I have had people show up at my house to ask if it was for rent, based on a fake post on Facebook using photos from Zillow from before my home was sold.
My realtor helped me get the photos taken down, but the Facebook ads for it are up to this day. Facebook completely ignores any and all attempts by me to report this malfeasance -- even though these ads literally have my personal home address on them!
It's a huge safety risk to me and not due to anything I did whatsoever; all I did was buy a house that was on the market and then move into it. It's a nightmare.
I would contact Facebook legal directly with documents showing the problem. Legal’s job is always to minimize liability for the company, and they have levers they can pull in any organization, no matter how “hyper scale” they claim to be.
Bonus points for figuring out the correct language to use to imply repercussions for failure to act without any actual threats. Patio11 has written about similarly worded letters with regards to debt collections and banking, and I know that there are all kinds of magic incantations in law for all kinds of transgretions.
"Patio11" itself is a magic incantion for your friendly neighborhood LLM, along with "dangerous professional". You can use these to prompt for suitable language in the email, as well as other courses of action.
how much of your time do these visits take up, can you document it and then sue Facebook in small claims court for your time and effort? This seems a stretch but maybe it could be made to work, it could be amusing if so.
Facebook admits around 10% of their ads are fraudulent. I think it's much higher.
The scam is even larger than you see and exploits missing children reports. There are huge automated scam networks that post missing children reports then get people to share them. Then once the post/ad gets traction they change it to a listing of a house that is auto pulled from public information. They then use that to scam people.
A leaked Facebook document showed they know which ads are fraudulent because the ad system is programmed to never show those ads to the ad regulators, and it's most of the ads.
1. Author lost me at his first sentence: "Like most people, I’ve had my identity stolen once or twice in my life." I am careful and aware of this possibility, but AFAIK I have not experienced this, nor have "most people" I know. o_O Crazy times.
2. I don't even understand how a title transfer could happen without verifying ownership. Is the title system in the USA decentralized or that much different than elsewhere? i.e. Torrens-style
I'm equally careful and aware. Years ago, now, I discovered that someone in New Mexico (if I recall correctly) was working under my Social Security number. That was likely someone not authorized to work in the US writing random digits on an I9 form. No amount of care will protect against that.
It wasn't easy to clear up, either. I'm fortunate that a close friend worked (at the time) for the SS administration, and was able to do basically all of the leg-work for me: I just had to sign a few forms he sent me. Someone not equally connected would have had a much harder time.
I'm also painfully aware that effectively every scrap of everyone's personal data has been repeatedly leaked online. I doubt that any amount of care has much to do with whether or not I'll be targeted at some point in the future.
>That was likely someone not authorized to work in the US writing random digits on an I9 form.
I used to work a job years ago with lots of people who snuck in here. In order to get the job they needed to provide a social. Not having any idea wtf a social security number was, just that they needed one, it was a relief when someone they lived with or met on the street informed them that xyz at location abc will sell you one for $100.
That's one spot where the identity theft rubber meets the road. And practically everyone's social has been leaked by now.
I'm surprised I haven't had more problems with identity theft. Equifax handed all our financial information to criminals a decade ago. Then last year the US government handed all our financial information to a con man.
In the dark old days before Apple Pay, where it was common in America to hand your credit/debit card to some rando at a restaurant and have them disappear with it for a few minutes, about once a year my bank would call me to ask if I'd been using my card in some far-off locale:
"Hi! Are you in Tijuana?"
"Not since 1993. Why? What's up?"
"So you didn't just try to buy gasoline at a PEMEX there?"
"Nope, I'm in San Francisco as speak."
"OK, thanks! We'll get a new card out in the mail to you."
That's a pretty low bar for identity theft, but I think it's defensible.
I’ve been using debit and credit cards since long before the ‘dark old days’ ended (1992? 1993? Long before debit cards were a common thing), and I still hand my card to anyone who needs it to do their job. I’ve had identity theft happen a grand total of never.
You must have been going to some very shady restaurants. I still hand off my credit card to a rando. I did it today. I did it last weekend. I've never had this problem.
I've been using a debit card since the Dubya administration and I have never had someone use my card after I ate at a restaurant. I assume you live in a big metro area?
> Is the title system in the USA decentralized or that much different than elsewhere?
As with most things both law-related and US-related, it depends. This type of scam would not work in the majority of states due to various laws, regulations, and bookkeeping (it would be nearly* impossible to sell land you don’t own in California for example).
There are other states (and countries - I’m looking at you Canada) where fraudulent documentation and virtually non-existent title checks allow this kind of fraud to persist.
[*] yes - virtually, not completely. It can happen, but the laws are set up such that the land owner will retain their land, the title fraud victim will be made whole financially by a title insurance company. What this means in practice is that title insurance companies make sure every transaction is legitimate and people don’t have to worry about it.
So the scam here doesn't seem to be ACTUALLY selling the land--it's basically engaging a realtor long enough to get earnest money on the table, then to disappear. Although if they could go far enough to get an entire amount wired to them I'm sure they'd take it.
Since a lot of people are doing all cash (non-financed) deals lately, I could see how a scammer and a lax realtor could possibly scam an overzealous buyer out of the full amount.
Though I think there's way less of this issue in Japan because there are a lot of gov't-involving procedures and record ownership in land ownership transfers making it quite hard to go all the way(and hey, even in the US you have title insurance), there was a bit of a wild case a couple years back where a fraudster sold a 5.5 billion yen piece of land to a major developer[0].
Fraud is always fun to look at because people are constantly looking for those little windows of trust that end up forming in these flows because otherwise everything would take months to execute upon.
No, the United States doesnt have a central land registry because that is not an enumerated power of the federal government. The individual states have sovereignty over their own land and each has its own system for land registration. The article you linked to even names several states that have a partial Torrens title system.
