How Scammers Could Sell Your Land (Without You Knowing)

(MUSIC INTRO)

[00:00:01] Bob: This week on The Perfect Scam.

[00:00:03] Daniel Kenigsberg: He said, "Oh by the way, I see they're building a house next to your old house." So the only place you can build a house next to my old house would have been on my land... This property, the last time I saw it, was like woods, big, big trees, dense woods. You couldn't walk through it.

[00:00:18] Bob: Somebody cut down a dozen trees or?

[00:00:20] Daniel Kenigsberg: They must have cut down hundreds of trees.

(MUSIC SEGUE)

[00:00:25] Bob: Welcome back to The Perfect Scam. I'm your host, Bob Sullivan. Maybe you heard the crazy story this spring about Graceland, Elvis's home, being put up for auction largely based on forged loan documents. A last-minute lawsuit put a stop to that but fake documents have been used to buy and sell real property and today's story is an example of that which is just crazy. Daniel grew up in Fairfield, Connecticut, and still owned property there. It was essentially his childhood backyard. But when he went home recently to visit a sick friend, a developer had cleared the land and was halfway through building a luxury home on it. How could something like this happen? And how would this kind of mess ever get untangled? Keep listening.

[00:01:16] Bob: I went to Fairfield for college, so I have a lot of affection for Fairfield.

[00:01:19] Daniel Kenigsberg: Oh, okay. So you had a Fairfield year?

[00:01:21] Bob: I did, I did.

[00:01:22] Daniel Kenigsberg: Well when I was a child, I don't know if you know this about Fairfield U, but when I was a child the New York Giants' summer training camp was at Fairfield University, so you could just go over there as a child and see all the New York Giants like Frank Gifford and YA Tittle, and all of those.

[00:01:38] Bob: So obviously you went, right?

[00:01:39] Daniel Kenigsberg: Yeah, as a kid, sure.

[00:01:40] Bob: I think when people think of Fairfield now, they basically think of, it's, you know, kind of like Bronx north, right, it's big, a big part of the New York Metropolitan area, but when you grew up, it wasn't quite like that, right?

[00:01:50] Daniel Kenigsberg: Towns like say Greenwich or Stanford or Darien, these I think were kind of like you know, bedroom communities of people who worked in New York City. There weren't that many people out as far as Fairfield, the town of Fairfield, that actually commuted to Manhattan every day.

[00:02:13] Bob: Growing up in the 1950s, it's fair to say that Fairfield was fairly rural at the time, and even today you'll spot plenty of stone fences in what some might call the first New England town as you head up the I-95 corridor.

[00:02:29] Daniel Kenigsberg: I actually moved into this home on my first birthday.

[00:02:32] Bob: Um, so you lived there until you were how old?

[00:02:34] Daniel Kenigsberg: I lived there until I went to uh college.

[00:02:38] Bob: When his dad bought the place, it was actually two lots with plenty of space. Daniel lived in a house on one lot and the vacant lot next door was a wooded playground.

[00:02:50] Daniel Kenigsberg: This whole area in 1953 was kind of undeveloped. The, this is obviously a postwar America and there were a lot of people who were young professionals, who were young business people who were starting out and starting their families in the area, and one thing about not only the town of Fairfield, but Fairfield County, is that it was somewhat restricted as to where people could live based on their religion or ethnicity. But for a lot of Jewish professionals, like my father who was a physician, he wanted to live in Fairfield and this particular plot of land was a farm and kind of a combination of a farm and an orchard, which had been in operation since 1716 believe it or not.

[00:03:41] Bob: Wow.

[00:03:41] Daniel Kenigsberg: That's 1-7-1-6. It belonged to the Parmlee family. And their house, that house from 1716 was kind of in our backyard, and is still there, and the Parmlee's were selling their land in the early 1950s real estate developers, and so here was a totally new uh neighborhood that was going to arise and so most of the people who were buying and building houses there were kind of Jewish professionals, be they, you know, uh, physicians or, again, business people, or there were some people on my block who were engineers. Um, uh but the neighborhood was way, way more than 50% Jewish, that's kind of the sociology of it because there were, you know there were other neighborhoods in Fairfield, Connecticut, that wouldn't sell you a house. It affected why they bought in that part of Fairfield and it also I think led to you know a lot of cohesion in that neighborhood because the majority of the fathers had served in the second World War. I was actually just thinking about this because it's almost June 6th, which is D-Day, and like you know my father went over on the third day of D-Day and you know, but that wasn't, that was pretty typical. You know almost all the fathers were veterans of the second World War. And they were all having children at about the same time, so I had this big cohort of children and many of us uh were also uh you know going through the same synagogues and uh uh, you know, obviously grammar schools, and so there was a lot of cohesion in this neighborhood and indeed, you know, a lot of people I grew up with still kind of live around there.

[00:05:23] Bob: So it should be clear why that property means so much to Daniel.

