2023-07-13 07:00:00
An empty house, center, is seen at the corner of Judi Place and Isabel Drive, on Friday, June 2, 2023, in Boulder City. (Bizuayehu Tesfaye/Las Vegas Review-Journal) @btesfaye An empty house, center, is seen at the corner of Judi Place and Isabel Drive, on June 2, 2023, in Boulder City. The property was put up for sale in March, but not by the real owner, who later called the police. (Bizuayehu Tesfaye/Las Vegas Review-Journal) @btesfaye An empty house, center, is seen at the corner of Judi Place and Isabel Drive, on June 2, 2023, in Boulder City. The property was put up for sale in March, but not by the real owner, who later called the police. (Bizuayehu Tesfaye/Las Vegas Review-Journal) @btesfaye An empty house, center, is seen at the corner of Judi Place and Isabel Drive, on June 2, 2023, in Boulder City. The property was put up for sale in March, but not by the real owner, who later called the police. (Bizuayehu Tesfaye/Las Vegas Review-Journal) @btesfaye An empty house, center, is seen at the corner of Judi Place and Isabel Drive, on June 2, 2023, in Boulder City. The property was put up for sale in March, but not by the real owner, who later called the police. (Bizuayehu Tesfaye/Las Vegas Review-Journal) @btesfaye An empty house, center, is seen at the corner of Judi Place and Isabel Drive, on June 2, 2023, in Boulder City. The property was put up for sale in March, but not by the real owner, who later called the police. (Bizuayehu Tesfaye/Las Vegas Review-Journal) @btesfaye An empty house, center, is seen at the corner of Judi Place and Isabel Drive, on June 2, 2023, in Boulder City. The property was put up for sale in March, but not by the real owner, who later called the police. (Bizuayehu Tesfaye/Las Vegas Review-Journal) @btesfaye Ashley Dickerson, senior branch manager for WFG National Title, left, and Jamie Lewis, vice president of Nevada state sales for WFG National Title, right, pose for pictured at Tivoli Village in Las Vegas on July 10, 2023. Working for WFG National Title, Dickerson and Lewis try to stop scammers committing suspicious transactions related to a growing real estate scheme known as seller impersonation fraud. (Rachel Aston/Las Vegas Review-Journal) @rookie__rae Ashley Dickerson, senior branch manager for WFG National Title, left, and Jamie Lewis, vice president of Nevada state sales for WFG National Title, right, pose for pictured at Tivoli Village in Las Vegas on July 10, 2023. Working for WFG National Title, Dickerson and Lewis try to stop scammers committing suspicious transactions related to a growing real estate scheme known as seller impersonation fraud. (Rachel Aston/Las Vegas Review-Journal) @rookie__rae Jamie Lewis, vice president and director of Nevada state sales for WFG National Title, left, and Ashley Dickerson, senior branch director for WFG National Title, right, pose for a photo at their Tivoli Village offices in Las Vegas on July 10, 2023. Working for WFG National Title, Dickerson and Lewis try to stop fraudsters committing suspicious transactions related to a sprawling real estate scheme known as impersonation fraud. seller. (Rachel Aston/Las Vegas Review-Journal) @rookie__rae Greg Hulett, president of Landmark Title of Nevada, outside his offices in Las Vegas on July 10, 2023. In his job in the title industry, Hulett works for stop scammers in a growing trend of a real estate scheme known as copycat seller fraud. (Rachel Aston/Las Vegas Review-Journal) @rookie__rae Greg Hulett, president of Landmark Title of Nevada, outside his offices in Las Vegas on July 10, 2023. In his job in the title industry, Hulett works for stop scammers in a growing trend of a real estate scheme known as copycat seller fraud. (Rachel Aston/Las Vegas Review-Journal) @rookie__rae Jamie Lewis, vice president and Nevada state sales manager for WFG National Title, left, and Ashley Dickerson, senior branch manager 2023. In their work for WFG National Title, Dickerson and Lewis try to stop scammers committing suspicious transactions related to a growing real estate scheme known as seller impersonation fraud. (Rachel Aston/Las Vegas Review-Journal) @rookie__rae Ashley Dickerson, branch manager and senior for WFG National Title, left, and Jamie Lewis, vice president and Nevada state sales manager for WFG National Title, left right, pose for a photo at Tivoli Village in Las Vegas on July 10, 2023. Working for WFG National Title, Dickerson and Lewis try to stop scammers committing suspicious transactions related to a growing real estate scheme known as fraud. vendor impersonation. (Rachel Aston/Las Vegas Review-Journal) @rookie__rae
Bernie Gates was at his home in Laguna Hills, California, when he received a disturbing letter: his long-time property in Boulder City was for sale.
