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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.

True but also my lawyer would charge me like $100 to send a letter with his title on it and that usually does the trick.

This is good advice and probably an avenue I need to explore, thank you.

I'm not sure I get the huge safety risk. You buy a property and you're in a public registry. There's no anonymity at that point in the US other than setting up trusts or other ownership screens.

First of all, like you say, those registries can have an LLC's name or the name of a trust, etc. It may not be my name. But some rando showing up doesn't know me, they want to occupy my house.

Second, those registries are much harder to find me in than a random Facebook Marketplace ad.

Third, those registries do not advertise that I am trying to sell my property or rent it out; there is no invitation to come to my home and approach me. I have literally had people show up at my door asking why I'm there if my house is for rent. Imagine if one of those people - as is common on Facebook Marketplace - was unhinged or dangerous, or got mad when I told them the truth.

It is a direct threat to my safety in a way that the mere record of my ownership of the property wouldn't be (if it had my name on it).

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.

Any source for this?

What is the point of listing a house that isn’t for sale, though?

To scam people out of some made up fee. Application fee, filing fee, holding fee, reservation fee., whatever BS they can get someone to send them a few bucks for since it's all free money to them.

Probably collecting application fees from people interested in renting it.

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.

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.

Leaked? Isn't it used in the open basically like for everything including student IDs?

This was once common but is exceedingly rare these days. I'm sure exceptions exist, but nearly all Americans now treat this as a Very Secret Number.

Secret... But generatable since 2009. [0] 2011 randomisation slightly reduced the risk, but not by much.

As many as 1 in 7 SSNs may have been accidentally used by more than one person. [1]

Unlike Australia's TFN or the UK's VAT, SSN has no self-check, making it rather easy to just... Generate one that works.

And all an API check of the number will tell you, is what an attacker would already have: DOB and Place of Birth.

[0] https://pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.0904891106

[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/technolog/odds-someone-else-has-your...

> nearly all Americans now treat this as a Very Secret Number

I don't think that they actually do in practice. Last time I opened an account with Comcast they required your social security number. Same with an AT&T cell plan.

Probably something to do with checking credit history right?

Last time I opened an account with Comcast they required your social security number. Same with an AT&T cell plan.

Strictly speaking they require /a/ Social Security Number, not necessarily /your/ SSN.

When I signed up for my most recent cellular service, I hesitated at giving my information to the guy in the store. I told him that since it was a pre-paid account I wasn't asking for credit, so there's no need for him to have my information.

He was OK with that, and pulled out an ID card the store keeps in a drawer for just such occasions.

Salespeople have a sales quota, not an enforce-the-rules quota.

Same when I visited Germany, every phone account needs your name and address and passport number to prevent spam, I bought a prepaid card, since I don't live there I don't have an address, so he used the address of the store. Still needed a passport though.

I applied for my first credit card at a desk they had set up in front of the school. No SSN. When I entered my income (non existent), guy went "no man.. come on. put this amount. hey'll never give you a card with that". Week later I received the card with my name misspelled and everything. (I still see that misspelled name EVERYWHERE when I search for my name)

I'm not sure people treat this as a Very Secret Number. Certainly using SSNs publically has gone away, but people are willing to provide their SSNs to basically anyone that asks for it. Heck, some job applications ask for your SSN.

*Super Secret Number

LOL.

Every single $&@ doctor's intake form: "We'd like to have you SSN".

Yes, I have seen doctors and dentists ask for the SSN, and categorically refuse to provide it.

Unless you personally are nearly all Americans, good for you, but not relevant to OPs post about "Very Secret Number"

And none of them have ever complained when I left if blank.

I've seen forms that explicitly say to put in all nines if you "don't have one", so that's what I do everywhere that insists on asking but doesn't have a legitimate purpose (ie tax reporting). To any human it should be obvious that all nines indicates an exception.

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.

Did he store his SSN card in his wallet like so many uninformed people do?

I did decades ago. Wallet was stolen. Haven't had an actual card sice.

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.

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's a fair point, but in the interests of a concise story I left out a couple of details: there were three different names associated with my SSN; all of the jobs were agricultural; there weren't any bank account, housing, or other identity-markers associated with my number. (I don't know how much of that I would have been able to figure out on my own, or even if my buddy should have told me that much, but it's nice to have friends in useful places.) I'm pretty sure about what happened.