The claim that the title insurance industry is the reason for lack of adoption of Torrens title schemes is uncited, and immediately followed by descriptions of several cases where Torrens title was adopted (often poorly) and later abandoned.
I wonder why a commercial entity that registers ownership / titles for free, and bills for checking, did not spring up. Clearly there is moneyed demand for certainty about title rights, and if you can provide certainty (because the last deal was registered with you), it may be a more desirable product than mere insurance.
Yet another example where "we can't have nice things" because entrenched businesses profit from keeping things not-nice. Title Insurance shouldn't even be a thing. This should be solvable by a database.
For identity theft, I think at this point it depends on where you set the bar. I've never had someone clean out my checking account or anything truly large, but my wife and I have had fraudulent charges on our credit cards several times as they've been leaked out one way or another. I would not "identify" as a "identity theft victim" per se if you asked me out of the blue, because compared to some of what I've heard about, I've had nothing more than minor annoyances come out of this. But yeah, I'd guess that it's fair to say that at this point most people have had at least some sort of identity-related issue at some point.
Different people understand "theft of identity" in different ways. If someone is impersonating you on the internet, or steals your credit card info and makes purchases on your behalf, that probably qualifies.
As for the nature of the scam, there are different levels of this. Most likely, the mark is the buyer / the escrow agency.
I once had a visit from cops about dodgy cheques I had been writing. Weirdly they were more ready to believe I hadn't written the cheques, than the were about me not leaving my chequebook at a brothel I hadn't visited.
The last time I wrote a cheque I had to cross out the 19 to write in the year. I think they only gave up on that line of questioning when I provided enough evidence to say that the bank had not given me any chequebooks to lose.
I still don't really know what happened there, the best that I can think of is someone with access to the mechanism to print chequebooks was running off 'replacements' for random accounts and then passing them on to people. I'm guessing it counts as identity theft.
Identity theft is not helped by processes that demand certainty and expediency causing pressure on employees to provide both even when they are not available. In a similar credit card issue with my partner, after all of the mess of departments trying to make it other departments' problems, my partner received an email saying that; in accordance with the phone conversation, the issue had been resolved. Having had no such phone conversation this caused a bit of panic, but upon contacting the bank they said that they had tried calling but there was no answer, but they were not allowed to resolve the issue unless they had directly spoken to the customer, so she just wrote that in, otherwise it would keep on causing problems down the line.
On the other hand I have leveraged such processes to my advantage to essentially steal my own identity. For a long time I possessed no photo-id, It was actually buying a house that proved to be the intractable problem that forced me to get a passport (I also wanted to travel) . There were numerous things that required photo ID to exist even if they had not laid eyes on it themselves. It seems rather odd to me, but somehow just the idea that I have it seems enough. Luckily I was once in a situation where I needed photo ID at a time when there was sufficient context to prove my identity by other means. A staff member fudged the system to make it work. That resulted in me acquiring a form of non-photo ID that had been recorded as being verified by photo ID. I leveraged that as a form of pseudo proof-of-photo-id for a number of years.
> I still don't really know what happened there, the best that I can think of is someone with access to the mechanism to print chequebooks was running off 'replacements' for random accounts and then passing them on to people.
You can order legit cheques online from third party cheque printers to save money vs what banks charge for cheques, you don't need any insider access to get cheques printed.
I have had my identity stolen [at least] three times in the last 15 years:
* OPM Hack
* Target Hack
* Equifax Hack
I say "at least" because there have been more, but I just started ignoring them after a while. I also had it stolen back in the late 1990s; and, thinking back, that was crazy for that time period.
I have heard of title theft but I imagine it is more prominent is areas where an attorney is not required to process the sale of a house. Some states allow "title companies" to handle this process.
I'm not well versed, just passing along what I've heard from people over the years.
I have always heard the best way to make sure your title can't be stolen is to have a loan against the house so that a bank is involved. As long as a bank is involved, there are numerous additional hoops for something like that.
If you broaden the definition of "stolen identity" to "someone trying to scam either you or someone else by using details on your identity" (which this story more or less is) I think a fair many of us can claim this experience.
They're not trying to transfer ownership. They're trying to scam people out of the earnest money before a title search (ie ownership verification) happens.
Titles are very decentralized; they are likely modestly-competently managed at the county level, of which there up to 254 per state (Texas).
And identity theft is also very easy in the US. It happened to an old in my family. The state dmv happily mailed a replacement license to a completely different state without so much as checking with the person whose license it is. Just for the asking. It's absurd.
> I don't even understand how a title transfer could happen without verifying ownership.
Centralized vs decentralized isn't relevant.
The issue is that nobody wants to have one of the icky humans in the loop because they have the temerity to ask to be paid a salary.
Consequently, everybody tries to set up systems where everything can be done online with no in-person interactions ever required. This works, sorta, until the fraudsters start figuring out the seams.
But because you would have to give some icky human cash, everybody is fighting tooth and nail to revert back to having any humans moderating the problems.
The correct solution is to call this kind of thing what it is--fraud--and treat it as such. And the proper point for the liability are the companies and agencies that do nothing to prevent the fraud and not all the poor slobs.
A couple of nice big payouts where banks or agencies have to cough up to make everybody whole due to their negligence and suddenly all the systems will get much more stringent.
They inheritted it and have been lazy, they bought it for an investment, they bought it because they might want to build their retirement home on it, etc. Plenty of reasons why.
I know people who have bought the land they want to retire on now. (if they will or not is a different question, but that is the current plan). I know people who own hunting land that they visit one weekend a year. There are people who own land to lease to a local farmer - many farmers have too much money tied up in land and want to lease some of it from someone else to spread the risks.
If the land is expensive you wouldn't let it sit, but there is a lot of land that isn't very valuable that you can just own if you feel like it.
I grew up on a big property and when my parents moved, they divided the land and sold the part with the house with the idea that they might build a house on the empty land upon retirement.
