Title Theft & Deed Fraud Articles

New York Attorney General Letitia James today announced the indictment of five members of a deed theft ring. The defendants impersonated the real homeowners of these properties by using forged driver's licenses and social security cards. They then used that forged information at contract signings and closings on the properties and forged the real owners’ signatures on deeds and real estate contracts.  

Arizona is seeing a rise in deed fraud schemes in which entire homes are sold out from under the rightful owners. The process for regaining ownership can be long and costly. The main targets are houses without a mortgage that are vacant or used for vacation rentals, and the victims are usually corporations or out-of-state homeowners.  

A woman found out her property in a South Memphis neighborhood was no longer in her name after someone reportedly forged her signature and took ownership. Dyson says without her knowledge, someone went to the Shelby County Register of Deeds office in March 2020 and handed over a quit claim deed, which is a fast way to transfer property. 

Five people who city prosecutors said Monday had been arrested on charges that they used forged deeds to steal houses. They face counts of fraud, conspiracy, and other offenses in the alleged theft of 11 properties, all but two in North Philadelphia. Most of the allegedly fraudulent transactions were certified by notary Demeshia Harris-Bey, 42, who is also among those charged. Also charged was Harris-Bey’s husband, Robert Harris-Bey, 58; he and his wife are accused in the theft of nine of the properties. 

The Watchdog surveyed the county clerks in Dallas, Denton, Collin and Tarrant counties. I also talked to the company that bombards us with advertising. I have experience covering this. A decade ago, I told the story of Norris Fisher, who stole 170 homes in Tarrant County (some kind of record) before he was shipped off to prison. So yeah, it’s real. Crooks can forge names and use fake notary public seals and change the ownership of your house without you knowing it. 

The COVID-19 pandemic created unprecedented access for cybercriminals to prey upon Americans who are shopping, working and doing virtually everything online – from home. The crime is Home Title Fraud. Cyber-criminals, foreign and domestic target our homes. Why? Because they stand to gain tens, even hundreds of thousands by taking over the title to your home. But it doesn’t just stop there. Cyber-criminals can literally have you evicted from your home. 

Deed fraud isn't a new idea. This problem has been around for decades, most commonly with vacant property and especially involving deceased property owners, but is becoming increasingly popular in blighted areas with a large number of vacant, zombie properties leaving property owners and investors at risk.

When family members of Lycienne Prince Barber were about to sell their dead relative’s two duplexes in Biscayne Park, they made a startling discovery. During the prerequisite title and lien searches on the properties, they found that a 55-year-old man had filed two warranty deeds transferring ownership of the properties to his own name in February and March of this year.  

Cybercrime has soared during the pandemic, with hacks, breaches and scams hitting unprecedented highs. You know hackers are waiting to pounce while you’re working, shopping and spending time online. What you don’t know is that you’re open to a type of theft you’ve probably never heard of: home title fraud.

A Cuyahoga County Grand Jury has indicted three men accused of using forged documents to steal and then attempt to sell houses across Cleveland and Garfield Heights. Dwayne Mitchell, David Garner and Maquis Lomax were charged in a 15-count indictment accusing the men of forgery, tampering with records, grand theft, theft and identity fraud.

A woman in Galien, Michigan falling victim to title fraud. She was making payments on a house only to learn it was secretly sold to someone else. She had a legal land contract with a 91-year-old woman who owns the home. Each month Joy made payments so she could one day own the home herself. 

A Florida man was sentenced to prison for trying to steal a new $219,000 home by snatching and filing a signed deed without signing loan documents. A jury convicted him in September of grand theft and filing a false document against real property. 

In 2019, homeowners submitted 118 deed fraud reports. At that rate, we will receive about the same number in 2019 as 2018. While we don’t anticipate an increase over 2018, which is encouraging, the numbers remain too high. Statistics don’t tell the whole story. Who are the victims? Deed fraud disproportionately affects people of color and the elderly, often the city’s most vulnerable residents. 

Winston Gregory Hall, a 37-year-old from East Flatbush was convicted by a jury on Wednesday in front of Justice Danny Chun of grand larceny and other charges after stealing the house owned by his 84-year-old neighbor by forging a deed and other documents that transferred ownership of the property to a trust. 

