap funds.
What drives me so crazy about these sorts of stories is that often the victim of a scam becomes a victim of the systems that regulate the market the scam exists in. IMO, once a victim of a scam is identified, they should be made whole. If a person or company is found to be responsible for the scam, a state/federal entity can then make a case for that person or company to repay them for making the victim whole. If recouping the loss isn't possible, the loss just becomes an incentive for regulatory and enforcement bodies to close loop-holes and tighten up procedures to prevent them from taking further losses because they are not protecting their citizens from criminals. We might actually see 20 year email scams finally disappear and hopefully, see fewer stories like this.
This sounds like a great solution. One thing that concerns me is that some people seem VERY gullible (my dad was, always believed there was a way to get something for nothing, all his life, but was otherwise very intelligent.) So some people might become even more tempted than they are now to fall for scams because they aren’t as afraid of losing large sums of money.
@synnove1046 for sure, the extremely simplified version of my suggestion I provided is full of loopholes and issues. An off-the-cuff idea to prevent the extremely gullible from chronically using this, there could be a limit a person(and only an actual person, no companies or "entities") to 1 or 2 claims. Maybe more, those are just numbers. But the point of this would be to pass the hurt to the government. It should hurt. The government really only acts fast when they end up the victims. And the only reason it should be the government, at least initially(they could sue others if found responsible), is that they, the goverment, are solely responsible for enacting, enforcing, and regulating illegal behavior. You do not have these same rights or responsibilities. In fact, taking justice into your own hands is often illegal as well, or at the very least frowned upon. My post wasn't meant to be the exact law or system, but a basic idea, victims shouldn't be further victimized. All that said, pointing out flaws is great. By having conversations, pointing out and weighing the pros and cons. For instance, another major issue with this, how do you weed out the scams that will use this to their advantage. You don't really want to blame victims, but there should be some scrutiny otherwise a scammer could essentially double their money with fake scam claims. I'm definitely not saying all of this is easy to do, but it shouldn't fall on the shoulders of some 70 year old who literally did nothing. The victim in the video did nothing wrong at all. They weren't even being gullible. They were just stolen from. And in a system full of checks and balances. How many government offices are involved in the sale of a piece of property? How many of them are you required by law to involve? It will vary place to place, but it's a lot. All that was really needed it sounds like is for one person at one of those required government entities to check the legitimacy of the notary and it could have saved the victim an additional $9000 in legal fees. Isn't checking whether a notary stamp is valid ultimately the responsibility of the ones who issue Notary Public Licensing, especially if they are also the ones accepting the stamp? As a reminder, the victim in this case had zero reason to know this was even happening. Additionally, the social security number was incorrect. How were the taxes done with a bad social security number being involved? That alone should have halted the entire scam. Ultimately, the goverment had numerous instances to stop this and only because it doesn't hurt them financially, they didn't. And I apologize for the length, I'm not ranting at you, just the situation. 😉
@@synnove1046 Maybe, but if your dad is made whole if he does fall to the scam, and the companies or industry is forced to pay out of pocket to make him whole. You bet you're sweet ass that the company/industry is going to make it HARDER for people to scam others, cause the people can willingly take those scams, and force the companies and industries to pay it back. Example. Email Scams. If you get a Google Email that is a Scam, and then Google was force to Remedy you, and pay you back. I bet within a week you'll never see a Scam Email ever existing again from that point of time onward. Cause right now, it would be a SUPER EASY fix for Goggle to stop scam emails. It is VERY Easy for them to fix. But they don't, cause it doesn't effect them at all. Make those scams hurt their bottom line? And they will be FORCED to fix their systems and fight against Scams, or else they would lose money.
This happened to my dad back during WW2. His sisters literally sold HIS farm while he was in overseas. I don't think he ever forgave them. I don't know why they were allowed to do that.
@@synnove1046 not one, from what I was told. Not only did they sell it, they sold it for about 20% of its value, and the money was gone before he returned from the war.
I'm a Realtor in Arizona. Theoretically in AZ you could buy a property for cash, take your deed and put it under your mattress and not have it recorded. It's extremely rare, but it's not a legal requirement to record a deed in AZ. If you have a mortgage, the bank will require it. I also don't know of a title company that would handle the transaction/titling without recording the deed in the end. Too much liability, for obvious reasons. But technically you can pay someone cash, he can sign his deed to you, and no Realtor, title company or county recorder would ever know. You are required to notify the tax man though. And I'd imagine you'd have quite an uphill battle if this situation ever happened to you and you never recorded your deed. Just cause it's not illegal doesn't mean it's smart.
Usually, several, change of owner, change of taxes, change of title, Reconveyance, the loan agreement, etc, can all be recorded, each sale results in at least 3 recordings and often more.
Notary, Title company and Recorder should be liable. The Recorders office should be the last line of defense to stop fraud. Both the Title Agency and Notary cans be fraudulent. They should even have random audits regularly to make sure all transactions are legal.
How hard is it to look up the serial number for a notary? Or how hard is it to send a request for acknowledgement of the signed documents? This new thing called the 'internet' might be able to help with that, when people finally learn how to use it.
Why can't each of the instances you enumerated just put the costs for those legal risks on the bill of the person who buys (or sells) the property? If you make the recoder office liable they will just charge every customer more money to be able to pay for that liability. It is similar to shoplifting where the store just increases the prices by the damage they got from thieves.
The only purpose of the notary in these transactions is to verify the identity of the person signing the warranty deed. With how easy it is to get a forged driver license, the person who forged the deed would easily be able to get it notarized. Add on top of that, most notary stamps are just standard ink stamps and can be forged using a computer easily. The real issue is that you only need a warranty deed or quit claim deed to transfer property. Nothing has been updated since the 80s to protect against this kind of very easy to do fraud. This issue needs to change to prevent this kind of theft from happening.
That's what I want to know. If somebody paid off the lien then the lien has been paid off and the lienholder/bank is no longer owed any money, end of story. If the IRS wants to come along and claim it's taxable income that's a separate issue, but based on Steve's (lousy) description it sounds like the bank got paid 9k and then 11k to satisfy a 9k lien. Does the bank need to pay somebody for the windfall thy got?
@@suedenim9208 If the IRS takes the 9k as a windfall, then the landowner can deduct the legal fees against that. This is still a mess as the tax year matters for tax brackets, but... yeah. What a mess that the bank always wins.
Something similar happened to my mom and aunt. When my grandfather passed away he left my mom, aunt and uncle some land that is like 45 minutes away from where they all live. My uncle sold his part to my mom and aunt and then the land just sat for years. At some point someone came in and sold it in a very similar way as described here. I'm not sure of the specifics but my mom said all-in that she had to use like 20k in her home equity to get it all straightened out. I'm assuming my aunt covered half of that but still it is insane. She said the way she found out it had been sold is when the logger she sent to log for taxes called her and told her he got ran off the property by the "owner"
I recently sold some land and was asked for ID by the attorneys and didn't understand why all the new protocols were in place... at least now I understand the reason.
Bought some land in Germany a short while ago. The notary had everyone involved bring a photographic governmental ID (and had his clerk check each for authenticity), sale documents from the previous owner and had taken about one and a half month to go through all of the records and finally approve the sale. Sure, this ain't cheap. But this kind of fraud is almost nonexistent here as a result.
Crimes like these, in the old days, were punished HARD. If we treated crimes of fraud with the severity that they're due, instead of "slap on the wrist" treatment, it would go a long way towards ending this sort of thing. Rob a bank of $5000? 20 years in prison. Defraud someone in a transaction for $500,000? Maybe they serve 2 years, then paroled. This makes NO sense.
Agreed. and it is NOT just the Fraud person himself that should be punished. Cause while they Forged fake Documents, it should ALWAYS be up the the Bank, Retailers, and Insurence company to actually DOUBLE CHECK and INVESTIGATE to make sure it is all 100% legal. If they do not, if they just accept the papers blindly, they are ACCOMPLICES and should be faced with the SAME Punishment. Cause THEY have a Legal Duty to make sure the papers are LEGAL and CORRECT for the Transaction to be Legal. If the Transactions is not legal, THEY, EVERYONE involved besides the victim are ALL 100% at fault, and the Penalty should hit EACH of them. ^ Do this, and Fraud would fucking VANISH over night. Every Realter and Insurence company would request in person meeting, with ID, Birth Certificate, and the PHYSICAL DEED in hand, which will be checked against the system to make sure it is 100% legal and in your hand, and not created recently. ^ Cause honestly, THAT is the BIGGEST bit that I don't fucking understand! How do you SELL THE LAND when you DO NOT PHYSICALLY HAVE THE DEED! It should be FORCED that you have a PHYSICAL DEED present to sell land, a Physical Deed that only the last known owner can get, or get a new copy of. There should be a paper trail, to EVERY copy of a Deed, from it's FIRST creation to NOW. There should be a Record for every time it was copied, what happened to those copies, every sale involving that deed and new update for the new owner. It should be IMPOSSIBLE to sell land without proper legal ownership of a physical deed with the deed database company being fully involved, supervising, and recording everything about that Deed being happened, in person, and ESPECIALLY now a days, it should be RECORDED, on Camera, and preserved, every single Transaction that happens and Transfer of Deed to new Owner and then updated with that information. Cause back in the old days, you had physical deeds, and you had to HEAVILY PROTECT THEM, cause without that Deed, you LEGALLY did not own a damn thing. And thus someone Stealing or Destroying a Deed, was Equavilent to Destroying Property, cause you could not longer legally be the owner of that land. Moving it over to Digital, was the WORSE possible mistake, cause it falls onto an Honor system, and belief that system isn't broken, and that people aren't lying about being the owners.
