The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) has put out alerts about an increase in property title fraud:
Basically, criminals will forge some documents and pretend to be you online, and then either hire a real estate agent to sell the property or take out a loan against it. The most vulnerable are vacant parcels and “unencumbered” properties with no mortgage lien on them (i.e. you’ve paid off your mortgage).
This states that 59% of title firms reported encountering at least one seller impersonation fraud attempt in the prior calendar year. In general, title insurance does not protect the property owner from post-closing events.
The actionable advice here is to check if your state or local office offers a “property alert” service. In addition, be on the lookout for unexpected changes in tax or utility bills. I would simply run a search for “[your county] property recording alert” or “[your county] property recording watch”. For example, let’s take Multnomah County of Portland, Oregon. If you search for “Multnomah Country property recording alert”, you will find their which is a free e-mail alert service for when a recorded document is indexed under a monitored name. This means that you should be able to be get an alert if a property titled in your name has its ownership changed.
This is how most of these free services work; they don’t actually prevent the fraud, but at least you are notified quickly after it occurs. That way, you can immediately start to take steps to fix it and possibly prevent someone taking out a loan against the property.
Make sure you are entering your information into a legitimate government website. I’ve seen some questionable sites mixed in with the official ones.
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