[00:05:29] Daniel Kenigsberg: Running around the neighborhood, going in and out of other people's houses, uh, everybody you know the dogs, dogs not being on leash, you know if you had a pet, the pet would be running all over the neighborhood with the children and yeah, it was very idyllic.

[00:05:43] Bob: Of course. You know it's not just a piece of land, right?

[00:05:46] Daniel Kenigsberg: Yeah, it's, it's funny. I mean this, this has really come kind of roaring back because you know I just also had my 50th college reunion and it's kind of strange to me that it's been much more emotional for me to, to see people that I was with when I was say between the ages of 5 and 10 than to see people I was with between the ages of 18 and 22. So it's a very different relationship.

[00:06:11] Bob: I mean your friends who were, when you're 5 and 6, that's your whole life.

[00:06:15] Daniel Kenigsberg: Yeah.

[00:06:17] Bob: Daniel now lives on Long Island where he enjoys a really successful medical career. Long Island isn't far from Fairfield as the crow flies, or as the ferry sails, but it's a world apart in the New York Metro area. The family finally sold their childhood home a few years ago when Daniel's brother died, but Daniel decided to hold onto the vacant woodland next door. He planned to give the land to his children someday, so he pays his property taxes on the land once a year, but otherwise doesn't think much about it until an old childhood friend calls one day.

[00:06:54] Daniel Kenigsberg: The call is about another childhood friend, also in the neighborhood, who was in hospice. So this is a friend who uh, you know had advanced cancer and he thought I might want to know that, I might want to say goodbye to him. And so in informing me about this he just said, you know, he's somebody who still lives locally, he said, "Oh by the way, I see they're building a house next to your old house." So the only place you can build a house next to my old house would have been on my land.

[00:07:27] Bob: They're building a house next to your old house? How could that possibly be? Daniel hasn't sold the land. There must be some mistake. A big one. But Daniel is fairly certain it's not his friend making the mistake.

[00:07:42] Bob: So this friend says they're building a house on what you know to be your land. Do you think, oh, he's got to be mistaken, doesn't remember where I was, what do you think?

[00:07:50] Daniel Kenigsberg: Oh no, I, I, he's a reliable person and this is our, our neighborhood, and there's only one lot where anybody could ever build a house. And so I believed him.

[00:08:02] Bob: Yeah, I cannot imagine someone saying, "You know that land you have, there's a house going up on it." What is that like?

[00:08:08] Daniel Kenigsberg: Well, it's, it's surprising.

[00:08:11] Bob: Daniel has to go see this for himself, and he doesn't have to wait long.

[00:08:16] Bob: Um, do you, do you rush to the property to go see it? When was the first time you saw the property in its development?

[00:08:21] Daniel Kenigsberg: Well, it was actually the same day because I remember it was a Wednesday, and it turns out the hospice is only, I mean it's maybe a quarter of a mile from my house. And there's a ferry that runs across Long Island Sound from Port Jefferson, which is near here to Bridgeport, which is next to Fairfield. So uh when I get done with work that day, I took the ferry to Connecticut and I went to hospice to see my friend, and then I went around the corner to see this, you know, this house under construction.

[00:08:52] Bob: And what was that like?

[00:08:53] Daniel Kenigsberg: Well, it's, again it's a little shocking to see it in reality.

[00:09:00] Bob: Daniel, a doctor, has a bit of a gift for understatement even in the face of very bad news. But he's shocked, particularly by what's happened to that beautiful, wooded lot from his childhood.

[00:09:13] Daniel Kenigsberg: This property, the last time I saw it, was like woods, big, big trees, dense woods. You couldn't walk through it; it was really dense woods and you know it was completely scorched earth. They, they completely tore, tore it down.

[00:09:26] Bob: Ah, somebody cut down a dozen trees or...?

[00:09:27] Daniel Kenigsberg: Oh, not a dozen trees, they must have cut down hundreds of trees. I mean...

[00:09:30] Bob: Oh my God!

[00:09:31] Daniel Kenigsberg: You know, if you can imagine, it's a half an acre of growth that in 1953 was kind of like a field, but in that part of the country it just grows into woods, so you, you know, in 50 years you can grow, well it's more than 50 years, 70 years, you can grow woods, and so that's what it is. Or was.

[00:09:50] Bob: Wow.

[00:09:50] Daniel Kenigsberg: And you know and they didn't try to save any, you know it's not like they tried to like save some of these trees for, you know, the property, the landscaping, they just did scorched earth.

[00:10:00] Bob: You had spent your childhood playing in these trees, right?

[00:10:03] Daniel Kenigsberg: Well, actually, when I was a young child, it was really more like a field, you know with high grass and small trees. There, on one edge of it, one edge of it there was still an apple tree, but there were, from when it was an orchard, but it still had apples on it, and I had a tree fort in that tree. But...

[00:10:20] Bob: You had a tree fort in the apple tree.

[00:10:21] Daniel Kenigsberg: Yeah.