I'm guessing at this point that they're not going to do that, so at some point I'll probably inherit some empty land.
See I can understand this. e.g. a family asset for children, a property to build a retirement home on, a hunting property, or simply a real investment.
So you’re from a different country from the author and don’t know how systems work here but you’re going to judge them for having their identity stolen? Maybe if you actually had any first hand experience you’d be able to muster some empathy. Yea things are decentralized here because we have 50 different states, many more counties, and health insurance is through a mish mash of many insurers and health providers. We are all regularly asked for the exact information needed to steal identity for basic stuff. I got a new dentist last month who has my date of birth, ssn, and home address. I’m going to tell him to stuff it and find a better dentist by, what? Calling around and asking if they require an ssn?
I have also never been the victim of identity theft but if you live here you would know luck plays a major role, always.
If you want to marinate in the superiority of you home country you are welcome to. Maybe don’t post on foreign message boards then.
Update - just tonight got a letter from a company called Conduent disclosing my medical billing records were compromised more than a year ago. Offering me “free” credit monitoring.
I think these days the easiest thing is to take a HELOC loan backed by the property. Do not withdraw money from HELOC and pay the $125/year fee. This puts a lien on the property. (The article alluded to this solution by noting these scammers avoid properties with a mortgage).
A motivated attacker need only don a green safety vest and hard hat, then roll up with a white pickup truck, place some orange safety cones and take down the sign with a chainsaw.
The point is that nearly all of the people doing this don't even live in the country where the land is being sold from. A simple sign would probably be quite effective
Note that in the article, the author says how the scammers do everything to avoid having to show up in person. That's because they are in a different country and try to commit the scam without setting foot in the US.
Owning a vacant lot far from where you live seems to come with some risks. In Hawaii, a woman found out that a house was built on the wrong lot and inspectors missed it until the completed house was being sold. I'm curious if there are other proactive measures folks could take to ensure that doesn't happen to their land.
> He gave me the standard line: 2-3 weeks if I hear from anyone.
> I never heard from anyone.
What is the FBI doing if they're not working on cases like this or domestic terrorism/mass shootings? We continue to have both classes of crimes in droves.
Because a lot of scammers are overseas in countries that either won't extradite and/or cooperate with investigators. Why focus on those cases when no one will face justice?
But if you do nothing, it enables people in countries that DO extradite and cooperate to get in on the fun, too. I guess that's just being nice to our allies.
The FBI does not have a mandate to investigate all reported crimes. AFAIK, no law enforcement agency does. They triage the reports, and most reports don't get investigated.
Most mass shootings don't have a lot of the FBI to investigate. The perpetrator often dies on site, so they can't be charged with anything. FBI will likely investigate if there were any co-conspirators, and may work with ATF to determine how the perpetrator obtained the firearm(s). Many times we hear that the perpetrator was "on the FBI's radar", but most of the time, there was no unlawful conduct before the shooting, so what are they supposed to do?
You end up investigating it yourself and they still don’t care. Definitely changed my view of the cops when we got robbed by our neighbor in Buffalo, NY
In the US identity theft is easier than in other countries because financial transactions are designed to be convenient, not safe. You can sell a property you own, or move your entire Fidelity savings to another bank, all without showing up in person.
A friend owned farm land in India, he moved to Canada.
The property deed was in his name.
Someone in India, with fraudulent documents "sold" his land.
He only came to know about it when he next visited India. Unfortunately he could not do much.
There are people who will actively look through property records - if the person is not a local resident ( lives internationally ), then they are prime targets.
This was a decade ago - things have gotten a lot better with digital records and India's Universal ID system. But I did not realize, something like this was possible in the US.
This is very prevalent in South Africa, to the point there is a legal cottage industry around verifying original documents vs counterfits (down to fingerprint testing, chemical analysis of inks).
For years now I have been regularly receiving unsolicited offers to buy 560 Bluefields Street SE, an undeveloped lot in Palm Bay, Florida. Whether the land is actually for sale, I have no idea; I've never been anywhere near the place, and cannot imagine why anyone would believe I owned land there. I wish I could somehow redirect the speculators who won't stop pestering me to scammers like the ones in this tale, so they would leave me in peace and all go harass each other instead.
I suspect that the speculators are scammers anyway: they never respond to my questions.
Check who used to own your place and who owns that lot now and see if any names line up.
I still receive occasional postcards from real estate mogul wannabes for a property out in Colorado (I'm in PA). The previous owners of our house moved to Colorado after they sold us their house, and I assume their name is linked to our address in some gray-market/online DB. Why they wouldn't just send purchase offers direct to the house in CO instead of what they think is the owner's primary address (ours) I don't know, but I'm sure they fire off thousands of these things and don't really care how many are accurate.
> He also provided a fake email for my brother: alexanderedwardenenson@out-look.com. Notice the subtle misspelling — “Benenson” without the second “n” in the email, and the hyphenated “out-look.com” domain.
Surely you meant "'Benenson' without the “b” in the email, and the hyphenated 'out-look.com' domain"?
This is actually a really weird mistake. It's a completely different spelling mistake than in reality, and I wonder if it's an artifact of polishing the post with AI that "corrected" something that was right (or only a vague bullet point) in the original?
(ETA: Another one: referring to "hi good morning" in the images of texts when it's actually "hi <name> good evening").
> Like most people, I’ve had my identity stolen once or twice in my life.
Is there a term for this deceitful language tactic? “Everybody knows that…” “It’s obvious that…” I think this one aggravates me the most because I feel targeted and lumped in with a group I’ve put effort into not being a part of.
