Umm, maybe if it was someone like Britney Spears rather than an actress from a 1930s. I'm pretty sure people nowadays are more familiar with the actors in the new version of KK rather than the classic.

@cpt.snerd: It damn better have all 8 legs.

~Y

FWIW if your credit monitoring service checks for public records changes, you should be notified fairly quickly that your property has changed hands. It won't prevent the fraud, but it might keep the problem from getting even more complicated with downstream transactions.

This is a really sensational stupid story.

In the end, they would have lent money to someone on the basis of collateral that they didn't actually possess (your property).

@YadidCotys:

You are the victim if you own the house out right. No bank or title company.

@silentluciditi:

I'm not certain you understand how title searches work. I know we want to blame someone, but often there isn't any blame to be passed on. Sometimes bad people do bad things.

A title search 'may' raise a red flag. But most of the time, it won't.

The title company is looking for a conveyance from each owner to each subsequent owner. If the fraudster creates a fraudulent deed from rightful owner to fraudulent owner.. Signs it, and otherwise does everything that is required for a deed to be valid, the only thing that is incorrect on the deed is the signature. How is an attorney supposed to know the signature is fake? There is nothing to compare it to. The buyer of a home does not sign the deed that gave him ownership, so the title researcher can't go look at the real deed. There will be nothing apparent on the face of a fraudulent deed that will give anyone the impression its fraudulent.

Before anyone says, "well, call the grantor on the phone." That will never happen and shouldn't happen.

Wow. Considering a Warranty Deed or Quit Claims Deed (conveyence deeds) must be signed byt eh grantor (the current owner of the property) this is pretty sad. That said, as long as the names in the deed itself and those on the signature line match, the clerk isn't going to stop it. As for obtaining a mortgage- shame on the title companies and lawyers for not catching the fraud. A title search should have turned up the discrepencies and raised a red flag.

@jfischer: Doesn't happen. Never will. Deed comes in, gets recorded, gets mailed back to whatever address is listed at the top of the deed. Actual owners who have been swindled never know until something adverse happens. Tax database will be updated to send to whoever's name and address are on the title (and the mailing address may or may not be the same as the property address), so even then it's a moot point.

This story makes me miss watching Carmen Sandiego after school every day.

I see this as irresponsible journalism by the new york daily (big surprise there). Showing the public how to forge a document is just asking for trouble.

I hope they get sued for clouding the title of the building. Not only that, but the notary committed a felony by notarizing Fay Wray, and being party to a fraudulent transaction. Way to go, fraud FTL.

If for whatever reason somebody forged a deed from you to them and took out a mortgage, the Title Insurance company that insured those fraudulent transactions would be on the hook to make both you and the mortgagee, (bank), whole. This would include all attorney's fees, recording costs, and whatever else was required.

By the way, you wouldn't even be considered the victim, the bank would be. Since the deed transfer was invalid, your ownership of the property never changed. Yes, you would have the headache of having to be involved with the mess, but other than the bureaucracy you would suffer no damages.

But I think you have a better chance, statistically, of getting struck by lightning than being involved with this kind of fraud.

Sleep easy.

@Farquar: Actually, I don't really see the problem with getting fingerprints.

I recently closed on a house that was part of an estate. In order to close the deal, we needed signatures from every heir on the paperwork. This didn't require that any of the heirs be able to drive...what it required was that the lawyer collecting the signatures be able to drive (and since many of them lived out of state, it took a few months to complete).

If they can go to this level of effort to collect original signatures, why not fingerprints? It's certainly harder to forge.

@Roeroica:

Agreed.

They usually have the APN# on the Deed of Trust, too.

@redkamel:

98% of the time it's some law firm runner that goes to the register of deeds. Requiring the parties to go to the registers office is impractical. Not everyone lives in the same state as the property they own. So, you are going to get the fingerprint of a person not related to the transaction.

You would also appear to require the parties each be licensed to drive. That would be illegal.. and children can own land you know.

Lets not leave out property that is owned by an estate, or corporation. What photo matters, what fingerprint do we want?

Or, a peice of property owned by 2 dozen people. (trust me, its not that uncommon) You are going to have each of those people showing up at the ROD?

And all of this isn't incredibly inefficient?

All of this to say, the system really isn't broken.. People just see a few examples of bad guys being bad and want a more bloated division of govt. to prevent it.

@redkamel:

??

Not following at all. What does this accomplish? Have you ever seen a real estate closing? Most of the time only the buyer is present, there are very few roundtable closings any more. The closing involves signing a bunch of papers. Awesome. How is whoever watching the video supposed to know that the people in the video are who they say they are?

Who keeps the videos? Register of Deeds have a hard enough time with space issues already. Does someone have the job at the registers office of watching the video? Yeah, that'll be efficient.