[00:10:22] Bob: It's jaw-dropping to see a home being built where his old tree fort was. On land he owns. And remember, Daniel has a lot to digest that day.

[00:10:34] Bob: I just want to make sure people understand, this is a, a hard day for you. You, you went to go visit your friend, to say good-bye to a childhood friend, then you see this. That sounds, that's a lot to deal with in one afternoon.

[00:10:44] Daniel Kenigsberg: Yeah, it, it is, although, you know, again, I'm a physician, so there's a lot of emotion involved in what I do day-to-day, so.

[00:10:54] Bob: Daniel takes the ferry back to Long Island that night, and he's already started to make a plan.

[00:11:00] Daniel Kenigsberg: Well, I did have a lawyer that I knew in Fairfield because my, my parents had set up estate planning, and they had an estates and trust lawyer, and then I had to deal with that lawyer when my mother died. And then I had to deal with that lawyer again when my brother died, and then when my second brother died. So the only lawyer I had in Fairfield, Connecticut, was an estates and trust lawyer, and fortunately she's still in practice. So I called her up and I said, "This just happened, and who should I go to," and, and she actually, I'm going to say it's quite remarkable. Within an hour or two she had figured the whole thing out by just, you know, just kind of calling other lawyers and looking at some town records, and uh got back to me with pretty much what happened.

[00:11:51] Bob: And what did she say?

[00:11:53] Daniel Kenigsberg: Well, she said that a lawyer had done a power of attorney, on my behalf, but not on my behalf. And uh had sold this land to a uh builder, and the builder was, you know, was building a house thinking that I had sold the land.

[00:12:12] Bob: Someone pretended to be you and sold the property.

[00:12:14] Daniel Kenigsberg: Right.

[00:12:17] Bob: Somehow a criminal faked his identity and persuaded a real estate agent and a developer and who knows who else that the land was for sale. And closed the sale and got the money. And the developer got the necessary permits and razed all the trees on the land. So the fight begins.

[00:12:42] Bob: I, I'm guessing there were lots of conversations between lawyers and builders.

[00:12:46] Daniel Kenigsberg: Yeah, well we hired lawyers and we had to uh basically um, I'm forgetting what the term is, but you have to you know contest the title to this property. So that was done. And then you had to stop the construction, you know then you have to establish that this is really my land and that whatever is going on on my land is a matter of trespassing. You know I must say the builder didn't really have any means to kind of contest that because it, you know it was what it was.

[00:13:24] Bob: And stopped construction pretty quickly, right?

[00:13:26] Daniel Kenigsberg: Yeah, yeah.

[00:13:27] Bob: So with--, I mean within a week? Within a month? How quickly was that construction stopped?

[00:13:30] Daniel Kenigsberg: Oh it was within a week.

[00:13:31] Bob: Okay.

[00:13:32] Daniel Kenigsberg: Yeah.

[00:13:32] Bob: The fake seller apparently used a fraudulent passport to convince everyone in the process he had the right to sell the land and the price was well below market value, a price the builder was willing to pay.

[00:13:47] Daniel Kenigsberg: One of the interesting for lack of better words or outrageous things about this is that since one of my brothers died I, up until 2009, this land was owned 50/50 between my brother Bernie and me. And then when my brother Bernie died, it became 100% owned by me. So since 2009, the tax bill would come to me, and I live in the same address now that I lived in 2009, and so every June I'd get a tax bill from the town of Fairfield, and I, you know, just paid the property tax and you know I didn't think about it very much. You know like I could pay it you know quarterly, but I would just pay the whole year at once, once a year. I guess because, you know, I'm the sole owner of that land and I'm pretty easy to find, you know, every year or so you know once or twice a year I get a call or a letter from somebody saying, do you want to sell your land? The answer is no, but people were finding me, you know if you, if you had just gone to town hall and said, you know, who owns this property, it would be my name and my address. So real easy to find me, so the fact that the people involved in these transactions never did that is, it's really quite unbelievable. But that's, I guess what happened.

[00:15:13] Bob: So Daniel has fairly easily established ownership and asserted his rights, but now he has to somehow figure out how the heck to undo all that damage.

[00:15:26] Bob: So the immediate bleeding has been stopped, I suppose you might say, um, but as you start to figure out, okay, how do we make this right? How do you put back 70 years' worth of tree growth?

[00:15:36] Daniel Kenigsberg: Well you know you, you have a basic question which is what is the outcome that you want is the outcome that, at this point in time, you'd just like to sell this land which you aren't using except for maybe emotional purposes or do you want the house torn down and do you want the land restored. And you know, our position was, I wasn't selling this land. I refused several offers to sell this land. And so you can, you know, tear down the house and restore the land. And that was the basis of the lawsuit that was filed.

[00:16:11] Bob: And, and restoring the land I'm, I'm guessing meant planting a whole bunch of saplings, doing some other things to at least approximate what it was, right?