Definitely raised my eyebrow. I assume he was being tongue in cheek. Reminds me of this copypasta:
“PROTIP: if you own a gun over a year without negligent discharging at least once, you aren't handling it enough. NDs are a natural part of handling weapons, just like tweaking your back is part of weightlifting and car accidents are part of driving. I ND several times a year because I actually HANDLE and know how to USE my weapons. It makes me a better firearms handler and marksman, and it's a small part of the price you pay in the sheepdog lifestyle Simple fact is, the "safety mentality" will build mental blocks in your head that will get you killed. You need to be comfortable putting your finger on the trigger and pointing the gun wherever you want no matter the time, place, or status of the weapon. Taking time to check whether the gun is loaded whenever you pick one up will serve to make you hesitate in a personal defense scenario”
What's unclear to me from the blog post is whether this is a problem for the property owner, or only for the buyers/attorneys/relators/insurances involved on the other side of the scam?
It seems like in most cases the scammer pockets the earnest money deposit and that's it, in some cases, the buyer thinks they actually bought the property but they haven't actually (how does that work in terms of the deed?)
Seems like the worst case outcome for vacant land is "free house"?
Edit: based on the comments, the problem for the property owner is the headache and cost associated with cleaning the mess up. You don't lose the property but a fraudulent title change (?) can actually end up in the registry, which can be cleaned up but is a major PITA.
Since you've discovered law enforcement isn't interested in enforcing the law, you need to set up your own sting and get the scammer to show up where you can arrest them after they commit a crime in your presence.
The scammer will show up to a bar in Bucharest. They are probably not even legally allowed in the U.S.
None of this scam requires the scammer to be in the U.S.
Even the New York driver's license, even if it is real, could be muled. More likely it is just a photoshop.
And even if they do show up to the meet, what are you going to do? Call the police? Will they even show up quickly? When they do, whose photo ID will the believe? Seems like a good way to spend a night at the station while the police sort some things out.
There's a pretty interesting Japanese show called Tokyo Swindlers that covers some real estate fraud in Tokyo. Not particularly realistic as far as I know but I enjoyed it.
This is interesting! A fraudulent deed on your title doesn’t change rights, but it might require you to clarify them in court, which is costly and inconvenient. Traditional title insurance only covered addressing clouds on title that existed when you acquired, meaning post-acquisition clouds would be your problem, but supposedly there is an enhanced coverage that title insurance companies offer as well, and the decision to surface the difference (at least where I live) lands with the closing attorney… who isn’t actually required to do or say anything about this….
I wouldn't say it has nothing to do with the article. A real estate agent selling your land on behalf of someone that isn't you is roughly analogous to a bank giving credit in your name to someone who isn't you. Either way, someone who isn't you got scammed by someone else who also isn't you, but somehow this is your problem.
This doesn't make sense, earnest money would be in escrow until the title clears. The scammer would never have access to the earnest money, nor would it ever get transferred to them unless the buyer took too long to close, or didn't come up with funds?? Like the title company would almost have to be involved for this to work.
The title is often actually transfered, and it is a mess to clean up.
You could walk into a court house and submit paperwork for filing, that transfers the title - all without any kind of sale or verification. It happens.
Hmm, I guess you technically just need to convince a notary that you're the seller and with virtual closings/ mobile notaries I guess that's probably pretty easy.
But still the scammer would never see the earnest money, unless the buyer backed out outside of an option period for whatever reason. Presumably they wouldn't if the land is cheap, and they've agreed to pay cash and put earnest money down.
Yeah I wonder if this entire "scam" is a scammer's urban legend, where one scammer brags that they successfully executed it and all the rest try it a few times and eventually give up. Sort of like the search for pirate gold.
This was extremely common as a scam in Kenya, the solution there was an extraordinarily simple tactic:
Put up a big "This property is not for sale" sign on the land.
I have had people show up at my house to ask if it was for rent, based on a fake post on Facebook using photos from Zillow from before my home was sold.
My realtor helped me get the photos taken down, but the Facebook ads for it are up to this day. Facebook completely ignores any and all attempts by me to report this malfeasance -- even though these ads literally have my personal home address on them!
It's a huge safety risk to me and not due to anything I did whatsoever; all I did was buy a house that was on the market and then move into it. It's a nightmare.
I would contact Facebook legal directly with documents showing the problem. Legal’s job is always to minimize liability for the company, and they have levers they can pull in any organization, no matter how “hyper scale” they claim to be.
Bonus points for figuring out the correct language to use to imply repercussions for failure to act without any actual threats. Patio11 has written about similarly worded letters with regards to debt collections and banking, and I know that there are all kinds of magic incantations in law for all kinds of transgretions.
"Patio11" itself is a magic incantion for your friendly neighborhood LLM, along with "dangerous professional". You can use these to prompt for suitable language in the email, as well as other courses of action.
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This is good advice and probably an avenue I need to explore, thank you.
how much of your time do these visits take up, can you document it and then sue Facebook in small claims court for your time and effort? This seems a stretch but maybe it could be made to work, it could be amusing if so.
Facebook admits around 10% of their ads are fraudulent. I think it's much higher.
The scam is even larger than you see and exploits missing children reports. There are huge automated scam networks that post missing children reports then get people to share them. Then once the post/ad gets traction they change it to a listing of a house that is auto pulled from public information. They then use that to scam people.
PleasantGreen has a series on it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uud0wTAOxSc
A leaked Facebook document showed they know which ads are fraudulent because the ad system is programmed to never show those ads to the ad regulators, and it's most of the ads.
What is the point of listing a house that isn’t for sale, though?
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1. Author lost me at his first sentence: "Like most people, I’ve had my identity stolen once or twice in my life." I am careful and aware of this possibility, but AFAIK I have not experienced this, nor have "most people" I know. o_O Crazy times.
2. I don't even understand how a title transfer could happen without verifying ownership. Is the title system in the USA decentralized or that much different than elsewhere? i.e. Torrens-style
I'm equally careful and aware. Years ago, now, I discovered that someone in New Mexico (if I recall correctly) was working under my Social Security number. That was likely someone not authorized to work in the US writing random digits on an I9 form. No amount of care will protect against that.