Wouldn't you like to see an annual report from the FBI to see how many cases of a type they've cleared? What about the IRS wouldn't they be positioned to pick up something like this?
It's because it's a Mexican Spanish word, and sometimes in Mexican Spanish X is pronounced as an H. When I've heard natives pronounce Bexar, they usually pronounce it somewhere between the name of the drug company, Bayer, and the animal, bear. It's like it has 1 1/4 syllables.
I didn't see the colon at first and I thought this title was *"Nightmare Man's Land Sold Without His Knowledge"* and I was like "who the heck is "Nightmare Man"? 😄
I had an issue recently where we owned a piece of land and went to sell it because my father had become ill. We felt there was no sense keeping it and figured a few thousand dollars would help with his medical bills. I called a relator and got it listed. He also sent a letter to the neighbor of the property to which the man was interested. When we went to do the actual paperwork, we found out that the township had sold it to a development company ( who owned the industrial park bordering it ) claiming it went up for tax sale. Supposedly, this had happened at least a year before we went to sell. We never received any communications from them BUT the ironic part is they continued to send us tax bills for the property. I really think there were shenanigans, but we ultimately decided it wasn't worth pursuing ( talking under 10k for the lot ).
That is so unfair. Of course I understand why you didn’t spend the money to fight it, but I can’t help but wonder if that’s what the town was planning on happening.
@@synnove1046 I would speculate yes, especially given who bought it. But it would all have to be fought in court and they plan on people not wanting to do it.
If they sold it for taxes. Then the taxes of each year the taxes were paid left a paper trail. Starting with your receipts. I go and pay my taxes and I got receipt for each year. My cousin pays at her bank who is authorized to collect the taxes from the people. She has receipts issued by her bank. Papertrail. Even a money order has a paper trail.
The simplest way to "fix" a fraudulent sale of property is to make THEM show proof of purchase. Take their proof of purchase and YOUR proof of purchase to the Justice Court Judge and let the judge's staff sort it out. That is how it is supposed to work. 2 problems here. There is theft of property and buying stolen property over $500, a felony. The fraudulent land owner is looking at prison for possession of stolen property, 5 years +.
Showing that you bought the property sometime before the other guy bought the property sounds like a great way to get the court to issue a ruling that it's now the other guy's property.
@@suedenim9208 Except that there is no middle man in this case. Had they put a middleman between ownerships, then it would have severely complicated things. However, because the fraudulent owner allegedly bought it from someone impersonating the actual owner, it is a simple case of receiving stolen property. Prove it is yours with your receipt. Ok, your receipt is hoaky as hell. You get prison. Have a nice day. The only way to avoid prison for the fraudulent owner is if they are able to finger the one that sold it to them, with the hoaky receipt. If that is possible, then they only lose the money they spent. Otherwise, receiving stolen property, over $500, is a felony.
@@SattracerThe problem with your solution is that if the person who fraudulently bought the property can't find the person that scammed them, it strongly incentivizes them to either pass the blame to someone innocent, or to fight like hell to claim that it was purchased legitimately. They've already been scammed out of a huge amount of money. That's punishment enough to incentivize them to help hunt down the scammer in the hopes that doing so will help them reclaim some of their lost money.
@@leyrua In the eyes of the law; It is in YOUR possession. YOU stole it. If the law can't put you at the scene (Ok you didn't steal it) you are in possession of stolen property. If you don't have a receipt, you have committed first degree fraud. If you have a receipt, ok, you have committed 2nd degree fraud (over 500 still a felony). "Some" judges will accept the fraudulent receipt as good enough to avoid prison but under no circumstances is the rightful property owner on the hook for a penny of your money lost. Unless you know where to find the one that ripped you off, that's just gone. And most likely the fraudulent property owner will also be on the hook for court costs, their lawyer and the rightful owner's lawyer too. If the fraudulent owner bought the property, in good faith, and lost big, then they can ask the court to make them whole by going after the court/county members that let the fraud slip by them. Then the county would have to reimburse (if the judge is in agreement). I worked for a pawn shop for a long time and I've had to learn the in and out of dealing with stolen everything.
I have a difficult time wrapping my head around this. I have been to a number of settlements here in PA, and it is neither a simple nor easy thing to transfer a real estate title. All parties involved need to show multiple forms of identification, and all taxes must be paid before a transfer can take place. you just about need a letter of reference from the Almighty to accomplish this here. Then I hear about these transactions taking place without the owner's knowledge???? How is this even possible? Surely not here in PA!!
Presenting ID's at closing is for the notary ,also at closing, to verify signatures.. If the "seller" is not local, then a notary on the seller signatures is accepted, the paperwork can be sent overnight, out of state for (fraudulent) seller signature and notary. The taxes(and mortgage balance) in Lehto's story were paid at closing.
@@scottnunya1 My point is that it is simply not that easy to do this here in PA. They check, recheck, and triple check everything. Once that is done, the paperwork goes to the recorder of deeds to be filed. Nothing simplwe about it. I have about 5 pounds of paperwork from my last settlement.
Here in UK we have a _land registry_ and can register to be informed of any access to our land records, so we'd be informed directly of any attempt to sell out property, or even to obtain planning permission (to build on). It is legal to apply for planning permission on somebody else's land, and can be used to find out whether the local authority would consider the development suitable, before making an offer to the landowner. But as I have registered I'd get notification.
How does the land registry know you address? Could a scam setup up by changing the land owners address so that the original owner does not get the notification? Do you get a notification of address change to the old address? Could I intercept that address change notification? We are speaking about identity theft. Things like faking ID and Utility Bill are trivial in the context of that.
@@sarowie After I posted my comments I started to wonder about that. I assume that for any change they will contact me through the originally established channel. I realise that I might be imbuing the land registry with an inappropriate level of confidence.
A notary is registered, and if they did their due diligence they should have searched who the notary was. If they don't exist, clear fraud, otherwise a real person falsely signed off on bad documents then they committed a crime. I have never had a notary NOT verify my ID when I asked them to stamp something, and they alaays include their own contact info on the form. Again, very easy to verify (if you wanted).
@@johnbriggs3916 even real ones are just looking at the ID presented to them. A Signature Guarantee actually verifies that the person is who they claim to be. Can that have fraud as well? Absolutely, just much less so. With so many real estate transactions happening these days, lots slips through the cracks!
ex father in law found a house built on a lot he paid taxes on for forty years then took the loss because he did not wish to retrieve his property from the young family living in the house
@@sarowie that is irrelevant to what I said. I was replying to someone that said that Steve should have mentioned the title insurance. I was pointing out that he in fact did mention it.
That is a nightmare, truly horrific, I am extremely glad that the real owner got his property back but it's horrifying that it happened at all. I wonder whether the real owner got a house out of this ordeal.
The mortgage simply should not exist anymore, because it is paid off. "BuT bY tHe WrOnG PeRsOn": yeah silly bank, if your identity checks does not work, then there is no hope. How owes you with money again?
Bank needs 2 IDs because they are on the hook for a mistake. The government makes it so they are never responsible for a mistake, which is why they 'trust' the notary stamp/etc.
I am sure that IDs where involved. It is just not that hard to fake US IDs in the grant schema of things, meaning howmany states and valid types of ID exist. I think no US Citizen alive as all security features of all states and ID variations memorized. Add to that that foreign IDs might also be valid. Of many countries are there? Could you check all passports for all relevant security features?
Seems fishy, the purchaser knows who was involved, he purchased the land from a person and paid off the loan of the real owner…go after the person who sold it.
Sheesh. I sold vacant land last year and was paper worked half to death. The title company even found a life estate belonging to my great grandmother that passed away in 1990. I had to find a death certificate to clear that hurdle. I did the closing from 1200 miles away using a mobile notary and that process had specific timing. I had to sign the documents during a certain time frame and they were immediately sent by the notary back to the title company closing agent.
I found more than my title company. I have the original 1964 septic permit and the house was not even built until 4 years later. The septic is now gone.
The elites don't see our land as "our land." They see it as "their land." The elites operate under the Compton Rule, "What's mines is mines and what's yours is mines." This rule dictates the operations of everyone in the legal real estate system from realtors to land lawyers to surveyors to county and municipal officials. Ask the people of Maui right now if they agree with my assertion. Steve notwithstanding of course. He's one of the good ones.
I feel bad for the guy who had to do all this to get his property back but even worse for the poor SOB that bought the land with no idea it was a fraudulent sale and is just out 200k.
Nope, that got that back because they paid the $400 for Title Insurance. Never buy without it. A lot of them are done by a certain Chicago based company. I have spent years studying real estate law.