[00:16:19] Daniel Kenigsberg: Right. And that would be something that would have to be monitored over a period of years because you know, that, that was the lawsuit.

[00:16:28] Bob: In the end, there is no reasonable way to set things back the way they were. Months go by. Local news is fascinated by the story which seems to have no happy ending possible. So eventually, Daniel agrees to the best solution he can find.

[00:16:45] Daniel Kenigsberg: I mean if I wanted to go through several years of, you know, litigation in federal court, there is probably no doubt that I could still own this property. You know, and then I guess I should jump ahead to tell you that this ultimately has resulted in a settlement, and the, the terms of the settlement are confidential, so I'm not allowed to disclose any of that, and it's also part of the settlement which is non-disparagement. So I'm not supposed to say anything bad about anybody.

[00:17:19] Bob: Am I allowed to ask, you don't own the property though, right?

[00:17:21] Daniel Kenigsberg: I no longer own the property.

[00:17:23] Bob: Um, and I'm sure you're glad to have this behind you in some form, but also this sounds like it's a little bittersweet.

[00:17:30] Daniel Kenigsberg: Well it's, it's what's known as a forced sale.

[00:17:32] Bob: What is a forced sale?

[00:17:34] Daniel Kenigsberg: Well, if you're going to make a settlement with all the parties involved, you have to give up the property that you didn't want to sell to begin with. I think the best example might be something like say eminent domain, like say they want to build a highway through your property and you know they can't build that highway unless it goes exactly through your property, and even though you don't want to sell your property, you know, at some point government can force you to do that because they have what's known as eminent domain. So that's forced sale.

[00:18:05] Bob: Daniel is trying his best to be philosophical about it all, but...

[00:18:09] Bob: I can't help but wonder listening to you, did anyone help you along the way? Was there a city official who came out and said, oh, I can’t believe this happened, or a neighbor who said, you know what can I do... I mean did you, did you get help from anybody as you were figuring this out?

[00:18:24] Daniel Kenigsberg: Well that's another part of the story which, which I think is somewhat important to your audience, okay? That I think the two take on messages are number one, even though you have a lot of people who have licenses who are supposed to know what they're doing and they're supposed to do a certain amount of care and due diligence, be they real estate brokers, be they lawyers, be they title companies, okay, that may not happen. And then the second part of this is that if this happens, is the town concerned? Is law enforcement concerned? And say the answer is, no. I mean it's not that I have, I want vengeance or I have a vendetta towards this fraudster wherever this person is in the world who said they were me and got a lot of money or my land that they didn't own, but if this isn't solved by law enforcement, then why isn't this person going to do it again and again? Right?

[00:19:25] Bob: Of course. The fact that somebody would get permits, pile up a bunch of wood, start construction on a piece of property without double-checking is, is a, otherworldly in my head, that's just shock...

[00:19:35] Daniel Kenigsberg: Not, not even, well, they didn't even single check.

[00:19:39] Bob: (laugh) I don't mean to laugh, but yeah.

[00:19:42] Daniel Kenigsberg: I don't know if that's a phrase, but they just did...

[00:19:43] Bob: That's a great phrase.

[00:19:44] Daniel Kenigsberg: They just didn't, plain didn't check.

[00:19:46] Bob: Yeah, yeah.

[00:19:47] Daniel Kenigsberg: Just imagine hundreds of thousands of dollars are wired from this builder who was buying the property to some fraudster who is selling the property. Why can't law enforcement track down where the money went and get to the person who received that money? Okay, to my knowledge, this has not been done. And...

[00:20:08] Bob: This is $330,000. Do I have that right?

[00:20:10] Daniel Kenigsberg: Yeah, it was actually, I don't know, it was $350,000. I think a small portion of it was held back for some reason, but somewhere in the $300,000 range the money is, you know, goes from one bank to another bank, okay. Well at the other bank, somebody's on the receiving end of that money. Who is it? Okay? I mean wouldn't that be the suspect? Right? I mean I'm not a, all I know about law enforcement is what I see on, you know, television and movies, but isn't that how it works? And again, if somebody gets away with it, they're just going to do it again and again. In fact, the, the person who lives next door in the actual house that I grew up in, is actually the person who, who bought that house from, my brother lived in that house when he died. And so she bought that house from my brother's estate, and although I've actually never physically met this person, I've had this kind of virtual relationship with her since I think 2011 when she bought the house. You know she'd read something, you know, in the local paper that pertains to me. She sends me an email or at one point a tree fell off my property into a neighbor's property and you know she relayed that to me, so I could let them, you know, chop down the tree. And you know, she wanted to put like "No Dumping" signs on the property. Anyway, I've been in regular touch with the person who's right next door. So that's, that's somebody else who would have been easy to say, you know, oh Dan, you know, here's his email, here's his phone number. So it's, it's not that I'm not hard to find.

[00:21:45] Bob: And yet, the system let him down.