It wasn't easy to clear up, either. I'm fortunate that a close friend worked (at the time) for the SS administration, and was able to do basically all of the leg-work for me: I just had to sign a few forms he sent me. Someone not equally connected would have had a much harder time.
I'm also painfully aware that effectively every scrap of everyone's personal data has been repeatedly leaked online. I doubt that any amount of care has much to do with whether or not I'll be targeted at some point in the future.
Social security numbers are not unique. In the old days, mistakes would happen, and some people would get the same one.
This person could have been an illegal, but there is a non-zero chance you just both had the same one. It does happen, or at least did.
>That was likely someone not authorized to work in the US writing random digits on an I9 form.
I used to work a job years ago with lots of people who snuck in here. In order to get the job they needed to provide a social. Not having any idea wtf a social security number was, just that they needed one, it was a relief when someone they lived with or met on the street informed them that xyz at location abc will sell you one for $100.
That's one spot where the identity theft rubber meets the road. And practically everyone's social has been leaked by now.
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I remember a friend's boyfriend lost his wallet in mexico.
she said the next few years he got many tax returns, apparently several people using his legitimate ssn.
does that mean someone was paying into your social security, essentially boosting your benefit amount when the time comes?
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I'm surprised I haven't had more problems with identity theft. Equifax handed all our financial information to criminals a decade ago. Then last year the US government handed all our financial information to a con man.
In the dark old days before Apple Pay, where it was common in America to hand your credit/debit card to some rando at a restaurant and have them disappear with it for a few minutes, about once a year my bank would call me to ask if I'd been using my card in some far-off locale:
"Hi! Are you in Tijuana?"
"Not since 1993. Why? What's up?"
"So you didn't just try to buy gasoline at a PEMEX there?"
"Nope, I'm in San Francisco as speak."
"OK, thanks! We'll get a new card out in the mail to you."
That's a pretty low bar for identity theft, but I think it's defensible.
I think tap-to-pay terminals that the server carries now eliminate more of this. but occasionally I have to give my card over.
On the other hand, stolen credit cards were kept by the restaurant and they got a reward.
Nowadays I don't think there is ANY checking of whose card is being used.
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Handing your credit card to pay is still such a foreign concept to me
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Remember when credit cards required your signature on the back?
I’ve been using debit and credit cards since long before the ‘dark old days’ ended (1992? 1993? Long before debit cards were a common thing), and I still hand my card to anyone who needs it to do their job. I’ve had identity theft happen a grand total of never.
Anecdotes are worthless.
You must have been going to some very shady restaurants. I still hand off my credit card to a rando. I did it today. I did it last weekend. I've never had this problem.
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I've been using a debit card since the Dubya administration and I have never had someone use my card after I ate at a restaurant. I assume you live in a big metro area?
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> Is the title system in the USA decentralized or that much different than elsewhere?
As with most things both law-related and US-related, it depends. This type of scam would not work in the majority of states due to various laws, regulations, and bookkeeping (it would be nearly* impossible to sell land you don’t own in California for example).
There are other states (and countries - I’m looking at you Canada) where fraudulent documentation and virtually non-existent title checks allow this kind of fraud to persist.
[*] yes - virtually, not completely. It can happen, but the laws are set up such that the land owner will retain their land, the title fraud victim will be made whole financially by a title insurance company. What this means in practice is that title insurance companies make sure every transaction is legitimate and people don’t have to worry about it.
So the scam here doesn't seem to be ACTUALLY selling the land--it's basically engaging a realtor long enough to get earnest money on the table, then to disappear. Although if they could go far enough to get an entire amount wired to them I'm sure they'd take it.
Since a lot of people are doing all cash (non-financed) deals lately, I could see how a scammer and a lax realtor could possibly scam an overzealous buyer out of the full amount.
Though I think there's way less of this issue in Japan because there are a lot of gov't-involving procedures and record ownership in land ownership transfers making it quite hard to go all the way(and hey, even in the US you have title insurance), there was a bit of a wild case a couple years back where a fraudster sold a 5.5 billion yen piece of land to a major developer[0].
Fraud is always fun to look at because people are constantly looking for those little windows of trust that end up forming in these flows because otherwise everything would take months to execute upon.
[0]:https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20181121/p2a/00m/0na/00...
Unlike most common law jurisdictions, the United States doesn't have a central land registry due to lobbying from the title insurance industry.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torrens_title#United_States
No, the United States doesnt have a central land registry because that is not an enumerated power of the federal government. The individual states have sovereignty over their own land and each has its own system for land registration. The article you linked to even names several states that have a partial Torrens title system.
The claim that the title insurance industry is the reason for lack of adoption of Torrens title schemes is uncited, and immediately followed by descriptions of several cases where Torrens title was adopted (often poorly) and later abandoned.
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I wonder why a commercial entity that registers ownership / titles for free, and bills for checking, did not spring up. Clearly there is moneyed demand for certainty about title rights, and if you can provide certainty (because the last deal was registered with you), it may be a more desirable product than mere insurance.
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Yet another example where "we can't have nice things" because entrenched businesses profit from keeping things not-nice. Title Insurance shouldn't even be a thing. This should be solvable by a database.
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For identity theft, I think at this point it depends on where you set the bar. I've never had someone clean out my checking account or anything truly large, but my wife and I have had fraudulent charges on our credit cards several times as they've been leaked out one way or another. I would not "identify" as a "identity theft victim" per se if you asked me out of the blue, because compared to some of what I've heard about, I've had nothing more than minor annoyances come out of this. But yeah, I'd guess that it's fair to say that at this point most people have had at least some sort of identity-related issue at some point.
Different people understand "theft of identity" in different ways. If someone is impersonating you on the internet, or steals your credit card info and makes purchases on your behalf, that probably qualifies.
As for the nature of the scam, there are different levels of this. Most likely, the mark is the buyer / the escrow agency.