Most county recorders are understaffed and overworked. Most people have two primary interactions with a recorder's office: Voting and property sales (usually "warranty deeds"). However, the recorder's office can have several dozen document types they handle - also known as "recording instruments." For every 100,000 people living in a county, a county recorder will move (record) about 100 documents per day into their systems. That's a rate of about one document every 5 minutes. Phoenix has about 1.62 million people, so that county probably moves 1,600 documents per day or roughly 1 document every 17 seconds. When you sell a home, a tree somewhere is sacrificed and dies. The documents may be standardized but will be fairly extensive in nature. Most county recorder's offices digitize incoming documents into a searchable format for easier storage and retrieval. So it is easy to see how a county recorder would say that it's not their job to police the accuracy of the incoming documents - they simply don't have that kind of time to do that, especially during election years where they still have to do their primary task of processing recording instruments and also handle tabulating votes for election results.
Never mind all that other miscellaneous stuff, we have to focus on Steve's mispronouncing of Bexar county (3:52). It's properly pronounced like 'bear' county, just for future reference. Bexar county contains the rather large city of San Antonio. You're welcome.
"Cost all of ONE Postage Stamp"? People don't understand how expensive it can be to move paper, this did not help. Cost of the Stamp, Cost of the Envelope, Cost of time for a Hired Employee to acquire material, use material, move material. Rent/lease for the real property, "office" equipment purchase/rental. plus other expenses; so that a 15USD or 20USD fee is easily attainable as a cost expense on a billing. Don't lawyers fees include these too? Off topic, My sister & her husband owned a piece of property, they cannot sell it. Because it is on a dirt road. A buyer would Have to pave the road, and install utilities (sewer & water, maybe gas) should it be bought according to 'new' zoning laws enacted years after they purchased the land.
It is deeply disturbing because since I’m living in Kentucky, I have had my New Jersey License plates stolen. I’ve had checks stolen from my mailbox. I had my drivers license stolen
That's assuming they bother to maintain their email database properly and notices actually go out, and that land owners (especially absentee ones) make sure their current email is on file which is highly unlikely.
My parents put their property (1 acre of land with a house they built about 15 years earlier) into a trust, but there was a glitch. Well before they built the house they had traded a strip on one side to the neighbor so he could route his house's driveway from the side street rather than the busy highway. That transaction split my parents' property into two parcels, and the attorney who set up their trust neglected to put in the 9-foot-wide strip on the east side. We only found this out decades later when both of our parents had passed and we were selling the property. The title search turned up the conundrum. Even our estate-planning attorney wasn't sure how to handle the situation, as that strip was going to have to go to probate since it wasn't in the trust. Fortunately, someone clued our attorney in to the existence of the "probate referee," who came and appraised the 9-foot strip. The value fell well under the threshold of requiring probate, and we were able to complete the sale with no further glitches. (The strip only had some fruit trees on it and the border was well outside the footprint of the house.)
When the bank says it's a windfall they don't think that's fair, what happened to the money already paid to the bank? Did the bank keep the windfall? Was it given to the title insurance company who had to pay back the money to the buyer?
How is paying 22k in attorneys fees and premature loan payoff a happy ending. That's what title insurance is for. I wish he would have legged this out as they would have most likely paid his attorneys fees and not made him pay back the payoff. 😢. Scammers are such DB's. Thanks for video Steve.
There should be a death penalty for this crime. The closing lawyer, deeds office, and title company should be responsible for checking. They all should pay the victims legal costs.
Saying something so outrageous as “there should be a death penalty for this crime” makes it impossible for me (and many others) to agree with this comment. First of all, I’m against the death penalty. Secondly, I could never even begin to understand how someone could feel that way over a property crime. I understand that some property crimes could be devastating and might ruin someone’s life, but death is just beyond way over the top.
@@synnove1046 You are part of the reason why we have so much crime today. I grew up in countries where they cut off body parts for the crime you committed and they do caning. I want punishment to deter crime and not encourage crime.
Hhmm... the problem is that at the core of it all is identity theft. You punish that as hard as you want, but how do you track down a person that uses a false identity?
Perhaps -- and this is just a thought -- property needs to be defined in secure block chains where every transaction is embedded in the chain. Fraud would not be impossible, of course, but would be much more difficult. As for property in an unrelated matter, it seems the government somewhere along the line recently authorized FEMA to seize stockpiles from people and just give it to whomever they deem needy. Some how, some way, this has to be unconstitutional but it will probably never be questioned. Have food stocked up for an emergency? Armed thugs from the government are authorized to seize it, now that it is deemed due process.
Counties ALL over the US can have a Notify Set-up on your Parcel of Property that Notifies Owner when Anything is Attempted to be Done on your Property.
How about when we buy the land or homes, the Title Agency and the Tax Appraisers Office copy our ID’s with our pictures or they can as far as getting our thumb print. That would make it harder for crooks to steal our property.
Turns out, land is the most pilferable item there is. The title companies don't do anything beyond cursory searches for easements or claims of ownership or past liens, county clerks and courthouses do no validation of proof of legality for anything that is recorded, county clerks will not help a diligent land owner dealing with a boundary bugger trespassing neighbor to conduct an easement search though the labyrinth of old and unwieldy public records, laws enable adverse possession with often nothing more than a few statements from neighbors, taking by acquiescence is a thing apparently that is like adverse possession but does not even have to meet even that level of scrutiny, then there's "variances," where a neighbor can hook up with your local powerhouse realtor, a county planning and zoning guru and a well connected surveyor to take a portion of your land without you knowing until it's too late, then there's eminent domain. Cops aren't going to get involved ("lady we ain't surveyors or lawyers, this is a civil matter"), county staff won't get involved (gotta stay objective), and lawyers won't give any advice other than start a lawsuit and even then most wont touch these cases for taking of small parcels from a common citizen with not so deep pockets - let alone portions of parcels. So why buy land at all? Stick to a quarter acre, no HOA, in an established neighborhood, survey it before closing, and fence it within a week of closing and live ion it with security cams and no trespass signs and tolerate no one entering ever. That's the best you can do. Holding property for use later is certainly unwise.
I thought this kind of a thing was a warranty of title issue. So, the title was never the fraudsters to sell so it wasn’t sold, the original owner was always and still is the owner. Then the buyer would seek relief from the title insurance company who, having not done their job fully properly, would seek relief from the whoever validated the title or otherwise seek a claim against their insurance, et cetera. What I’m saying is, I thought everyone should have a clear target to go after to restore themselves, and the seller, at worst, should only have to go after the title company for trying to sell the title. They certainly didn’t owe the $9000. Whoever transferred the money without verifying the fraudster owes that and they should then go after the fraudster. The seller should NOT have this big of a head ache caused by others incompetence. These are my two cents; your opinion may vary.
Question: I bought my house free and clear twenty years ago. Can I put a lien on my property and make myself the lien holder to help prevent this type of fraud??? Please respond.
The actual landowner should be treated as though NO transaction ever occurred. The other parties should be involved as though it was grand theft by fraud.
I recently sold a tract of land I owned (12 acres) and was shocked by how little I had to prove I was the real owner of the property. I met with the real estate agent who I hired to sell the property once in person. He is a notary and notarized the deed when we were about to close. Other than that, everything was handled via email and phone calls. A simple fake ID would have sufficed to sell my property without me knowing.
Question: Is there any sure fire way to prevent something like this from happening? I know that title insurance doesn't cover an event like this and companies that market insurance for this are really just monitoring services. What if you put a lien on your property in the amount of it's market value? If you did the lien would have to be paid before the title could be transferred, right? And it should also prevent an identity thief from securing a fradulent loan with your home. However, if I understand correctly, most courts won't let a property owner put a lien on their own property. Is there any way to make such an idea work?
Wait did the bank get paid twice for the remaining balance on the loan? I sounds like the bank got paid the initial $9000 remaining balance by the scammer and then again by the owner.
I was in the county clerk's office and saw the free program they offer to inform me of any action taken on my property. I was there to file a DBA (doing business as) form. I enrolled in the online reporting program that afternoon and a few days later, I noticed that someone (me) had added a DBA to my address. It's comforting to know that it works so quickly. I live north of the Dallas FT Worth area. According to the County Clerk, Dallas and Tarrant Counties see a lot of attempted fraud involving property issues.
Most places do not have that and you can be AZ does not. I doubt my county does even though their system is all automated. Taxes and recordings and all electronic.
This will only continue to get worse. It’s too easy to make a fake notary signature block. Municipalities need to have a better system to ensure the true owner is transferring property.
There should be photos of the persons who is signing the paperwork and prints so they are on record with prison time for frauds the minute they sign. Before the money is transfered in a 90 day hold to verify the information and funds released on any title transfer of $5000 or more. That would benefit even on auto title transfer as well. Both parties ! Buyers and sellers !
They should be treated like any other case of stolen property. It’s stolen, unlawfully sold and still legally belongs to the person who rightfully owned it. And if you refuse to give it up now you’re in possession of stolen property. I hate to say it, but the buyer needs to go after the person that sold it to them. The person who had his property stolen shouldn’t be the one getting the biggest run around.