[00:21:49] Daniel Kenigsberg: I think that you know we exist in a very mature society where we don't think that something like that could ever happen because all of these layers of, you know, government and, you know, bureaucracy that would prevent something like this happening. In other words, if you're, you know, if you're going to develop land, you're going to have to prove that you own the land, you're going to have to have a deed, presumably uh the town or city where that property is is going to have to be complicit with that. Uh, there have to be, whenever transactions occur, there are usually like lawyers involved and real estate agents involved, and all of those people are supposed to...

[00:22:29] Bob: Fees and permits, right?

[00:22:30] Daniel Kenigsberg: You know, they're supposed to confirm that what they're dealing with is in fact eligible to be, I don't know, for lack of a better word, manipulated, okay? It's kind of, you know, you... I didn't doubt that it happened, but it was like amazing to me. How could this have happened?

[00:22:51] Bob: Still, Daniel maintains an admirable detachment from the madness of this situation.

[00:22:57] Daniel Kenigsberg: Fortunately, it wasn't something that was going to you know threaten my health or threaten my family or threaten my career. It was just something, you know, very odd and rather big and very interesting to me.

[00:23:10] Bob: You have a sense, a certain aura of detachment about it which is, I appreciate.

[00:23:14] Daniel Kenigsberg: Yeah, I mean on the one hand it's something that I do have an emotional connection to if I, if I drive up Sky Top Drive in Fairfield, Connecticut, there is all kind of impulses that go through me, but on the other hand, the mechanics of this are really pretty interesting.

[00:23:30] Bob: And so interesting is one word. I bet you've used a few other words along the way for it.

[00:23:34] Daniel Kenigsberg: Yeah.

[00:23:35] Bob: And I know this is sort of an impossible questions, but okay, so you are talking to that listener right now. Is there anything that listener should be doing?

[00:23:43] Daniel Kenigsberg: I don't think you can assume that something like this won't happen. I think that you, you probably need somebody to check on what you own from time to time and make sure nothing's happening to it.

[00:23:56] Bob: We started out talking about Fairfield as a very small village where everybody knew everybody, everybody's dogs played in each other's yards and so something like this couldn't happen in that world. But in the modern world where all this stuff happens, uh, automagically, uh I think we're much more vulnerable to this kind of thing. What, what do you think?

[00:24:13] Daniel Kenigsberg: Well I certainly think now that we have not just a lot more virtual interactions with each other, but even now where you can have like deep fakes and AI, yeah, I think it's, something like this can only get worse. But on, on basic things like say the ownership of land, you know there are documents in places where these documents reside, I think the, maybe the thing we're really going to have to worry about some day is around personal identity. I mean you know, are we all going to have to get like retina scans or, uh or some sort of bio, biomorphic proof of who we are? I don't know.

[00:24:54] Bob: Hmm.

[00:24:55] Daniel Kenigsberg: But it's, it's an important issue for, you know, living in a society. It's an important issue for governing a society, but hopefully, smart people can figure out how to do it.

[00:25:06] Bob: Land rights are pretty fundamental to the order of things here. So if it's this fragile, that's pretty alarming.

[00:25:14] Daniel Kenigsberg: Yeah.

[00:25:14] Bob: People are going to want to know and whatever you can say given your non-disparagement clause, how do you feel about this today? How, how, how are you about this?

[00:25:23] Daniel Kenigsberg: I must admit that even though I haven't lived there since I went to college, I've always been kind of a, a chauvinist about the state of Connecticut. It's, you know, is I think maybe the most highly educated state in the country, certainly one of them. Fairfield County is one of the wealthiest, most educated counties in the country. I uh, I've always thought that this is a very kind of a developed part of the United States. People I know there who are professionals, you know, people who practice medicine there tend to be, you know, very good doctors. I think uh, the legal system there, in my experience, has worked like pretty darn well. And you know this is kind of disillusioned because there have been a whole bunch of people who, in this whole chain of events, kind of fell down on the job. So kind of disillusioned me about my home state, but you know, again, it's not the fault of Connecticut, it's probably something that's much more endemic in our greater society.

[00:26:22] Bob: But I could see this being really troubling if something, 'cause if I were you, my brain would be searching to other places in my life where a system I assumed would protect me, won't protect me, and what, what could that mean?

[00:26:33] Daniel Kenigsberg: Well you can, you can get to a pretty dark place.

[00:26:37] Bob: That's why Daniel is anxious to talk about what happened to him. He wants this problem to be solved so no one else has to go through what he did.

[00:26:47] Daniel Kenigsberg: No, really as, as I've thought about it, it's really those two things. Number one, that, that this can happen. Number two, I think it's the responsibility of government and specifically law enforcement to make sure that this doesn't happen, and if it does happen, to prevent it from happening again.

[00:27:07] Bob: Hopefully some good comes out of you sharing your story. Maybe the right person hears it and decides it, to fix this problem.