Now, I do understand it can be hard to prove the forged document. But why dont they just add a fingerprint requirement, or some simple id...like both people need to be present to file the paperwork, and are photographed and matched against a DMV database.

@jfischer:

lol

No county, anywhere, does this. Ever.

It's not a sanity check, its a waste of time and money. I challenge you to find a single county register of deeds that does this. You won't because such a thing does not exist.

It's a pointless endeavor. People aren't making false deeds and sticking around. They are making false deeds and immediately turning around and getting mortgages and disapearing.

Lets assume a county does this.. They mail the form out next day. Assuming the owner of the home actually lives in the home (and many times they won't, see examples) Then what? The register of deeds can't pull a recorded deed just because someone comes in and says the deed is fraudulent. It's illegal. The legality of the fraudulent deed needs to be challenged through the legal process like anything else. They can record a notification that there is some issue, but they may (and should) require some court ordered action to do so. Within a week of recordation fraud guy has already gotten his mortgage and disapeared. Screwed owner is equally screwed with the notification. It does nothing but waste resources.

It's not like this is a common problem in most areas. Most challenged deed issues have nothing to do with this sort of fraud.

aw, skip it.

It's a good read if you liked this post.

True, but the property tax department certainly has a handy database to link deeds to street addresses for the purposes of sending out tax bills and such, so there is simply no excuse for not sending a notice to the address that is the subject of the deed filing. This sort of sanity check is very basic, and a jurisdiction not doing some level of sanity check is opening itself to charges of willful disregard of their fiduciary obligation to the citizens they serve.

the point of the article is that we need to make people aware of this newest scam to get money to be able to try and stop it from happening like it is

What a topsy turvy world we live in!

@m4ximusprim3: I violated rule #1. Keep it short.

I'm sorry..

@Sinflux: I think the point is that the deed was transfered to the con.

Which brings me to my view that penalties for this sort of con are far too light. A year??? this sort of thing ruins lives on an unprecedented scale. 20 years to life...how about execution?

Something like this happened to my mom once. My dad owned a house that was used as an office building. One day my mom got a phone call from a guy who said that my dad sold him the building. My mom asked him to fax over the paperwork and upon receipt she realized that this was a bunch of bull. too bad for that guy he didn't realize that my dad had died 7 years prior to the signature that was on his paperwork.

This really doesn't say anything about the stupidity of govt. employees. Those of you who think so don't understand how the system works.

Clerks in the register of deeds offices are not required to read the documents that are filed. Honestly, they shouldn't. It would cause an already moderately slow process to grind to a halt. Even the smallest of counties get hundreds of filings a day. In a large urban area it can be thousands-tens of thousands a day.

The street address to the property is not on the recorded deed. Street addresses change over time and cannot be used as a description. The legal description of the property is used. If you own a home look at your deed and read the legal description. You live in that house but if someone read that description out loud to you there is a decent chance you'd have no idea he was talking about your land. Some states use a pin system that assigns a bunch of letters/numbers to each lot. Again, a state employee is going to have no idea what the deed is referring to just by looking at a pin.

A clerk looks at recordings to make sure certain procedures have been followed. They don't, and can't make sure that the witnesses actually exist. The don't and can't make sure that the signatures on the deeds are authentic. What would you propose they do to verify these things? Start calling people? Who are they going to call? Your phone number isn't listed on your deed. The witnesses don't include that information on the deed. (Most states don't require witnesses anyway.) If a clerk rejected a document because they thought the witness shared a name with some previous notorious person a lawyer would reach through the window and beat the clerk with his own keyboard.

Those that think this is govt employee incompetence, or laziness.. It's not. This is how the system works. Someone come up with a plan that would cover all of these situations that would be less expensive to implement then the costs associated with the fraud and litigation that follows.

@nursetim: I would like to buy your bridge.

Having recently turned in a 10-page memo on adverse possession, I'm kind of glad it's not!

This is a huge problem in lovely Florida. Happens all the time. The clerks just stamp the paperwork and take the money. There is no assessment as to whether the forms are genuine.

I've heard some discussion about the clerk's having to send out notices when they issue a quit claim deed so that the owner gets some notice that their house has been stolen and is about to be mortgage to the hilt. I actually monitor the status of activity on my homes via my local property appraiser web's site. I check to make sure there has been no title activity once a month.

Pretty sad.

@Orv: 250k pesos

@CarlR: Yeah, and in this economy I bet you could get 200k, 250k easy for the Empire State.

The object is not to actually gain ownership of the building, just to obtain enough documentation to take out a mortgage on the property, and then skip town with the cash.

Hello new apartment!!!! enormous apartment... >_<