In March, a real estate agency had listed the parcel for $175,000 and found a buyer, so a title company sent Gates, the owner of record, a certified letter of purchase.
But he did not want to part with the property.
“It’s impossible,” he remembers Gates thinking. “It is not for sale”.
The deal was off and Gates called the police. But he was about to fall victim to a type of fraud that is becoming more prevalent across the country: Con artists try to sell other people’s land behind their backs.
Greg Hulett, president of Nevada Landmark Title, said the fraud is telling in its brazenness.
“You hear about people stealing cars, but who the hell steals houses?” he said. “Who steals land?”.
The idea of selling someone’s property without them knowing may seem crazy. But attempting the scam is not difficult, as fraudulent sellers cannot initially be forced by anyone to prove that they actually own the place.
Nevada law does not require real estate agents to prove that their clients own the property they are trying to sell, and anyone can list a property online without first proving it is theirs. Sellers can also transact by phone and email and have used fake IDs to pose as real property owners, according to industry sources.
Seller impersonation scams are often thwarted, as in the case of Gates. But a provider of wire fraud security services knows of multiple fake sales made outside of Nevada.
In such cases, the true owners would be forced to repossess their real estate in court, and unsuspecting buyers would have to recover their money through title insurance claims, a potentially lengthy, costly, and harrowing process.
Even a fraud attempt can, at the very least, force people to spend time getting rid of it and worrying about identity theft.
Last year, a piece of land near the North Las Vegas airport was put up for sale by a person who disappeared after the listing agent confronted him about not being the real owner. Authorities are also investigating an attempted sale of land near Lake Tahoe after someone allegedly posing as the owner listed the land for nearly $11 million.
Realtor Shannon Fitzpatrick of Movoto Real Estate, whose firm put Gates’ land up for sale to the still-mystery seller, said his wife took over the ad, which included more than 30 photos and boasted of an “opportunity to build the house of his dreams (in) Boulder City.” She could not be reached for comment.
Fitzpatrick also pointed out that the market is riddled with scams.
“Right now it’s absolutely crazy,” he said.
Scam is ‘national level’
Southern Nevada is no stranger to real estate fraud and other scams, including fake rental ads. Seller impersonation fraud is not new, and the Las Vegas Review-Journal was unable to find any data showing its prevalence locally or nationally. But this scam has garnered more attention lately due to the apparent increase in the number of cases that often affect vacant properties.
Elizabeth Blosser, vice president of government affairs at the American Land Title Association, said the scam is not common, but it is “on the rise.” She said members across the country are reporting the fraud.
Matt Troiani, a senior attorney and director of legal affairs for the National Association of Realtors, also couldn’t provide statistics, but said members of his group are reporting it, too.
“This is at the national level,” he said.
Nevada law requires real estate agents to disclose any “material and relevant” facts or information in the course of a transaction. But state law and regulations don’t explicitly address whether they have to verify that their clients own the properties they put on the market, said Teri Williams, a spokeswoman for the Nevada Department of Business and Industry.
The Las Vegas Realtors’ trade association told the Review-Journal that each brokerage firm has its own policies when it comes to homeowner verification, adding that this is “not a responsibility of the association.”
Assemblywoman Heidi Kasama, R-Las Vegas, is a longtime real estate broker and said she pulls at tax records and looks for other documentation to verify ownership. Not all agents take those steps, she said.
He also noted that title companies are tasked with confirming a seller’s legitimacy before a deal is closed.
“I think the system works,” he said.
Kasama and others interviewed for this report said that new legislation would not be effective in cracking down on scams. However, several people stated that increased awareness and training of real estate agents would help protect owners and buyers.
“Laws are often poorly written,” said Hulett of Landmark Title. “I don’t have a lot of faith that that solves anything.”
‘We talk a lot about this scam’
It’s a felony under state law for the fraudulent sale of real estate, though it’s unclear if anyone has been arrested or prosecuted for the seller-implantation scam in southern Nevada.
The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police and Henderson and North Las Vegas police said they do not record reports of real property theft and declined to speak to the Review-Journal for this story.
Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford’s office said it has filed charges in real estate cases involving theft of funds and home loan fraud, but has not received any allegations of seller impersonation fraud.
The Investigative Division of the Nevada Department of Public Safety does not investigate allegations of real estate fraud. And the US attorney’s office in Nevada said it has prosecuted mortgage fraud, but not seller impersonation fraud.
However, police in southern Nevada are aware that this scam is becoming more common, Boulder City police Detective Sgt. Tiffany Driscoll said.