[00:27:14] Bob: Imagine, your childhood property sold, a home built on it without your knowledge. I know Daniel's story sounds crazy, but fraud around home and property sales like this isn't all that unusual. We've covered something often called mortgage wire fraud on The Perfect Scam before in which criminals impersonate people involved in real estate transactions and redirect wire payments so they can steal the money. According to one survey, fully half of realtors report someone has tried to impersonate them. So to talk about all these kinds of frauds and how to protect yourself, we have Diane Tomb on the podcast again today. She is the CEO of the American Land Title Association.

[00:28:00] Diane Tomb: We are the trade association that represents the title insurance industry, which is a pretty wide group of individuals. We represent every single county. We have a member in every nick and cranny of this great country of ours. So every county in the country, we have somebody represented there. And we represent both the folks who underwrite the insurance that goes with, you know, the biggest purchase most people make in their, their lives, their home, as well as the agents that help close at the closing table and make sure everything is in order, and sort of really protect the integrity of the whole process.

[00:28:36] Bob: Okay, so, you know, just to review, you were on not that long ago with us, and in that case, like I'm making up this term, but it was essentially realtor impersonation that was happening. People in the middle of a sale would get an email that looked like it was from their realtor so they would end up wiring money to a criminal. This is something else. This is seller impersonation, right?

[00:28:53] Diane Tomb: Right, so the one that when we spoke a few years back, Bob, we actually refer to it as wire transfer fraud. But you're right, it's what, that's what the fraudsters do. They actually do impersonate a realtor or anyone in the transaction, they sort of follow the deal and they sit there and wait until the money gets transferred. At the 11th hour they'll send an email and give you the wrong number and have it transferred you know somewhere offshore or to another country where they can access it. So and that is something that has continued to increase because of technology and others, wire transfer fraud, but we're seeing even additional types of fraud, which is what we're talking about today, which is the seller impersonation.

[00:29:34] Bob: So wire transfer fraud is still happening. In fact, it happened to a friend of one of my family members recently. The news isn't all bad though.

[00:29:43] Diane Tomb: The good news is today people are more aware of it, because it was about three years ago during the pandemic, you know people were just starting to use technology more in this capacity, but now, you know, folks know what to look for most times, but to your point, sometimes it happens late on a Friday, they time these things when, you know that money's gone before they're able to recover it.

[00:30:01] Bob: And it's on the rise? It's as bad as it was then? Is it not as bad as it was then?

[00:30:06] Diane Tomb: It's continuing, but we're able to recover the money quicker, and people are more aware of it, but it's still something folks need to be looking for.

[00:30:14] Bob: But impersonating a seller and selling a property that's not really for sale, well that's not as common, but it is happening. As I mentioned at the beginning of this episode, it almost happened to Graceland. Diane explains.

[00:30:31] Diane Tomb: Graceland is, you know, Elvis Presley's home, and it is a national historic landmark, and when Lisa, Lisa Marie who was Elvis Presley's daughter, passed away last year, she left the home to her daughter, and she, a fraudulent company said that Lisa Marie had used it as collateral for like a multimillion dollar loan. And as a result, they were coming to sort of you know come back and get paid that money that they are owed, that they were going to put the house up for auction. And luckily, the granddaughter who now owns the home was able to sort of get a judge to put it, a stop to it. So they could uh recapture the actual home. So it did not move forward. But what was, there's so many things that were unusual about that particular situation, but mostly the fraudsters tend to stay away from those sort of high profile ones like that, because it's, you know, obviously it's going to draw attention and you know there are, there are people who understand how it works will be more likely to ask more questions. And that's what happened in this case, but it is, you know, for us it helps us sort of get it on people's radar screen, that this, this is really happening out there and you really need to be aware of it.

[00:31:38] Bob: So Graceland was saved only days before it was put up for auction which seems incredible to me. Obviously, that was a high-profile sale, so that helped. Not so with Daniel's fraudulent sale or with others.

[00:31:54] Bob: And when we say seller impersonation, that means a person pretends they have a piece of property to sell, and in my head, that seems utterly impossible. How can this be?

[00:32:03] Diane Tomb: Right? So they actually oftentimes they use the real property owner's Social Security number. They get their driver's license number, and they actually have folks who will, who will help develop these notary credentials that look legitimate and they won't know. I think what makes this unique is oftentimes the uh seller, the one who's impersonating, is looking to do an all-cash deal or they want to offer this property at a much lower cost than what it really is worth. There's usually some red flags that, you know, folks need to be really savvy to, to be able to sort of anticipate that this might, there might be something wrong with this.

[00:32:42] Bob: Daniel's situation was obviously emotional for him, but others lost out too.

[00:32:49] Bob: And here there's one more thing that you said that I want to go back to um, which is there are victims, you know, all over the place. In this crime in Connecticut, the property was, you know, was a beautiful, wooded property. The buyer, who didn't know any different bought it, cleared it, half built a house on it. So you know the buyer was clearly a victim. The, the owner was clearly a victim. There's basically no way to make, to undo all of that, so sort of like the neighborhood, the earth was a victim too. It's a really, really messy crime.