A 34-year-old Sherman Oaks man accused of involvement in a Southern California mortgage fraud scheme with West Hollywood resident Patrick Joseph Soria pleaded not guilty Wednesday in an Orange County courtroom to nearly five dozen felony charges.

The New Yorker Hotel is locked in a court battle with a man it says is a shameless freeloader who scored a year rent-free under an obscure legal loophole — and then filed a phony deed to commandeer the entire Midtown building.

Law enforcement sources tell TMZ ... 59-year-old Ronald Eugene Griffin first showed up at an L.A. property owned by the actress in January and allegedly fiddled with the locks, but took off when he was approached by Halle's gardener.

First American Financial Corp., one of the largest U.S. title insurers, may have allowed unauthorized access to more than 885 million records related to mortgage deals going back to 2003, according to a security researcher.

When a data leak like this occurs, it can be hard to tell just how severe it is. Without question, it's a troubling occurrence and does not inspire confidence in First American's capabilities to protect customer data.  What makes it challenging to fully understand how widespread the effect of this leak is the fact that this information simply sat exposed online.

Krebs reports that the exposed records included Social Security numbers, driver's license images, bank account numbers and statements, mortgage and tax documents, and wire transaction receipts—an absolute treasure trove for any scammer or identity thief.

First American Financial Corporation, a provider of title insurance, said Friday that it had fixed a vulnerability in its website that exposed 885 million records related to mortgage deals going back 16 years. The vulnerability would have allowed anyone to gain access to Social Security numbers, bank account details, drivers license and mortgage and tax records.

Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney Daniel Kinney says that in the “Home Title Fraud” Scam, the crooks impersonate the homeowner so they can refinance or sell the victim’s property for their own benefit. They first obtain the homeowner’s personal information through identity theft or by stealing mail.

Documents filed in Forsyth County Superior Court on April 8, state that David Potskhveracvili, 50, of Milton has been indicted by a grand jury for two charges of, “unlawful act in connection with registration of title to land” for allegedly forging documents and transferring ownership of two west Forsyth residences to himself by a quit claim deed on Oct. 12, 2017.

After allegedly stealing nearly two dozen properties in Philadelphia, three foreign nationals appear to have fled the country with their profits, the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office says. Assistant District Attorney Kimberly Esack said the three men stole the houses with forged deeds between April 2017 and June 2018.

Two Long Island men were indicted Thursday on charges of  trying to steal two homes from property owners in Brooklyn and Queens, state Attorney General Letitia James said. One of the homes is  on 95th Street in Brownsville, Brooklyn; the other is on 138th Avenue in Laurelton, Queens, she said, announcing the duo had been indicted on charges of grand larceny and offering a false instrument for filing.

Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office has accused a 50-year-old man of using forged deeds and notary stamps to steal six properties in the city’s booming Point Breeze neighborhood. Housing theft has grown as more neighborhoods have gentrified. The city Records Department logged 136 complaints of deed fraud last year, nearly doubling from the previous year.

The NBC10 Investigators take a look at a scam that's targeting Philadelphia property owners. Curtis Simmons still remembers the place his grandfather lived until his death in 2002: a small building he owned in the Graduate Hospital section of Philadelphia that held a modest apartment a garage workshop.

A large breach of mortgage data that has exposed the personal financial information of tens of thousands of borrowers raises key consumer questions: What happens to all those disclosures we make after we apply for and obtain a home loan — our tax returns, Social Security numbers, credit card accounts, bank account numbers and detailed summaries of our assets?

A trove of more than 24 million financial and banking documents, representing tens of thousands of loans and mortgages from some of the biggest banks in the U.S., has been found online after a server security lapse. The database wasn’t protected with a password, allowing anyone to access and read the massive cache of documents.

A man hired to help care for his elderly diabetic neighbor has been indicted for allegedly stealing and trying to sell the senior citizen's East New York home. Jordan Horsford, 29, was indicted on Wednesday on 12 counts, including grand larceny and identity theft.

A loophole in Kansas law has allowed a murderer serving a life sentence to file bogus deeds, claiming ownership of properties including the defunct Joyland amusement park, the former Greyhound bus station and the Wellness Center veterans home, Sedgwick County officials said. And there’s little anyone can do about it.