Sidenote: I don't bear any ill will towards whoever used my SSN. It's not like I was targeted, or even that any harm to me was intended. This was a "hack" of a dysfunctional immigration and employment system, in a way that's totally obvious and easy to anticipate. My ire is reserved for those in positions of responsibility who maintain a regime that is manifestly not fit for purpose.

does that mean someone was paying into your social security, essentially boosting your benefit amount when the time comes?

If you don't dispute it, yes. However, if you don't dispute it, IRS knows about it as well and will be asking for their cut. Generally, the benefit increase is not worth higher taxes.

And writing random digits has about a one-in-three chance of being a hit.

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.

Credit cards never generally required identity verification (especially not for the cost of a restaurant dinner; anti-fraud measures might kick in for larger purchases, though), that was always a "feature". (Credit card companies want people to spend money and have always prioritized that over fraud detection.) Even the whole "I'm going to write Check ID on the card signature line" thing was never officially recognized by credit card providers, and explicitly was against the Terms of Service of most of them. The signature line was never meant to be an anti-fraud tool, it was your acknowledgement that you had read your Card's Terms of Service and accepted that contract, a holdover from the days before software invented shrinkwrapped/clickwrapped/SaaS contract acceptance and contracts still generally needed an explicit signature of acceptance. (That's the reason signature lines are just now disappearing, the Credit Card industry is finally following the software industry on "any and all possible uses of our services is acceptance of all of our contracts"; nothing to do with how much more NFC and EMV chips are secure against fraud.)

That you know of

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.

Handing your credit card to pay is still such a foreign concept to me

Back when computers were actually expensive and wireless networking technology wasn’t as good/common, they would take your card to the back office and run it on the single, hardwired card terminal.

Nowadays it’s less of an issue as those terminals cost peanuts and WiFi is ubiquitous so they have many of them and can just bring one to your table.

When there was only a single terminal it was common in Europe to just... walk to the counter and pay for the meal card in hand. No other way to type in your PIN

Not universally true. I had a couple of cards without a chip because, reasons. I still was walking to the counter myself, because giving somebody my card feels weird.

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.

Yeah I agree. Not only do I hand off my card, literally everyone I know does so. None have ever had problems. I'm not saying that such fraud never happens, because it obviously does happen. But I don't think it's so overwhelmingly common as is being claimed here.

In my lifetime, I had my card details stolen once (in Washington DC). It was an American Express. They caught it immediately and shipped me a new card before I even noticed.

It was basically “we caught some shady shit, here is your new card number, which will be delivered today”. It is one of the reasons I like Amex. They are johnny-on-the-spot when they get a sniff of fraud.

This source[0] is hardly unbiased, so take this with a heavy dose of "citation needed", but it claims:

> 62 million Americans had fraudulent charges on their credit or debit cards last year alone, with unauthorized purchases exceeding $6.2 billion annually.

However, that jibes with other numbers I've seen.

https://www.security.org/digital-safety/credit-card-fraud-re...

That jives with the number of unauthorized transactions I've had on my cards. 62/260 million adults = about a quarter of adults each year. On average I probably average a fraudulent transaction in a quarter of the years.

> On average I probably average a fraudulent transaction in a quarter of the years.

I’ve had one fraudulent charge in my entire lifetime. Once a quarter seems insane. Are you putting your card info into random websites or something?

He meant once every 4 years not once every quarter.

I had my corporate card get cloned by the Wendys at Seatac airport, about 10 years ago. Do you consider that to be a sketchy restaurant? Why are you victim blaming?

I had not used the card in several weeks. Coffee and a breakfast sandwich at Wendys was the only purchase I made that day. ~4 hours later my card was declined when checking in to my hotel in LA. Called their security department, they wanted to know whether I had authorized a $4000 purchase at a Best Buy in Dallas.

I don't know how to define sketchy. I believe you. I just don't know how to account for the difference in experience.

> 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

I don't think I've ever seen anyone use a phone to pay at a restaurant. I think I generally see 95%+ pay with cards, the same way that "was" common. The rest is cash. Maybe I'm just not paying attention? I don't know.

This exact thing happened to me once at the hotel bar in the Santa Clara Convention Center / Hyatt Regency Santa Clara.

Not especially, I don't think. It's incredibly common according to everything I see online.

I guess I'm just lucky.