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What puzzles me, why would the victim need to undo it? Can't the victim not simply go to the police, or a court, report the crime, ask for an injunction that all involved parties need to undo the fraud on their own costs immediately. And WHY has NO court so far decided that the administration needs to fix the problem within x months or be held in contempt?
"What is: because there is no money in it for the courts, Alex?"
I think it is because it is considered a civil matter rather than a criminal one. Someone breaking into your house is a criminal matter and someone squatting in your house is a civil matter.
Because then how can the government suck you dry of your money?
Guy that sold it likely didnt give his real name. I would assume the guy that bought it doesnt want to admit he got taken for 200k.
Because that's the way the system is rigged. The individual has to jump through a thousand hoops to fix something that wasn't even their fault. Credit card fraud, bank fraud, identity theft, etc. The onus is 100% on YOU to fix it. The government and businesses don't want to help you unless you force them to, and even then they drag their feet to the point in can take years to fix what should be a simple clerical correction.
It really is amazing how little effort goes into verifying documents that transfer land ownership. I guess Title Insurers and financial institutions aren’t losing enough money yet …
problem is they just rely on title insurance to cover the costs involved. So they have little incentive to work harder at finding fraud when they know it's all insured and will cost them nothing but premiums.
I bet the info/databases which begins the process of these crimes come from insiders in the financial institutions in most cases.
@@SirStanleytheStumbler After a point the title company would either be uninsurable, or their insurance company would demand various precautions be taken to remain insured. That may actually be what happened in this case.
@@throckwoddle oh absolutely. And the insurance industry should have started cracking down years ago.
Government does the actual land records.
In 1974, my wife and I bought a building lot and built a house. We had a title search and got title insurance. In 1977, I received a letter from a lawyer stating his client owned the lot and demanded $1000 a month rent. I turned the matter over to the title insurance company. I never heard anything more about it. Turned out that the “new owner” bought the property from someone who didn’t own it. Crooks have been around for ever.
So they bought something from someone who did not own it. Property has to be conveyed y true owner. So..buyer is screwed correct? What was the outcome? I hope you did not get screwed.
My wife and I were OK. No cost, no hassle, only a big scare. The title insurance company handled the matter. I would hope that the “new buyer” sued the fraudulent seller.
Seems like you mentioned this incident in another comment on a different video. If not, this happened to two people. Lol
Some counties are now offering to a program to notify you by email when a document is recorded an the owner’s name or business name. It's after the recording is done, but you can catch the theft & hopefully the thief pretty quickly.
@@MtgCoachPeople change email all the time. They should have to actually talk to you before it can be sold. A phone call takes 5 minutes.
I think you can only say it "ended well" if the original scammer got arrested and prosecuted and is never able to do it again..
And possibly has a few broken fingers
Real estate fraud with outrageous amount of money should be punished accordingly
I vote drawing and quartering. On pay-per-view.
This makes a good argument for creating a new ID theft company called Death Lock. Death Lock would use former CIA/KGB hit men to hunt down ID scammers and rub them out!
Put 'em in with Bubba Ray "Ain't had a woman in ten years", preferably one whose momma was a victim of this...
They should continue to be thrifty. A .22LR is much less expensive than a lawyer.
Since the DOJ is busy with their own stuff, is anybody watching how strong organized crime is getting again?
Maybe we should bring back the old drop and stop, I know a lot of corpo rat executives would be getting their necks measured and I'm okay with that, they've certainly done enough damage to society and the country, they shouldn't be allowed to simply pay a fine then keep on breaking the law like nothing happened.
The problem is that the police and prosecutors do not investigate these fraudulent transactions. So there is no consequence to the person committing the fraud. It would not be that difficult to investigate.
The police just say, It's a civil matter. Just to get out of any investigation.
Police are useless. They're like the TSA - security theater.
An odd question: Is it being posited here that there are no criminal statutes concerning fraud?
@@rj9203the four most infuriating words a cop can say.
@@scandelicious764 It's the same thing as saying "It's no my yob man" (see reruns of Chico and the Man - Freddie Prinze)
A lot of this is done by RON(remote online notary). I have been a notary for 3 years and refuse to do REMOTE notary work. In person, wet ink signatures only. ANYONE can order a notary stamp from online venders. Alabama just made changes to the notary law in the state. Training, higher insurance, and higher bond. I have refused several notary jobs because the ID was bad. You would not know with remote signing.
Are you a Notary Signing Agent? I am one too, in Oklahoma. I avoid RON like the plague because I know that in a case like this, no matter how legitimate the signer’s forged ID seemed to be, I would end up being on the hook for this transaction in some way and that would cause me too many problems for my business. In Oklahoma, you need to have car titles notarized but nobody understands how the process works so people bring me car titles signed by the seller and they are the buyer. I notarize the seller’s signature.
@@barnabusdoyle4930How are you legally able to notarize the seller’s signature if they are not there in person? I always thought that Notaries had to witness the signature actually being made as it was happening AND verify their ID. (I’ve only had a few things notarized in my life and it’s also been at least ten years since.).
Also, I thought Notaries only used embossing stamps, not flat ink. (I don’t know the proper name for them - the leave a raised seal on the paper.) Is that only in some states?
Without a wet signature and an examination of ID I fail to see how they can claim it was legitimately notarized. This sounds like "let's all pretend it was notarized so I can collect my fee."
@@barnabusdoyle4930 I only do GNW...faster, cash payments.
@@synnove1046 RON (remote online notary) has been authorized due to the pandemic. Embossing stamps have dropped out of favor due to the fact they are very hard to show up when copies are made.
Mark my words: This WILL get fixed once it happens to someone connected enough, but not before then.
Nah, the courts and law enforcement will just miraculously find the resources and motivation to resolve it in record time and the criminal gets max sentencing. Until people stop thinking politics is something external to how the society in general thinks and behaves ain't nothing changing.
Those people will never be targeted with this, specifically because the criminals don't want a crackdown.
The well connected individual will get taken care of, but the processes will not change
Hopefully someone connected with the Gambinos or Genoveses
Imagine if a victim loses, so they retaliate by doing the same thing to everyone that made them lose their home? I bet that would make it a lot harder to commit this kind of fraud in the future, when corporations suddenly lose their property.
The bank with the US$9000 outstanding loan *should* have reached out to the original landowner to confirm *before* any sale went through. The bank my parents use actually offers this as a service: since my parents own their house outright, the bank gave them a C$1 perpetual 'mortgage'. If anyone does a pre-sale check for leans on the property, that will trigger the bank to immediately alert them. I don't see why other banks can't do the same.
(This same bank also won't allow other people to give you money without your approval. So secretly paying off an outstanding lean would not be possible.)
I understand banks are only 3rd parties here, but these simple procedural changes would help reduce this type of fraud and protect the bank's customers.
Which bank is this? That sounds like a great service on their part
What is the name of that bank?
@@Mr.BluemaskIt's RBC (Royal Bank of Canada). I don't know if this service is a Canadian thing or just RBC, but as I said, I don't see why other banks (including US) can't do the same.
@@rjf9418 It's RBC (Royal Bank of Canada). I don't know if this service is a Canadian thing or just RBC, but as I said, I don't see why other banks (including US) can't do the same.
But the state should not accept/permit the new issue of a title, because the state should still have a lean on file and that would be a block to a title transfer, period.
He shouldn't have to even fight about it..... It just shouldn't be able to forward.
Sounds like a land theft ring is more than likely doing this . Everyone involved in this deal should be deeply investigated to see how bad this situation is . Thanks for bringing these stories to light Steve .
You can't sell what you don't own. And if you buy something that somebody doesn't own, you got nothing. But it will cause the true owner a bunch of trouble, true. The world is full of crooks now, so few people have any ethical integrity any longer.
Well you can but not without the owners permission.
@@michaelpettersson4919 It's not a sale, that is the point. It's theft.
Integrity was scarce before, now it's almost completely gone.
@@OneWildTurkeyintegrity? We used to buy and own humans! We are getting better…. It’s just 2 steps forward, one step back…. This is an example of a backwards step
You don't own what you don't maintain. Neighbors buy a plot and build a house, they don't have to put up with some terrorist plotting with enemy forces to redistrict their ownership. If some Nerd wants to build a Siege platform to raid your house complete with tanks and catapults aimed at your window. Eventually that ownership does not mean shit and they should stand down before the locals RIP them a new one.
When I entered the real estate market in 1979 as a sales person or “ realtor’, I recognized that things like this were very possible. I’m not surprised in the least bit. It’s actually quite easy under the right set of circumstances. Absentee owners are the easiest.
BUt isn't there checks put in place to screen out the fraud? Would be very stupid to just "believe" and use their word as truth.
Bexar county. It’s basically San Antonio and it’s pronounced “Bear”. Thanks Steve!
It sound to me like the bank may have stolen $9000 as well. They were paid this to pay off the loan and later just decided to reverse it because they could get more money by holding this property hostage against the owner. Unless they gave the original money back to the fradulent sellers, in which case the police should be looking at this bank and what they did closely, they may have just kept that first payment for themselves. The story doesn't explain this.
Even if the bank had to give the money back, that is not the problem of the owner. That's the bank's problem. They should be going after the title agency for reimbursement.