[00:33:16] Diane Tomb: Yeah, and it's very, as you know, very emotional to people because a lot of times like, you know, properties like that have been passed down through the family as well, right? So there's that piece that seems to be, you know like very violating for people.

[00:33:28] Bob: What's more personal and, and more sentimental than a piece of property.

[00:33:32] Diane Tomb: Right, your home, right? A place where your memories with the, your loved ones.

[00:33:36] Bob: Yeah, he had put a treehouse, he had picked apples from the trees that were in that property, and he had planned, planned to give it to his kids, so.

[00:33:43] Diane Tomb: Right, yeah. No, and you know we, we hear these stories and again, like the wire fraud that we talked about before, these are people's, you know that down payment is like their life savings, right? And this is the biggest purchase they're ever going to make and sometimes that's just gone quickly.

[00:33:58] Bob: Okay, so I'm guessing that it's really typical that these pieces of property have no mortgage on them, so there's not a, a bank to sort of interfere with the criminal's proceedings, right?

[00:34:07] Diane Tomb: I some cases, yes, but not always. You know, in places that does exist, and like I said, if they've got the, you know if they've been able to get the uh real property owner's Social Security number and driver's license, you know, and those types of things, they can get away with this.

[00:34:21] Bob: What are the red flag that a crime like this might be happening?

[00:34:25] Diane Tomb: You know, as I said, you know one of the things we like to say in our business, uh from romance to real estate; if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. And that's something I think we need to apply to all aspects of our life, right? But when it comes to this particular type of fraud that we're seeing a lot of, you know if a property is vacant or occupied by someone other than the owner, it's usually it's an investment property, vacation or rental. They're the ones that these fraudsters--, the fraudsters tend to sort of focus on. Today, particularly, you know, certain types of properties have a lot of equity in them, and that's what they're looking to sort of prey on, and a lot of times there's, there are folks, you know, this audience is more likely, because they tend to have, you know, maybe one or more property that they don't always see regularly or, or check in on. As I mentioned before, the property is for sale or sold below market value, the seller wants a quick sale, usually in less than three weeks and they don't want to negotiate on the fees, they're looking for a cash buyer, and this one is, you know, in today's world it doesn't seem as odd, but it's really, really important; oftentimes they'll only communicate by phone or email, and they don't want to meet via video call, or definitely not in person.

[00:35:37] Bob: That's interesting. So requiring a video call, while I'm sure not perfect, is a protection.

[00:35:43] Diane Tomb: Yeah, absolutely. And you know, today we also encourage people to look them up on social media, you know, to see if they're legit, because most folks who are selling property or you know are working with a realtor would, would be, you know, represented in that way.

[00:35:56] Bob: Have some kind of footprint out there in the world.

[00:35:58] Diane Tomb: Correct.

[00:36:00] Bob: As a property owner, it's also worth getting to know a little bit more about your county which is probably the part of government that maintains property records where you live.

[00:36:11] Diane Tomb: You know, as you know real estate is local, right? So um, everywhere we go, we have to make sure we, one of the biggest process, one of the most important pieces of the whole process is the records, the county records of the actual property. And that's a piece of what the title insurance agent needs to do to be able to make a suc--, successful transfer of property.

[00:36:32] Bob: You know I'm going to stick up for regular people here who do this you know maybe only once in their lives or a couple of times in their life. And somewhere in my head, I know there's a government record about my property, but I wouldn't necessarily think it's at the county office or what county office that would be. Can you help me understand that a little bit better?

[00:36:49] Diane Tomb: Yeah, no, that's a great question, and you're right. I mean it's a very daunting process. Any type of land transfer, but buying a home for most people, they don't, you know, they maybe they do it once, maybe twice if they're lucky. So there's a lot of moving pieces and um, the actual um, the most important piece, one of the most important piece is the actual property itself, and of course, the home on it, but in some cases, you know, people inherit land and other things. And so every county in the country keeps records of all of the property, and it's a public service that the local county does.

[00:37:25] Bob: And there is another public service your county office probably provides which might be the single best way to protect yourself from having property sold without your knowledge. And it's free.

[00:37:37] Diane Tomb: So one of the most important things that you can do is go to your county recorder's office, and many of them offer complimentary property alert notifications. So any time anything has been done related to your property, you will get a notice. So if someone tried to, you know, open it up or if there was some, something related to it. So when any document is filed to it pertaining to your property, you will get a notice.

[00:38:04] Bob: You know what, I love this suggestion because I do think I, I wish people took advantage of these little government services much more than they did. I think they would like government more frankly and realize it actually serves a purpose. So you can call your county recorder--, is it, would it normally be the county recorder's office?