I once had a visit from cops about dodgy cheques I had been writing. Weirdly they were more ready to believe I hadn't written the cheques, than the were about me not leaving my chequebook at a brothel I hadn't visited.
The last time I wrote a cheque I had to cross out the 19 to write in the year. I think they only gave up on that line of questioning when I provided enough evidence to say that the bank had not given me any chequebooks to lose.
I still don't really know what happened there, the best that I can think of is someone with access to the mechanism to print chequebooks was running off 'replacements' for random accounts and then passing them on to people. I'm guessing it counts as identity theft.
Identity theft is not helped by processes that demand certainty and expediency causing pressure on employees to provide both even when they are not available. In a similar credit card issue with my partner, after all of the mess of departments trying to make it other departments' problems, my partner received an email saying that; in accordance with the phone conversation, the issue had been resolved. Having had no such phone conversation this caused a bit of panic, but upon contacting the bank they said that they had tried calling but there was no answer, but they were not allowed to resolve the issue unless they had directly spoken to the customer, so she just wrote that in, otherwise it would keep on causing problems down the line.
On the other hand I have leveraged such processes to my advantage to essentially steal my own identity. For a long time I possessed no photo-id, It was actually buying a house that proved to be the intractable problem that forced me to get a passport (I also wanted to travel) . There were numerous things that required photo ID to exist even if they had not laid eyes on it themselves. It seems rather odd to me, but somehow just the idea that I have it seems enough. Luckily I was once in a situation where I needed photo ID at a time when there was sufficient context to prove my identity by other means. A staff member fudged the system to make it work. That resulted in me acquiring a form of non-photo ID that had been recorded as being verified by photo ID. I leveraged that as a form of pseudo proof-of-photo-id for a number of years.
> I still don't really know what happened there, the best that I can think of is someone with access to the mechanism to print chequebooks was running off 'replacements' for random accounts and then passing them on to people.
You can order legit cheques online from third party cheque printers to save money vs what banks charge for cheques, you don't need any insider access to get cheques printed.
I have had my identity stolen [at least] three times in the last 15 years:
* OPM Hack
* Target Hack
* Equifax Hack
I say "at least" because there have been more, but I just started ignoring them after a while. I also had it stolen back in the late 1990s; and, thinking back, that was crazy for that time period.
I have heard of title theft but I imagine it is more prominent is areas where an attorney is not required to process the sale of a house. Some states allow "title companies" to handle this process.
I'm not well versed, just passing along what I've heard from people over the years.
I have always heard the best way to make sure your title can't be stolen is to have a loan against the house so that a bank is involved. As long as a bank is involved, there are numerous additional hoops for something like that.
If you broaden the definition of "stolen identity" to "someone trying to scam either you or someone else by using details on your identity" (which this story more or less is) I think a fair many of us can claim this experience.
They're not trying to transfer ownership. They're trying to scam people out of the earnest money before a title search (ie ownership verification) happens.
Titles are very decentralized; they are likely modestly-competently managed at the county level, of which there up to 254 per state (Texas).
And identity theft is also very easy in the US. It happened to an old in my family. The state dmv happily mailed a replacement license to a completely different state without so much as checking with the person whose license it is. Just for the asking. It's absurd.
> I don't even understand how a title transfer could happen without verifying ownership.
Centralized vs decentralized isn't relevant.
The issue is that nobody wants to have one of the icky humans in the loop because they have the temerity to ask to be paid a salary.
Consequently, everybody tries to set up systems where everything can be done online with no in-person interactions ever required. This works, sorta, until the fraudsters start figuring out the seams.
But because you would have to give some icky human cash, everybody is fighting tooth and nail to revert back to having any humans moderating the problems.
The correct solution is to call this kind of thing what it is--fraud--and treat it as such. And the proper point for the liability are the companies and agencies that do nothing to prevent the fraud and not all the poor slobs.
A couple of nice big payouts where banks or agencies have to cough up to make everybody whole due to their negligence and suddenly all the systems will get much more stringent.
I also wondered why someone would own an empty lot in another town for years on end and neither build on it nor sell it.
They inheritted it and have been lazy, they bought it for an investment, they bought it because they might want to build their retirement home on it, etc. Plenty of reasons why.
I know people who have bought the land they want to retire on now. (if they will or not is a different question, but that is the current plan). I know people who own hunting land that they visit one weekend a year. There are people who own land to lease to a local farmer - many farmers have too much money tied up in land and want to lease some of it from someone else to spread the risks.
If the land is expensive you wouldn't let it sit, but there is a lot of land that isn't very valuable that you can just own if you feel like it.
I grew up on a big property and when my parents moved, they divided the land and sold the part with the house with the idea that they might build a house on the empty land upon retirement.
I'm guessing at this point that they're not going to do that, so at some point I'll probably inherit some empty land.
Optionality. There is also a lot of cheap land in the US, so it often isn't a large investment.
See I can understand this. e.g. a family asset for children, a property to build a retirement home on, a hunting property, or simply a real investment.
Buy low, sell high.
So you’re from a different country from the author and don’t know how systems work here but you’re going to judge them for having their identity stolen? Maybe if you actually had any first hand experience you’d be able to muster some empathy. Yea things are decentralized here because we have 50 different states, many more counties, and health insurance is through a mish mash of many insurers and health providers. We are all regularly asked for the exact information needed to steal identity for basic stuff. I got a new dentist last month who has my date of birth, ssn, and home address. I’m going to tell him to stuff it and find a better dentist by, what? Calling around and asking if they require an ssn?
I have also never been the victim of identity theft but if you live here you would know luck plays a major role, always.
If you want to marinate in the superiority of you home country you are welcome to. Maybe don’t post on foreign message boards then.
Update - just tonight got a letter from a company called Conduent disclosing my medical billing records were compromised more than a year ago. Offering me “free” credit monitoring.