Banksters got away with another steal here. Name them!
The title company owes him that 20k he had to pay out of pocket.
The title company's obligation is to the buyer who paid them for the insurance, and they satisfied that obligation.
@@suedenim9208I disagree. The title company just like anyone else has an obligation to anybody they harm and they definitely harmed this person.
@@suedenim9208really? So exactly what does title insurance cover?
@@Gypsygirl9 The title insurance company guarantees the validity of the title to the person who bought the coverage. It is in no way liable to anyone else. The real estate brokerage could be sued, but that probably won't be worth the legal cost and bother.
@@suedenim9208then maybe it's time to hold them liable for shit like this, maybe when they become on the hook directly for fraud, they will start doing their due diligence which will reduce frauds like this.
My grandfather once told me if I ever bought land, put a structure on it and visit at least twice a year. Seems something like this incident happened in his family back in the 30’s. So not new by a long shot.
Why buy land at all if you don't plan on doing anything with it? It's just a tax liability.
@@nodak81 Land is pretty good as assets, pass down through the family, etc.
@@nodak81 land is inherently valuable already without adding economic value
@@nodak81bought a piece of land for 104 thousand and sold it 7 years later for 350 thousand dollars, that's why you buy land, they aren't making any more land 🤔🤔
@@bbrcummins1984 Sure they are. Example: volcanoes, Hawai'i (ready for development after the lava cools).
We need to be able to freeze our titles from transfer sale of assets like we can freeze our credit reports. This is complete insanity that someone can get away with this !!
Since this occurred, our county tax assessor has provided a process where I'm notified of any actions against my title/deed to my property. The problem is some county tax assessors have up to 90 days to record the transaction. I hope it doesn't become legal until it's recorded.
@@danburch9989 A step in the right direction but ideally it should never get this far from the fraudsters. It can cost a lot of money to "undo" this and typically the fraudsters are uncollectible once all is said and done and the legit homeowner is stuck with attorney fees. The municipalities should be more forward thinking and allow us to freeze our titles from title transfers, like our credit reports.
No coincidence that the fraud has spiked with the discovery of this loophole. Reminds me of people exploiting a bug in a video game before it gets patched!
In California, the title insurance company I worked with employs their own notaries. Either they will drive out and meet the seller in person for a fee, or the seller will have to go to the title company's office to close the deal. They will not accept notarized documents not notarized by their staff.
Not sure, but I think the banker loan agent I used at the purchase was the notary. It is pretty common for banks to have a notary.
County recorders need to setup a notification system. You enter a parcel I'd and email. If any document is recorded against that parcel you get an email or text alert.
There are a few counties with this system.
We have an "Alert Me" system in our county records department that is an optional alert system. It is so chock full of caveats, I haven't signed up for it. It only alerts you when someone files a document with your name on it. One problem with it is it is a third party app which means it is another avenue for your private info to be peddled to others while pretending to offer some sort of protection. Then there's Lifelock. We have that but not sure it helps us with pragmatic protection of our title more than just telling us after the fact that we got screwed.
I would imagine it's pretty easy and inexpensive for the county to set up too.
County Recorders record hundreds of different document types. Land related one are a VERY VERY small percentage of the work they do. You obviously have NO IDEA what their actual job is. Every construction or repair job that needs a permit is recorded. I bet you have a lot more people doing that then buying houses. Businesses make up the vast amount of recordings.
San Diego County has instituted such a system.
Several counties in my area (TX) will notify by email on recordings in your name, but not on a property. Its not practical to go by property description. However the fraud has already occurred at that point, it just gives you a head start on dealing with it. If there is a title co involved, you might be able to trap funds.
What drives me so crazy about these sorts of stories is that often the victim of a scam becomes a victim of the systems that regulate the market the scam exists in. IMO, once a victim of a scam is identified, they should be made whole. If a person or company is found to be responsible for the scam, a state/federal entity can then make a case for that person or company to repay them for making the victim whole. If recouping the loss isn't possible, the loss just becomes an incentive for regulatory and enforcement bodies to close loop-holes and tighten up procedures to prevent them from taking further losses because they are not protecting their citizens from criminals. We might actually see 20 year email scams finally disappear and hopefully, see fewer stories like this.
This sounds like a great solution. One thing that concerns me is that some people seem VERY gullible (my dad was, always believed there was a way to get something for nothing, all his life, but was otherwise very intelligent.) So some people might become even more tempted than they are now to fall for scams because they aren’t as afraid of losing large sums of money.
@synnove1046 for sure, the extremely simplified version of my suggestion I provided is full of loopholes and issues. An off-the-cuff idea to prevent the extremely gullible from chronically using this, there could be a limit a person(and only an actual person, no companies or "entities") to 1 or 2 claims. Maybe more, those are just numbers. But the point of this would be to pass the hurt to the government. It should hurt. The government really only acts fast when they end up the victims. And the only reason it should be the government, at least initially(they could sue others if found responsible), is that they, the goverment, are solely responsible for enacting, enforcing, and regulating illegal behavior. You do not have these same rights or responsibilities. In fact, taking justice into your own hands is often illegal as well, or at the very least frowned upon.
My post wasn't meant to be the exact law or system, but a basic idea, victims shouldn't be further victimized. All that said, pointing out flaws is great. By having conversations, pointing out and weighing the pros and cons. For instance, another major issue with this, how do you weed out the scams that will use this to their advantage. You don't really want to blame victims, but there should be some scrutiny otherwise a scammer could essentially double their money with fake scam claims. I'm definitely not saying all of this is easy to do, but it shouldn't fall on the shoulders of some 70 year old who literally did nothing. The victim in the video did nothing wrong at all. They weren't even being gullible. They were just stolen from. And in a system full of checks and balances. How many government offices are involved in the sale of a piece of property? How many of them are you required by law to involve? It will vary place to place, but it's a lot. All that was really needed it sounds like is for one person at one of those required government entities to check the legitimacy of the notary and it could have saved the victim an additional $9000 in legal fees. Isn't checking whether a notary stamp is valid ultimately the responsibility of the ones who issue Notary Public Licensing, especially if they are also the ones accepting the stamp? As a reminder, the victim in this case had zero reason to know this was even happening. Additionally, the social security number was incorrect. How were the taxes done with a bad social security number being involved? That alone should have halted the entire scam. Ultimately, the goverment had numerous instances to stop this and only because it doesn't hurt them financially, they didn't.
And I apologize for the length, I'm not ranting at you, just the situation. 😉
@@jasonseymour4235I like the breakdown in your secobd post
@@synnove1046 Maybe, but if your dad is made whole if he does fall to the scam, and the companies or industry is forced to pay out of pocket to make him whole. You bet you're sweet ass that the company/industry is going to make it HARDER for people to scam others, cause the people can willingly take those scams, and force the companies and industries to pay it back.
Example. Email Scams. If you get a Google Email that is a Scam, and then Google was force to Remedy you, and pay you back. I bet within a week you'll never see a Scam Email ever existing again from that point of time onward. Cause right now, it would be a SUPER EASY fix for Goggle to stop scam emails. It is VERY Easy for them to fix. But they don't, cause it doesn't effect them at all. Make those scams hurt their bottom line? And they will be FORCED to fix their systems and fight against Scams, or else they would lose money.
this crap happens everyday here in NYC. The police dept has opened a new dept just to fight this fraud.
Another dept to pay officers tax payer money to do nothing but violate our rights. Great! Smh
This happened to my dad back during WW2. His sisters literally sold HIS farm while he was in overseas. I don't think he ever forgave them. I don't know why they were allowed to do that.
Wow, that was a rotten thing to do. I’d never trust them with anything ever again. Did he at least get every penny of the sale?
The sisters thought he'd be killed in action and never return anyway. What scum!
@@synnove1046 not one, from what I was told. Not only did they sell it, they sold it for about 20% of its value, and the money was gone before he returned from the war.
@@Pepeekeo808 I'm sure you're correct. I can't think of another reason they would have.
A friends grandmother sold his car after he shipped out to Vietnam
I'm a Realtor in Arizona. Theoretically in AZ you could buy a property for cash, take your deed and put it under your mattress and not have it recorded. It's extremely rare, but it's not a legal requirement to record a deed in AZ. If you have a mortgage, the bank will require it. I also don't know of a title company that would handle the transaction/titling without recording the deed in the end. Too much liability, for obvious reasons. But technically you can pay someone cash, he can sign his deed to you, and no Realtor, title company or county recorder would ever know. You are required to notify the tax man though. And I'd imagine you'd have quite an uphill battle if this situation ever happened to you and you never recorded your deed. Just cause it's not illegal doesn't mean it's smart.
Usually, several, change of owner, change of taxes, change of title, Reconveyance, the loan agreement, etc, can all be recorded, each sale results in at least 3 recordings and often more.
Kind of makes the point of the value in having things recorded, even if you don't have to.
Notary, Title company and Recorder should be liable. The Recorders office should be the last line of defense to stop fraud. Both the Title Agency and Notary cans be fraudulent. They should even have random audits regularly to make sure all transactions are legal.
Exactly. If there's one thing people want it's the government spending more money to go do stuff.