“We talked a lot about this scam,” he said.
The buyer of Gates’ land was not suspected of involvement in the scheme, Driscoll said. He also said police never learned the identity of the seller because the suspect’s email address was no longer active and the phone numbers were untraceable.
The scammer’s handbook
Fake sellers follow a similar method across the country.
They search property records for unencumbered real estate – without loans or encumbrances – and often choose vacant land. A vacant lot can go unnoticed or be ignored by the owner for years. There are also fewer people involved in the sale if there are no liens to pay, which means there is less chance of someone finding out about the scam.
Posing as the real owner – whose identity can also be found in public records – the scammers contact a real estate agent to put the site up for sale. They only communicate by email or phone, saying they can’t meet face-to-face or on video.
They also often list properties below market value to garner immediate interest and then quickly accept an offer, preferring cash sales. To close the deal, they seek a remote notary’s signature, impersonate one, and provide forged documents, according to CertifID, an electronic fraud protection company.
Title companies or others involved in the sale may frustrate you in the latter process, as they may suspect the seller and catch him in the lie or look for additional layers of confirmation that lead them to pull the string.
Ashley Dickerson, branch manager and escrow officer for WFG National Title Insurance Co. in southern Nevada, says she has stopped two fraudulent sales and helped prevent others in recent months.
In one case, a salesperson claimed he couldn’t meet her because she was in a Florida hospital awaiting surgery to give her niece a life-saving organ.
“They are all pretty exaggerated,” he says of the red flags.
Tom Cronkright, co-founder and CEO of CertifID, claims that fake sales have been made.
In one case, he said, a Michigan property owner learned his site had been purchased after driving by and seeing stakes in the ground because the buyer was planning a housing project.
The Clark County Recorder’s Office needs a court order before it can remove a deed – the document that transfers ownership of real estate – from its records, county spokesman Erik Pappa said.
Buyers in fraudulent sales can get their money back through title insurance coverage. But insurers will assume the buyer is part of the scam until proven otherwise, Hulett said.
In all, it could be months before the true owner and buyer are compensated, he said.
Terri Lawson, director of operations for Meridian Title Corp. in Indiana, agreed.
“It will not be easy to solve this,” he said.
The seller disappears
Last year, Maryam Mohavvelaty, an agent with Realty One Group, was looking for a business when she saw a listing online for sale by the owner of a piece of land near the North Las Vegas airport. She contacted the seller, who hired her to find a buyer.
At his request, the seller provided him with a copy of his driver’s license, which showed that his name matched that of the owner of the land. She asked to speak to him via Zoom, but he told her she couldn’t, so they communicated via phone and SMS.
However, he soon learned that the land was actually owned by someone else, the owner of a nearby auto shop.
Mohavvelaty says he immediately withdrew the ad and called his client to tell him he had met the real owner. He replied that he was his uncle and that they had the same name. She promised to call him right away, hung up, and disappeared.
In northern Nevada, Trevor Smith, a realtor for Coldwell Banker Select, said someone listed a 14.5-acre lot in Incline Village for sale at his office earlier this year. Its price was almost 11 million dollars.
The seller’s name matched the registered owner’s name. But other details were sketchy, and the seller, who never met the listing agents in person, had what appeared to be a photoshopped passport, Smith said.
Agents removed the ad, and authorities are investigating, he said.
Washoe County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Bryan Samudio declined to comment, saying it was an ongoing investigation.
‘Large number of fraudulent schemes’
Gates, who also owns a vacation home and rental property in Boulder City, bought the 0.2-acre parcel of land that was nearly sold in 2003, property records show. He wants to build a house there one day, adding that if he builds high enough he’ll get an unobstructed view of Lake Mead.
The land, sandwiched between two houses in a quiet neighborhood, was put up for sale on March 30 by the fraudulent seller. A contract was signed with a buyer on April 10, but the offer was withdrawn on April 24, according to real estate sites. Gates called the police the next day.
In the police report, the title company stated that when working on a purchase involving out-of-state owners, it sends them a certified letter because of the “vast number of fraudulent schemes” involving such properties.
According to the report, the sales agent found the seller online, but police dropped the case after the investigating agent failed to find the customer.
Driscoll said the case was closed by the patrol department and never made it to the Boulder City Detective Bureau. He chalked it up to a possible training problem and indicated that he could refer the case to the attorney general’s office.
Despite the drama of the matter, Gates is pleased with how the case turned out for him.
“I didn’t have to go to court to get the property back,” he said.
1691988359
#Real #estate #scammers #sell #elses #property