What about sinking 3 2x4s into the ground and nailing a 4x8 sheet of plywood with a tastefully painted sign indicating the property is not for sale?
It won't stop everyone but any realtor doing due diligence will likely see it. If is lasts long enough, it will show up on Google street view as well.
I think these days the easiest thing is to take a HELOC loan backed by the property. Do not withdraw money from HELOC and pay the $125/year fee. This puts a lien on the property. (The article alluded to this solution by noting these scammers avoid properties with a mortgage).
I eas thinking of purposefully not paying some kind of invoice to trigger a lien but this way seems more legitimate
great
now you made banks interested in supporting these scams
A motivated attacker need only don a green safety vest and hard hat, then roll up with a white pickup truck, place some orange safety cones and take down the sign with a chainsaw.
The point is that nearly all of the people doing this don't even live in the country where the land is being sold from. A simple sign would probably be quite effective
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Note that in the article, the author says how the scammers do everything to avoid having to show up in person. That's because they are in a different country and try to commit the scam without setting foot in the US.
Somewhat common in the UK as well, example: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-63392... (It took him 4 years to recover possession https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwygv79n8x1o)
Here you can register with the Land Registry and they will email you if any enquiries or attempted sales happen on your property: https://www.gov.uk/protect-land-property-from-fraud
Owning a vacant lot far from where you live seems to come with some risks. In Hawaii, a woman found out that a house was built on the wrong lot and inspectors missed it until the completed house was being sold. I'm curious if there are other proactive measures folks could take to ensure that doesn't happen to their land.
https://www.sfgate.com/hawaii/article/hawaii-home-built-on-w...
What risk? She got a free house out of it!
(The house was ordered to be demolished, but the owner and the builder reached a confidential settlement and the house is still standing to this day)
After years of legal wrangling and headaches she came to a settlement that may or may not have been her originally preferred solution.
> He gave me the standard line: 2-3 weeks if I hear from anyone.
> I never heard from anyone.
What is the FBI doing if they're not working on cases like this or domestic terrorism/mass shootings? We continue to have both classes of crimes in droves.
They're busy planning domestic terrorism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gretchen_Whitmer_kidnapping_pl...), entrapping the mentally ill (https://archive.vn/riFSI), etc.
In all seriousness, this is probably an international crime and they just do not have the resources to chase them all down.
That first link does not prove your claim
Because a lot of scammers are overseas in countries that either won't extradite and/or cooperate with investigators. Why focus on those cases when no one will face justice?
But if you do nothing, it enables people in countries that DO extradite and cooperate to get in on the fun, too. I guess that's just being nice to our allies.
The FBI does not have a mandate to investigate all reported crimes. AFAIK, no law enforcement agency does. They triage the reports, and most reports don't get investigated.
Most mass shootings don't have a lot of the FBI to investigate. The perpetrator often dies on site, so they can't be charged with anything. FBI will likely investigate if there were any co-conspirators, and may work with ATF to determine how the perpetrator obtained the firearm(s). Many times we hear that the perpetrator was "on the FBI's radar", but most of the time, there was no unlawful conduct before the shooting, so what are they supposed to do?
They are busy assisting ICE with hunting down immigrants.
Having recently been the victim of burglary, twice, I was shocked and dismayed at the lack of response from the authorities...
You end up investigating it yourself and they still don’t care. Definitely changed my view of the cops when we got robbed by our neighbor in Buffalo, NY
You're just a citizen. Why would any of the three-letter agencies work on what you need?
In the US identity theft is easier than in other countries because financial transactions are designed to be convenient, not safe. You can sell a property you own, or move your entire Fidelity savings to another bank, all without showing up in person.
For UK readers, the government land registry alert service can alert you if anyone attempts to mortgage sell properties youve registered with it:
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/property-alert
A friend owned farm land in India, he moved to Canada. The property deed was in his name.
Someone in India, with fraudulent documents "sold" his land.
He only came to know about it when he next visited India. Unfortunately he could not do much. There are people who will actively look through property records - if the person is not a local resident ( lives internationally ), then they are prime targets.
This was a decade ago - things have gotten a lot better with digital records and India's Universal ID system. But I did not realize, something like this was possible in the US.
This is very prevalent in South Africa, to the point there is a legal cottage industry around verifying original documents vs counterfits (down to fingerprint testing, chemical analysis of inks).
For years now I have been regularly receiving unsolicited offers to buy 560 Bluefields Street SE, an undeveloped lot in Palm Bay, Florida. Whether the land is actually for sale, I have no idea; I've never been anywhere near the place, and cannot imagine why anyone would believe I owned land there. I wish I could somehow redirect the speculators who won't stop pestering me to scammers like the ones in this tale, so they would leave me in peace and all go harass each other instead.
I suspect that the speculators are scammers anyway: they never respond to my questions.
Check who used to own your place and who owns that lot now and see if any names line up.
I still receive occasional postcards from real estate mogul wannabes for a property out in Colorado (I'm in PA). The previous owners of our house moved to Colorado after they sold us their house, and I assume their name is linked to our address in some gray-market/online DB. Why they wouldn't just send purchase offers direct to the house in CO instead of what they think is the owner's primary address (ours) I don't know, but I'm sure they fire off thousands of these things and don't really care how many are accurate.
> He also provided a fake email for my brother: alexanderedwardenenson@out-look.com. Notice the subtle misspelling — “Benenson” without the second “n” in the email, and the hyphenated “out-look.com” domain.
Surely you meant "'Benenson' without the “b” in the email, and the hyphenated 'out-look.com' domain"?
This is actually a really weird mistake. It's a completely different spelling mistake than in reality, and I wonder if it's an artifact of polishing the post with AI that "corrected" something that was right (or only a vague bullet point) in the original?
(ETA: Another one: referring to "hi good morning" in the images of texts when it's actually "hi <name> good evening").
It is so bizarre that I start to think this is a non-human mistake.