How hard is it to look up the serial number for a notary? Or how hard is it to send a request for acknowledgement of the signed documents?
This new thing called the 'internet' might be able to help with that, when people finally learn how to use it.
Why can't each of the instances you enumerated just put the costs for those legal risks on the bill of the person who buys (or sells) the property?
If you make the recoder office liable they will just charge every customer more money to be able to pay for that liability. It is similar to shoplifting where the store just increases the prices by the damage they got from thieves.
The only purpose of the notary in these transactions is to verify the identity of the person signing the warranty deed. With how easy it is to get a forged driver license, the person who forged the deed would easily be able to get it notarized. Add on top of that, most notary stamps are just standard ink stamps and can be forged using a computer easily.
The real issue is that you only need a warranty deed or quit claim deed to transfer property. Nothing has been updated since the 80s to protect against this kind of very easy to do fraud. This issue needs to change to prevent this kind of theft from happening.
@@Temo990 Just like title insurance. The people allowing the fraud should be fined or even jailed, depending on their involvement.
Ben taking a last look around before he sinks below water level, between the shelves, Steve's LHS
Question: what happened to the 9000 bucks the bank first received to pay off the loan?
That's what I want to know. If somebody paid off the lien then the lien has been paid off and the lienholder/bank is no longer owed any money, end of story. If the IRS wants to come along and claim it's taxable income that's a separate issue, but based on Steve's (lousy) description it sounds like the bank got paid 9k and then 11k to satisfy a 9k lien. Does the bank need to pay somebody for the windfall thy got?
It turned in to 20 000 after the real owner paid 11k. You know how banks operate. Money turns in to more money 👍
@@suedenim9208 If the IRS takes the 9k as a windfall, then the landowner can deduct the legal fees against that. This is still a mess as the tax year matters for tax brackets, but... yeah. What a mess that the bank always wins.
Gone
Bankster Partee’
Something similar happened to my mom and aunt. When my grandfather passed away he left my mom, aunt and uncle some land that is like 45 minutes away from where they all live. My uncle sold his part to my mom and aunt and then the land just sat for years. At some point someone came in and sold it in a very similar way as described here. I'm not sure of the specifics but my mom said all-in that she had to use like 20k in her home equity to get it all straightened out. I'm assuming my aunt covered half of that but still it is insane. She said the way she found out it had been sold is when the logger she sent to log for taxes called her and told her he got ran off the property by the "owner"
Yeah, unoccupied land is easier since no one is there to get any notices.
@@toriless yeah it was a drop in the bucket of the 47% of the total landmass in the US that is unoccupied. She just got the opposite of lucky
I recently sold some land and was asked for ID by the attorneys and didn't understand why all the new protocols were in place... at least now I understand the reason.
I'll keep this in mind because I am currently looking at buying a couple acres of land to build my retirement home in 20 or so years.
Bought some land in Germany a short while ago. The notary had everyone involved bring a photographic governmental ID (and had his clerk check each for authenticity), sale documents from the previous owner and had taken about one and a half month to go through all of the records and finally approve the sale.
Sure, this ain't cheap. But this kind of fraud is almost nonexistent here as a result.
Showing id has always happened at closings. Lol. As it should. Why would you not be asked for id? This is a preventive for these crooked crimes.
and a billion initials.
Still between the book cases on Steve’s left.
Crimes like these, in the old days, were punished HARD. If we treated crimes of fraud with the severity that they're due, instead of "slap on the wrist" treatment, it would go a long way towards ending this sort of thing. Rob a bank of $5000? 20 years in prison. Defraud someone in a transaction for $500,000? Maybe they serve 2 years, then paroled. This makes NO sense.
Agreed. and it is NOT just the Fraud person himself that should be punished. Cause while they Forged fake Documents, it should ALWAYS be up the the Bank, Retailers, and Insurence company to actually DOUBLE CHECK and INVESTIGATE to make sure it is all 100% legal. If they do not, if they just accept the papers blindly, they are ACCOMPLICES and should be faced with the SAME Punishment. Cause THEY have a Legal Duty to make sure the papers are LEGAL and CORRECT for the Transaction to be Legal. If the Transactions is not legal, THEY, EVERYONE involved besides the victim are ALL 100% at fault, and the Penalty should hit EACH of them.
^ Do this, and Fraud would fucking VANISH over night. Every Realter and Insurence company would request in person meeting, with ID, Birth Certificate, and the PHYSICAL DEED in hand, which will be checked against the system to make sure it is 100% legal and in your hand, and not created recently.
^ Cause honestly, THAT is the BIGGEST bit that I don't fucking understand! How do you SELL THE LAND when you DO NOT PHYSICALLY HAVE THE DEED! It should be FORCED that you have a PHYSICAL DEED present to sell land, a Physical Deed that only the last known owner can get, or get a new copy of. There should be a paper trail, to EVERY copy of a Deed, from it's FIRST creation to NOW. There should be a Record for every time it was copied, what happened to those copies, every sale involving that deed and new update for the new owner. It should be IMPOSSIBLE to sell land without proper legal ownership of a physical deed with the deed database company being fully involved, supervising, and recording everything about that Deed being happened, in person, and ESPECIALLY now a days, it should be RECORDED, on Camera, and preserved, every single Transaction that happens and Transfer of Deed to new Owner and then updated with that information.
Cause back in the old days, you had physical deeds, and you had to HEAVILY PROTECT THEM, cause without that Deed, you LEGALLY did not own a damn thing. And thus someone Stealing or Destroying a Deed, was Equavilent to Destroying Property, cause you could not longer legally be the owner of that land. Moving it over to Digital, was the WORSE possible mistake, cause it falls onto an Honor system, and belief that system isn't broken, and that people aren't lying about being the owners.
Wouldn't you like to see an annual report from the FBI
to see how many cases of a type they've cleared?
What about the IRS wouldn't they be positioned to pick up something like this?
NOPE, IRS is not evolved.
I will say whoever allowed this to happen with faulty policies should be liable for the fraud.
Bexar County, TX for some reason is pronounced Bear County.
Deep in the heart of Texas!
Ask Elon, he would know...
It's Spanish.
It's because it's a Mexican Spanish word, and sometimes in Mexican Spanish X is pronounced as an H. When I've heard natives pronounce Bexar, they usually pronounce it somewhere between the name of the drug company, Bayer, and the animal, bear. It's like it has 1 1/4 syllables.
It's how they pronounce the "x" in spanish..
I didn't see the colon at first and I thought this title was *"Nightmare Man's Land Sold Without His Knowledge"* and I was like "who the heck is "Nightmare Man"? 😄
Just want to mention, the x in Bexar County is silent. It should probably be pronounced something like bay-har, but it's just pronounced as bair, lol.
Bizarre. And how do y’all pronounce THAT?
This is a nightmare for everyone except the person who got the money.
I had an issue recently where we owned a piece of land and went to sell it because my father had become ill. We felt there was no sense keeping it and figured a few thousand dollars would help with his medical bills. I called a relator and got it listed. He also sent a letter to the neighbor of the property to which the man was interested. When we went to do the actual paperwork, we found out that the township had sold it to a development company ( who owned the industrial park bordering it ) claiming it went up for tax sale. Supposedly, this had happened at least a year before we went to sell. We never received any communications from them BUT the ironic part is they continued to send us tax bills for the property. I really think there were shenanigans, but we ultimately decided it wasn't worth pursuing ( talking under 10k for the lot ).
Sounds like some bureaucrats lined their pockets.
@@SpotTheBorgCat No doubt
That is so unfair. Of course I understand why you didn’t spend the money to fight it, but I can’t help but wonder if that’s what the town was planning on happening.
@@synnove1046 I would speculate yes, especially given who bought it. But it would all have to be fought in court and they plan on people not wanting to do it.
If they sold it for taxes. Then the taxes of each year the taxes were paid left a paper trail. Starting with your receipts. I go and pay my taxes and I got receipt for each year. My cousin pays at her bank who is authorized to collect the taxes from the people. She has receipts issued by her bank. Papertrail. Even a money order has a paper trail.
The simplest way to "fix" a fraudulent sale of property is to make THEM show proof of purchase. Take their proof of purchase and YOUR proof of purchase to the Justice Court Judge and let the judge's staff sort it out. That is how it is supposed to work. 2 problems here. There is theft of property and buying stolen property over $500, a felony. The fraudulent land owner is looking at prison for possession of stolen property, 5 years +.
Showing that you bought the property sometime before the other guy bought the property sounds like a great way to get the court to issue a ruling that it's now the other guy's property.
@@suedenim9208 Except that there is no middle man in this case. Had they put a middleman between ownerships, then it would have severely complicated things. However, because the fraudulent owner allegedly bought it from someone impersonating the actual owner, it is a simple case of receiving stolen property. Prove it is yours with your receipt. Ok, your receipt is hoaky as hell. You get prison. Have a nice day. The only way to avoid prison for the fraudulent owner is if they are able to finger the one that sold it to them, with the hoaky receipt. If that is possible, then they only lose the money they spent. Otherwise, receiving stolen property, over $500, is a felony.
would you really want to trust a judge or the justice system when it comes to someone stealing your land???