[00:38:18] Diane Tomb: It would be. The county recorder's office, and I can tell you I, my, myself, one of my colleagues here told me about it a couple years back, and so every month I get a little update that says, you know, everything's fine. Nothing has been done. So every county has a different approach how they do it, but it's free. You get, you know, monthly updates and it's worth, you know, everybody's time and effort, particularly again, because if it's not the home you live in, it's a very large asset that you want to make sure that you're protecting.

[00:38:47] Bob: That makes a ton of sense to me. Great. I, I love giving people specifics, the actions they can take to help themselves.

[00:38:53] Bob: And on the other side, if you are someone who might be buying property, there are things you can do also.

[00:39:00] Diane Tomb: First and foremost, you know, always ask questions, right? If any part of the process seems out of the ordinary and to your point, anybody in the transition, in the transaction should know that, right, ask the real estate agent if they have a personal or a verified knowledge of the seller's identity, like if the seller doesn't want to be seen.

[00:39:18] Bob: What else can consumers do?

[00:39:21] Diane Tomb: Yeah, well I think always, always make sure you're, you know, aware of what's going on in your, in your properties and what's happening. And in, in this case, as you know, there's really two victims, right? There's the unsuspecting buyer, like they're not, they're assuming the proper--, right? Why wouldn't they? And then there's the actual legitimate property owner and you know making sure that the emails, texts that are coming through, and all of those things that, that they're really legit. And I think there's always you know that, that trust your instinct. I think as humans, you know, we talked about that part earlier. If something seems off, it probably is off, and doing something about it. And I think one of the most important things if you do become a victim, is not to wait, like the quicker you move, the better, because they're more likely to track down, you know, again, because most of these financial institutions are aware, they can't do anything until the transaction actually happens. But now that they're aware and they're looking for these types of fraud, that there, things can be stopped, but only if you move quickly.

[00:40:18] Bob: Government agencies or companies involved in real estate transactions, should they be doing anything else?

[00:40:25] Diane Tomb: Yeah, I mean I think the most important thing that we're all trying to do. I know we're going to try to do it, we work very closely with you know the federal level, the consumer federal protection board and others is educate folks and make people be just really good, informed consumers. We have a bunch of one-pagers that we put together that will combat this and give people sort of like a one-pager of what to look for. We work very closely with organizations like AARP and the National Center for Law Center, and other third-party groups that can educate individuals and to know what's happening out there and prevent it. You know that's the most important thing. But you know then there's the back end of it, right? Once it happens, make sure you contact your local and state law enforcement, also the FBI gets involved, and the state attorney generals are the ones that we're also working with at that level to make them aware of these um, so they can put out alerts to make sure that folks are looking for these types of things. So there's lots of different layers to this, but it's really important that we all work together to sort of identify them. And I think in our case, our, our members tend to be on the front line because they start to see this stuff first, and that they start to work really closely with the state and local officials to make them aware of it. So that's something that we take on as sort of an additional role, but obviously it's something that needs to be done and since we have access to that information, that's something that we do.

[00:41:45] Bob: I know technology has helped in a lot of ways, it's made, you know my most recent closing, which was maybe 10 years ago, was way easier than the one 25 years ago, uh so that part's good. But technology's also opened a lot of these doors for criminals, right?

[00:41:58] Diane Tomb: Yeah, it did. You know, we're working really hard to with, even with the federal government and others to do things like when you transfer money that there's, you know there's no intermediaries involved, um, so it's like um, you know a quick, so to your point and, and the pandemic did accelerate a lot of that, being able to have these transactions done um, in a way where there's real time, so there's no, you know, you don't have to go through the bank, right, and so then you don't worry about those frauds, you know it will, it will bring the, the fraudsters opportunity to get involved, to make it less and less likely. So there are all kinds of things that we're moving forward, it's just not going, it's not quick enough, and you know what we see are these fraudsters just tend to be two steps ahead, right? Once, you know, we catch up to them in one area, they're moving on to some other area.

[00:42:42] Bob: Once we catch up to the criminals, they're already moving on to some other area. Well we here at The Perfect Scam will be right there with them. One last thing, if you want to learn more about this kind of property crime, you can visit the American Land Title Association website at alta.org. That's a-l-t-a.org. For The Perfect Scam, I'm Bob Sullivan.

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[00:43:14] Bob: If you have been targeted by a scam or fraud, you are not alone. Call the AARP Fraud Watch Network Helpline at 877-908-3360. Their trained fraud specialists can provide you with free support and guidance on what to do next. Our email address at The Perfect Scam is: theperfectscampodcast@aarp.org, and we want to hear from you. If you've been the victim of a scam or you know someone who has, and you'd like us to tell their story, write to us. That address again is: theperfectscampodcast@aarp.org. Thank you to our team of scambusters; Associate Producer, Annalea Embree; Researcher, Becky Dodson; Executive Producer, Julie Getz; and our Audio Engineer and Sound Designer, Julio Gonzalez. Be sure to find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. For AARP's The Perfect Scam, I'm Bob Sullivan.

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