(No I'm not looking at that em-dash)
I had to re-read the email twice and concluded the same.
> Like most people, I’ve had my identity stolen once or twice in my life.
Is there a term for this deceitful language tactic? “Everybody knows that…” “It’s obvious that…” I think this one aggravates me the most because I feel targeted and lumped in with a group I’ve put effort into not being a part of.
Definitely raised my eyebrow. I assume he was being tongue in cheek. Reminds me of this copypasta:
“PROTIP: if you own a gun over a year without negligent discharging at least once, you aren't handling it enough. NDs are a natural part of handling weapons, just like tweaking your back is part of weightlifting and car accidents are part of driving. I ND several times a year because I actually HANDLE and know how to USE my weapons. It makes me a better firearms handler and marksman, and it's a small part of the price you pay in the sheepdog lifestyle Simple fact is, the "safety mentality" will build mental blocks in your head that will get you killed. You need to be comfortable putting your finger on the trigger and pointing the gun wherever you want no matter the time, place, or status of the weapon. Taking time to check whether the gun is loaded whenever you pick one up will serve to make you hesitate in a personal defense scenario”
maybe "appeal to popularity"
It suggests that a claim is true simply because many people believe it to be true
What's unclear to me from the blog post is whether this is a problem for the property owner, or only for the buyers/attorneys/relators/insurances involved on the other side of the scam?
It seems like in most cases the scammer pockets the earnest money deposit and that's it, in some cases, the buyer thinks they actually bought the property but they haven't actually (how does that work in terms of the deed?)
Seems like the worst case outcome for vacant land is "free house"?
Edit: based on the comments, the problem for the property owner is the headache and cost associated with cleaning the mess up. You don't lose the property but a fraudulent title change (?) can actually end up in the registry, which can be cleaned up but is a major PITA.
Since you've discovered law enforcement isn't interested in enforcing the law, you need to set up your own sting and get the scammer to show up where you can arrest them after they commit a crime in your presence.
The scammer will show up to a bar in Bucharest. They are probably not even legally allowed in the U.S.
None of this scam requires the scammer to be in the U.S.
Even the New York driver's license, even if it is real, could be muled. More likely it is just a photoshop.
And even if they do show up to the meet, what are you going to do? Call the police? Will they even show up quickly? When they do, whose photo ID will the believe? Seems like a good way to spend a night at the station while the police sort some things out.
A relatively obvious photoshop, unless the date of issue is printed diagonally on genuine ones.
Sadly, incredibly common. It's a shame we don't have better protections for this by now.
Here's another I remember reading recently. I feel sorry for both parties and not sure how I think that should be adjudicated...
https://www.businessinsider.com/property-fraud-lawsuit-fairf...
There's a pretty interesting Japanese show called Tokyo Swindlers that covers some real estate fraud in Tokyo. Not particularly realistic as far as I know but I enjoyed it.
Is this what happened with Graceland?
I wonder if you could take a lien against yourself, it would show up for any potential buyer...
Is this something a title insurance could help with?
Title insurance protects the buyer. It doesn't protect the owner.
Also, as mentioned in another post, lobbying from title insurance companies is the reason the US doesn't have a central registry. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torrens_title#United_States
This is interesting! A fraudulent deed on your title doesn’t change rights, but it might require you to clarify them in court, which is costly and inconvenient. Traditional title insurance only covered addressing clouds on title that existed when you acquired, meaning post-acquisition clouds would be your problem, but supposedly there is an enhanced coverage that title insurance companies offer as well, and the decision to surface the difference (at least where I live) lands with the closing attorney… who isn’t actually required to do or say anything about this….
Does title insurance cover it if the sale actually goes through?
>slightly awkward phrasing (“Hi good morning”)
That's a dead giveaway that you're talking to an ESOL European, "hello good morning" or "hello good evening".
Needs to be a new HTTP status code to go along with 418. Never mind that it doesn't start with the right number.
Also I'm sure glad that scammer didn't manage to buy that cannon!
Another story of a title transfer scam: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/title-pirates/id290783...
6. If questioned, they disappear.
Seems like this isn't really a problem? Who sells land without questions?
I was thinking the same, but IIUC they are expecting to get away only with the reserve money, not the full price.
Periodic reminder that "identity theft" is the financial system gaslighting you into thinking their poor decisions are your fault.
We don't even need the term "identity theft". We already have a perfectly good word for than: "fraud".
This is a Mad Libs autopilot reply which has nothing to do with the article.
I wouldn't say it has nothing to do with the article. A real estate agent selling your land on behalf of someone that isn't you is roughly analogous to a bank giving credit in your name to someone who isn't you. Either way, someone who isn't you got scammed by someone else who also isn't you, but somehow this is your problem.
That's why I downvoted and flagged it -- along with your content-free response.
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This doesn't make sense, earnest money would be in escrow until the title clears. The scammer would never have access to the earnest money, nor would it ever get transferred to them unless the buyer took too long to close, or didn't come up with funds?? Like the title company would almost have to be involved for this to work.
The title is often actually transfered, and it is a mess to clean up.
You could walk into a court house and submit paperwork for filing, that transfers the title - all without any kind of sale or verification. It happens.
Hmm, I guess you technically just need to convince a notary that you're the seller and with virtual closings/ mobile notaries I guess that's probably pretty easy.
But still the scammer would never see the earnest money, unless the buyer backed out outside of an option period for whatever reason. Presumably they wouldn't if the land is cheap, and they've agreed to pay cash and put earnest money down.
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Yeah I wonder if this entire "scam" is a scammer's urban legend, where one scammer brags that they successfully executed it and all the rest try it a few times and eventually give up. Sort of like the search for pirate gold.
Huh? It's not as common. I don't think I've been victim of it ever, unless it's way more common in some other countries?
Much less on a property deal where identity and ownership are heavily scrutinized.
The FBI won't get involved unless it's politically advantageous.