@@SattracerThe problem with your solution is that if the person who fraudulently bought the property can't find the person that scammed them, it strongly incentivizes them to either pass the blame to someone innocent, or to fight like hell to claim that it was purchased legitimately.
They've already been scammed out of a huge amount of money. That's punishment enough to incentivize them to help hunt down the scammer in the hopes that doing so will help them reclaim some of their lost money.
@@leyrua In the eyes of the law; It is in YOUR possession. YOU stole it. If the law can't put you at the scene (Ok you didn't steal it) you are in possession of stolen property. If you don't have a receipt, you have committed first degree fraud. If you have a receipt, ok, you have committed 2nd degree fraud (over 500 still a felony). "Some" judges will accept the fraudulent receipt as good enough to avoid prison but under no circumstances is the rightful property owner on the hook for a penny of your money lost. Unless you know where to find the one that ripped you off, that's just gone. And most likely the fraudulent property owner will also be on the hook for court costs, their lawyer and the rightful owner's lawyer too. If the fraudulent owner bought the property, in good faith, and lost big, then they can ask the court to make them whole by going after the court/county members that let the fraud slip by them. Then the county would have to reimburse (if the judge is in agreement). I worked for a pawn shop for a long time and I've had to learn the in and out of dealing with stolen everything.
This is scary as hell. Imagine finding out one day the investment you spend 20 years making is now gone.
I have a difficult time wrapping my head around this. I have been to a number of settlements here in PA, and it is neither a simple nor easy thing to transfer a real estate title. All parties involved need to show multiple forms of identification, and all taxes must be paid before a transfer can take place. you just about need a letter of reference from the Almighty to accomplish this here. Then I hear about these transactions taking place without the owner's knowledge???? How is this even possible? Surely not here in PA!!
Presenting ID's at closing is for the notary ,also at closing, to verify signatures.. If the "seller" is not local, then a notary on the seller signatures is accepted, the paperwork can be sent overnight, out of state for (fraudulent) seller signature and notary. The taxes(and mortgage balance) in Lehto's story were paid at closing.
@@scottnunya1 My point is that it is simply not that easy to do this here in PA. They check, recheck, and triple check everything. Once that is done, the paperwork goes to the recorder of deeds to be filed. Nothing simplwe about it. I have about 5 pounds of paperwork from my last settlement.
Seems like some sketchy people working from the inside a bank or county system (or the like) would have to be involved for this to be able to happen.
Here in UK we have a _land registry_ and can register to be informed of any access to our land records, so we'd be informed directly of any attempt to sell out property, or even to obtain planning permission (to build on). It is legal to apply for planning permission on somebody else's land, and can be used to find out whether the local authority would consider the development suitable, before making an offer to the landowner. But as I have registered I'd get notification.
How does the land registry know you address?
Could a scam setup up by changing the land owners address so that the original owner does not get the notification?
Do you get a notification of address change to the old address? Could I intercept that address change notification?
We are speaking about identity theft. Things like faking ID and Utility Bill are trivial in the context of that.
@@sarowie After I posted my comments I started to wonder about that.
I assume that for any change they will contact me through the originally established channel. I realise that I might be imbuing the land registry with an inappropriate level of confidence.
He needs to sue the title company and what ever agent that sold the land to recoup his time and costs
Notaries are worthless. All they are saying is that the person in front of you is signing the document. Has nothing to do with verifying ids.
A notary is registered, and if they did their due diligence they should have searched who the notary was. If they don't exist, clear fraud, otherwise a real person falsely signed off on bad documents then they committed a crime. I have never had a notary NOT verify my ID when I asked them to stamp something, and they alaays include their own contact info on the form. Again, very easy to verify (if you wanted).
Nobody is claiming that there was a real notary involved.
@@johnbriggs3916 even real ones are just looking at the ID presented to them. A Signature Guarantee actually verifies that the person is who they claim to be. Can that have fraud as well? Absolutely, just much less so.
With so many real estate transactions happening these days, lots slips through the cracks!
Saudi Arabia knows how to deal with thieves. 😊
especially with that amount of money.
Chop chop square
ex father in law found a house built on a lot he paid taxes on for forty years then took the loss because he did not wish to retrieve his property from the young family living in the house
Heard Az had trouble verifying ID for ballots as well. Trouble at the border determining citizenship. 😮
Sucks to be the guy who bought the property without good title. Oh well.
Hopefully he purchased title insurance!
@@chrisforker7487 Yeah, Steve should have said something about that.
@@suedenim9208 he did @8:05 say that the title company refunded the money to the buyers.
@@smhedge getting the money refunded does not make the buyer whole again. The buyer had a reason to get this property in that location.
@@sarowie that is irrelevant to what I said. I was replying to someone that said that Steve should have mentioned the title insurance. I was pointing out that he in fact did mention it.
That is a nightmare, truly horrific, I am extremely glad that the real owner got his property back but it's horrifying that it happened at all. I wonder whether the real owner got a house out of this ordeal.
Yeah, his own one back.
The balance on the mortgage that was paid on his behalf should have just been surrendered to him as damages for his trouble in time
The mortgage simply should not exist anymore, because it is paid off.
"BuT bY tHe WrOnG PeRsOn": yeah silly bank, if your identity checks does not work, then there is no hope.
How owes you with money again?
@@sarowie it wasn't the bank, but the insurance company, but imo the title company should have at it.
Question: what happened to the 9000 bucks the bank first received to pay off the loan?
Ben's stuck between bookshelf sides by Civil War sword
Bank needs 2 IDs because they are on the hook for a mistake. The government makes it so they are never responsible for a mistake, which is why they 'trust' the notary stamp/etc.
Roll a stop sign and they want to see ID. Sell land and nobody can't be bothered.
I am sure that IDs where involved. It is just not that hard to fake US IDs in the grant schema of things, meaning howmany states and valid types of ID exist.
I think no US Citizen alive as all security features of all states and ID variations memorized.
Add to that that foreign IDs might also be valid. Of many countries are there? Could you check all passports for all relevant security features?
Seems fishy, the purchaser knows who was involved, he purchased the land from a person and paid off the loan of the real owner…go after the person who sold it.
Sheesh. I sold vacant land last year and was paper worked half to death. The title company even found a life estate belonging to my great grandmother that passed away in 1990. I had to find a death certificate to clear that hurdle. I did the closing from 1200 miles away using a mobile notary and that process had specific timing. I had to sign the documents during a certain time frame and they were immediately sent by the notary back to the title company closing agent.
I found more than my title company. I have the original 1964 septic permit and the house was not even built until 4 years later. The septic is now gone.
The elites don't see our land as "our land." They see it as "their land." The elites operate under the Compton Rule, "What's mines is mines and what's yours is mines." This rule dictates the operations of everyone in the legal real estate system from realtors to land lawyers to surveyors to county and municipal officials. Ask the people of Maui right now if they agree with my assertion. Steve notwithstanding of course. He's one of the good ones.
I feel bad for the guy who had to do all this to get his property back but even worse for the poor SOB that bought the land with no idea it was a fraudulent sale and is just out 200k.
Title insurance SHOULD cover that, but they'll try to wriggle out of it.
If you listened to the story the title insurance company paid the guy his 200k back. The title insurance company is out the money.
Nope, that got that back because they paid the $400 for Title Insurance. Never buy without it. A lot of them are done by a certain Chicago based company. I have spent years studying real estate law.
Title insurance company refunded buyer
Some states also require this to be handled by a lawyer .
Most county recorders are understaffed and overworked. Most people have two primary interactions with a recorder's office: Voting and property sales (usually "warranty deeds"). However, the recorder's office can have several dozen document types they handle - also known as "recording instruments." For every 100,000 people living in a county, a county recorder will move (record) about 100 documents per day into their systems. That's a rate of about one document every 5 minutes. Phoenix has about 1.62 million people, so that county probably moves 1,600 documents per day or roughly 1 document every 17 seconds. When you sell a home, a tree somewhere is sacrificed and dies. The documents may be standardized but will be fairly extensive in nature. Most county recorder's offices digitize incoming documents into a searchable format for easier storage and retrieval. So it is easy to see how a county recorder would say that it's not their job to police the accuracy of the incoming documents - they simply don't have that kind of time to do that, especially during election years where they still have to do their primary task of processing recording instruments and also handle tabulating votes for election results.
Most recording are for businesses. I can look them up.
Never mind all that other miscellaneous stuff, we have to focus on Steve's mispronouncing of Bexar county (3:52). It's properly pronounced like 'bear' county, just for future reference. Bexar county contains the rather large city of San Antonio. You're welcome.
I am convinced there is an easy fix to this crime. There needs to be new legislation to address this.
Steve, 3:53, Bexar county is pronounced “Bear”. Don’t mess with Texas. ;)
“It ended well”. From Steve’s lips to God’s ears. ❤
"Cost all of ONE Postage Stamp"? People don't understand how expensive it can be to move paper, this did not help. Cost of the Stamp, Cost of the Envelope, Cost of time for a Hired Employee to acquire material, use material, move material. Rent/lease for the real property, "office" equipment purchase/rental. plus other expenses; so that a 15USD or 20USD fee is easily attainable as a cost expense on a billing. Don't lawyers fees include these too? Off topic, My sister & her husband owned a piece of property, they cannot sell it. Because it is on a dirt road. A buyer would Have to pave the road, and install utilities (sewer & water, maybe gas) should it be bought according to 'new' zoning laws enacted years after they purchased the land.
