In late March, the FBI warned of the newest form of identity theft: house stealing. The crime often works like this: A group or an individual finds a vacant home. They look up the deed information. They briefly steal the current owner’s identity (or create a fake one if the home has been foreclosed on) and create IDs, driver’s licenses, etc. They quickly sell the house for sometimes rock-bottom prices, because either way they profit tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Real Estate Investor · Charleston, SC · Member since 2008 · 156 posts · 37 votes
18y
This is why I am such an advocate of title insurance and why I am so opposed to the "kitchen table closings".
My attorney told me of a case where a home owner who wanted to sell his dilapidated property switched the house numbers with a rehabbed house next door to which he had access. He showed the RE investor the rehabbed house, but the address on the paper referred to his badly kept house. When the deal was done, the investor had no title insurance and could not prove a case for fraud since all of the documents matched to the house that was actually sold including the investors' own Purchase and sales Agreement.
Some of these thieves are smarter than the rest of us!