‘If someone wants to find my Social Security number, it will take them exactly $3 and five minutes,’ a data security specialist said. So much stolen data is available on the dark web, people shouldn’t worry whether their information has been swiped...Every American person should assume all of their data is out there.

Hundreds of Brooklynites have been the victims of deed theft and potentially illegal evictions that rob them of their homes, according to local politicians who are demanding a federal investigation. Deed fraud and mortgage foreclosures have reached a crisis moment in Brooklyn. We must do more to ensure that bad actors and government programs are not forcing seniors and low-income residents out of their homes.

In 2008 when title theft was still uncommon, the FBI posted a notice about this house stealing scam, telling homeowners what to watch out for. A few years later in 2012, the California Department of Real Estate issued a consumer alert about the rising number of fraudulent property deeds and noted that the county recorder is not responsible...

A Phoenix man has plead guilty to fraud and money laundering in a real estate scam that involved claiming title to Valley residents' homes. Daniel Barraza Nevarez filed quitclaim deeds illegally transferring ownership in Paradise Valley, Scottsdale and Phoenix homes between November 2017 and February 2018, according to the Arizona Attorney General's Office.

Jon Richard Rattray of Gilbert has been indicted for fraud, money laundering, identity theft and forgery. He's suspected of taking out multiple mortgages on metro Phoenix homes to tap their equity and then filing documents to hide the loans. The owner of Hawkeye Real Estate Services LLC would then take out more loans on the homes or sell them to buyers...

Three years ago, Tonya Bell went to City Hall and discovered that she was dead. And that her house had been stolen. She learned these things when she looked at the deed for a property she owned in Germantown. In the deed, she had been declared dead by a man she had never heard of.  He had named himself her sole heir and taken ownership of her house for $1.

Wifredo A. Ferrer, United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, George L. Piro, Special Agent in Charge, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Miami Field Office, and Drew J. Breakspear, Commissioner, Florida Office of Financial Regulation, announce that Karl Oreste, 56, of Miramar, pled guilty today before U.S. District Judge Robert N. Scola, Jr.,...

Inspectors with the U.S. Postal Inspection Service (USPIS) arrested Norris Lynn Fisher, 62, on a mail fraud charge, announced U.S. Attorney James T. Jacks of the Northern District of Texas. Fisher was arrested at his home in Fort Worth, without incident, and appeared before U.S. Magistrate...

Sandra Elaine Barton, 30, Fresno, California, Christopher Spencer Barton, 31, Fresno, California, Daniel Paul Vedenoff, 29, Fresno, California, Sheldon W. Feigel, 50, Fresno, California, and Craig Merrill Mortensen, Fresno, California, were arrested and charged with 288 felony counts including perjury, filing false court records and preparing false evidence. The five individuals arrested were booked into...

SACRAMENTO, CA - The California Department of Real Estate (DRE) issued a Consumer Alert last week about the growing number of scams that involve forged or fraudulent property deeds and what consumers can do to protect themselves against such fraud. The DRE is a state department whose mission is to protect the public interests in real estate...

In 2013, Head was convicted in two jury trials of two conspiracies to commit mail fraud in connection with nationwide "foreclosure rescue" scams. He was also convicted of seven counts of mail fraud. According to evidence presented at trial and at his sentencing hearing, Head was the CEO of a group of brokerage and financial companies in Orange County and Los Angeles County: Head Financial Services, Creative Loans, and others.

One of the growing concerns for county recorders throughout the United States is the increase in property fraud. To prove the point about how easy it is to perpetrate this kind of property fraud, the Daily News in New York stole the Empire State Building as a prank last December. They did return it.

A felon who stuck more than a thousand homeowners in Arizona and California with bogus liens as part of a credit-collection scam has been sentenced to 10 years in prison. How Jeff McCoon ended up behind bars has less to do with the liens he filed than a set of circumstances that took seven years to...

NBC 5's Lisa Parker gets at the heart of the problem with property and recording fraud: criminals and bad actors abusing the open recording system and a collective sense of honesty on which we all rely. Because homeowner's can't "freeze" their property titles and because County Recorders aren't allowed by law to verify legal claims...