Buyer Beware 💯
It is deeply disturbing because since I’m living in Kentucky, I have had my New Jersey License plates stolen. I’ve had checks stolen from my mailbox. I had my drivers license stolen
Good to put your property in a trust. It makes it difficult to do this. Also our county has an email notification if something is done with the title.
How would that make it more difficult when it's all based on failure to be sure about who the "owner" is?
That's assuming they bother to maintain their email database properly and notices actually go out, and that land owners (especially absentee ones) make sure their current email is on file which is highly unlikely.
My parents put their property (1 acre of land with a house they built about 15 years earlier) into a trust, but there was a glitch. Well before they built the house they had traded a strip on one side to the neighbor so he could route his house's driveway from the side street rather than the busy highway. That transaction split my parents' property into two parcels, and the attorney who set up their trust neglected to put in the 9-foot-wide strip on the east side. We only found this out decades later when both of our parents had passed and we were selling the property. The title search turned up the conundrum. Even our estate-planning attorney wasn't sure how to handle the situation, as that strip was going to have to go to probate since it wasn't in the trust. Fortunately, someone clued our attorney in to the existence of the "probate referee," who came and appraised the 9-foot strip. The value fell well under the threshold of requiring probate, and we were able to complete the sale with no further glitches. (The strip only had some fruit trees on it and the border was well outside the footprint of the house.)
There are other legal reason to use a trust as well but consult someone first.
When the bank says it's a windfall they don't think that's fair, what happened to the money already paid to the bank? Did the bank keep the windfall? Was it given to the title insurance company who had to pay back the money to the buyer?
Thank you
How is paying 22k in attorneys fees and premature loan payoff a happy ending. That's what title insurance is for. I wish he would have legged this out as they would have most likely paid his attorneys fees and not made him pay back the payoff. 😢. Scammers are such DB's. Thanks for video Steve.
There should be a death penalty for this crime.
The closing lawyer, deeds office, and title company should be responsible for checking. They all should pay the victims legal costs.
Saying something so outrageous as “there should be a death penalty for this crime” makes it impossible for me (and many others) to agree with this comment. First of all, I’m against the death penalty. Secondly, I could never even begin to understand how someone could feel that way over a property crime. I understand that some property crimes could be devastating and might ruin someone’s life, but death is just beyond way over the top.
@@synnove1046
You are part of the reason why we have so much crime today. I grew up in countries where they cut off body parts for the crime you committed and they do caning.
I want punishment to deter crime and not encourage crime.
Hhmm... the problem is that at the core of it all is identity theft.
You punish that as hard as you want, but how do you track down a person that uses a false identity?
@@sarowie
I would do a retina scan and finger prints on everyone involve in the sale process.
Perhaps -- and this is just a thought -- property needs to be defined in secure block chains where every transaction is embedded in the chain. Fraud would not be impossible, of course, but would be much more difficult.
As for property in an unrelated matter, it seems the government somewhere along the line recently authorized FEMA to seize stockpiles from people and just give it to whomever they deem needy. Some how, some way, this has to be unconstitutional but it will probably never be questioned. Have food stocked up for an emergency? Armed thugs from the government are authorized to seize it, now that it is deemed due process.
Counties ALL over the US can have a Notify Set-up on your Parcel of Property that Notifies Owner when Anything is Attempted to be Done on your Property.
How about when we buy the land or homes, the Title Agency and the Tax Appraisers Office copy our ID’s with our pictures or they can as far as getting our thumb print. That would make it harder for crooks to steal our property.
Q: Change the gravitational constant of the universe. Geordi: How am I supposed to do that? Q: You just DO it!
Turns out, land is the most pilferable item there is. The title companies don't do anything beyond cursory searches for easements or claims of ownership or past liens, county clerks and courthouses do no validation of proof of legality for anything that is recorded, county clerks will not help a diligent land owner dealing with a boundary bugger trespassing neighbor to conduct an easement search though the labyrinth of old and unwieldy public records, laws enable adverse possession with often nothing more than a few statements from neighbors, taking by acquiescence is a thing apparently that is like adverse possession but does not even have to meet even that level of scrutiny, then there's "variances," where a neighbor can hook up with your local powerhouse realtor, a county planning and zoning guru and a well connected surveyor to take a portion of your land without you knowing until it's too late, then there's eminent domain. Cops aren't going to get involved ("lady we ain't surveyors or lawyers, this is a civil matter"), county staff won't get involved (gotta stay objective), and lawyers won't give any advice other than start a lawsuit and even then most wont touch these cases for taking of small parcels from a common citizen with not so deep pockets - let alone portions of parcels. So why buy land at all? Stick to a quarter acre, no HOA, in an established neighborhood, survey it before closing, and fence it within a week of closing and live ion it with security cams and no trespass signs and tolerate no one entering ever. That's the best you can do. Holding property for use later is certainly unwise.
I hope he sues the companies.
He's out $20k. Well, at least $9,000. The $11k was to pay off the land.
I thought this kind of a thing was a warranty of title issue. So, the title was never the fraudsters to sell so it wasn’t sold, the original owner was always and still is the owner. Then the buyer would seek relief from the title insurance company who, having not done their job fully properly, would seek relief from the whoever validated the title or otherwise seek a claim against their insurance, et cetera. What I’m saying is, I thought everyone should have a clear target to go after to restore themselves, and the seller, at worst, should only have to go after the title company for trying to sell the title. They certainly didn’t owe the $9000. Whoever transferred the money without verifying the fraudster owes that and they should then go after the fraudster. The seller should NOT have this big of a head ache caused by others incompetence. These are my two cents; your opinion may vary.
Question: I bought my house free and clear twenty years ago. Can I put a lien on my property and make myself the lien holder to help prevent this type of fraud??? Please respond.
The actual landowner should be treated as though NO transaction ever occurred. The other parties should be involved as though it was grand theft by fraud.
I recently sold a tract of land I owned (12 acres) and was shocked by how little I had to prove I was the real owner of the property. I met with the real estate agent who I hired to sell the property once in person. He is a notary and notarized the deed when we were about to close. Other than that, everything was handled via email and phone calls. A simple fake ID would have sufficed to sell my property without me knowing.
Yeah, unless a bank is involved, 95% of the paperwork will be from the bank.
Question: Is there any sure fire way to prevent something like this from happening? I know that title insurance doesn't cover an event like this and companies that market insurance for this are really just monitoring services. What if you put a lien on your property in the amount of it's market value? If you did the lien would have to be paid before the title could be transferred, right? And it should also prevent an identity thief from securing a fradulent loan with your home. However, if I understand correctly, most courts won't let a property owner put a lien on their own property. Is there any way to make such an idea work?
Wait did the bank get paid twice for the remaining balance on the loan? I sounds like the bank got paid the initial $9000 remaining balance by the scammer and then again by the owner.
Wouldn't the title insurance company be liable for the costs incurred by the actual owner since they ok'd the fraudulent sale?
That's BS. He should sue for all damages including attorney fees.
So the 'happy' ending here is he's still out of pocket $20k.. Title co should cover that, it's their negligence that caused this.
The title company should refund him his $11,000 dollars since they are the ones that dropped the ball.
Serves the title insurance company right. They don’t add as much value as the claim to add anyway
I was in the county clerk's office and saw the free program they offer to inform me of any action taken on my property. I was there to file a DBA (doing business as) form. I enrolled in the online reporting program that afternoon and a few days later, I noticed that someone (me) had added a DBA to my address. It's comforting to know that it works so quickly. I live north of the Dallas FT Worth area. According to the County Clerk, Dallas and Tarrant Counties see a lot of attempted fraud involving property issues.
Most places do not have that and you can be AZ does not. I doubt my county does even though their system is all automated. Taxes and recordings and all electronic.
This will only continue to get worse. It’s too easy to make a fake notary signature block. Municipalities need to have a better system to ensure the true owner is transferring property.
There should be photos of the persons who is signing the paperwork and prints so they are on record with prison time for frauds the minute they sign. Before the money is transfered in a 90 day hold to verify the information and funds released on any title transfer of $5000 or more. That would benefit even on auto title transfer as well. Both parties ! Buyers and sellers !
Sounds like someone at the title company or the mortgage company are involved illegally.
They should be treated like any other case of stolen property. It’s stolen, unlawfully sold and still legally belongs to the person who rightfully owned it. And if you refuse to give it up now you’re in possession of stolen property. I hate to say it, but the buyer needs to go after the person that sold it to them. The person who had his property stolen shouldn’t be the one getting the biggest run around.
The land buyers should be the victims and robbed not the land owner. It was a fraudulent transaction.
So the bank gets a windfall of 9k after extorting it from the rightful property owner.
This problem is because they use a rubber stamp now and not an embossed stamp.
I am glad that he got his property back but what a nightmare for him .
Shouldn't the title company be required to pay the owner's expenses?