Mine was cloned at a very high-end restaurant in Austin, TX.

I've been using my credit card at restaurants for 30 years. I've used it probably 5000 times, and I've only had the number stolen once (from a grocery store).

Where are these low-trust areas of the US? I want to visit and check it out.

Reminds me of the carbon copies (actual carbon copies) some local car renter made. They wrote your risk on the carbon copy as a "reservation", carbon copied your CC onto it and stored it in a safe. Pretty much a list of ready-to-use cards if you got hold of them.

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?

In Texas about a decade ago there was a criminal enterprise out of Houston that was putting swimmers on gas station pumps all over the state. Little towns, big towns, country gas stations. My now wife got hit that way.

Swimming at a gas station pump would be uncomfortably lethal.

I wonder how well you would have to be able to swim to overcome the density/buoyancy difference if swimming in a pool of gasoline?

It depends how long you can hold your breath. I imagine many people would be overwhelmed by the fumes before they got very far.

It's a pretty drastic density difference. I think an Olympic swimmer would have a hard time staying above the surface.

Ah, 12 hours later I log back in to see skimmers got autocorrected to swimmers.

Gasoline fight!

I am, but some of these events were when I was traveling through smaller Midwest towns. There doesn't seem to be a pattern to it.

In any case, it hasn't happened again since I started using tap to pay whenever possible.

Remember when credit cards required your signature on the back?

My mom used to tell me to write CHECK ID in the signature block. Someone only ever asked me once. It's probably been like 10 years since I've signed the back of a new card. An older woman at an antique shop actually checked for a signature and made me sign it in front of her.

If you look at the credit card agreement, a card isn’t (or at least wasn’t) authorized for use unless it had an actual signature. “Check ID” and such are cute, but really only mean that the card is unsigned and thus invalid.

The fact that a signature is, to date, a legally binding form of identification is baffling to me to be honest. More and more is digital these days, but still.

(my "signature" is just a squiggle based on my initials and I can't reproduce it consistently)

It's not legally binding if you didn't sign it, but that won't stop someone from trying to claim that you did.

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.

> No, the United States doesnt have a central land registry because that is not an enumerated power of the federal government.

I think you misunderstood the post you were replying to. Torrens title was invented in Australia. Just like in the US, land titles are a state responsibility in Australia not a federal one. But each state has a central statewide land registry which is the authoritative source of truth for land ownership. By contrast, US states hold land title records in a decentralised way (at the local government level not the state level), and those records aren’t legally decisive.

Most common law jurisdictions have centralised land titles, but often centralised at one level below the national government.

In fact, in the US, I'm not sure it even happens systematically at the state level. In the state where I live (Massachusetts) even though counties are largely vestigial, that's where deeds and such are registered and filed as far as I know. (Just went through this for various reasons.)

"No, the United States doesnt have a central land registry [..]"

Fascinating, how is ownership established if there is no single source of truth?

I feel the answer to this is also crucial to understanding OP. It could be a minor annoyance or the real possibility to lose your land.

> how is ownership established if there is no single source of truth?

Oh, boy, let me tell you it is very disconcerting to pay a title company to do a search of legal records on a property, and the only guarantee they offer in some states is that "we didn't find anything suspicious but there is no guarantee that someone from the past won't pop up with a better claim to ownership. You can't hold it against us if that happens." How is it that most people making the biggest purchase of their lives are going along with that? I'm definitely not okay with it, but sometimes you can't buy property without accepting it- no title company will offer a stronger guarantee.

For details, I'm talking about how in some states the Special Warranty Deed is the standard for real estate purchases: https://www.legalzoom.com/articles/what-is-a-special-warrant.... A title company will guarantee that the current seller hasn't entered any agreements that might legally obligate you (such as offering the property as collateral for an outstanding loan), but they are very clear that actions of previous owners are not included in this guarantee. So there is no single source of truth- we just hope that we're not part of the tiny percentage where the special deed is insufficient.

Edit: for context, there is a distinction between title insurance and the deed itself, but the title company is only offering insurance on the deed, so if the deed only covers the previous owner then the insurance only covers that too.

  > You can't hold it against us if that happens

I was getting ready to debate you, but I'll admit that I'm mostly wrong about title insurance.

Special warranty deeds only cover the current seller, but title insurance can defend against prior ownership claims. I will note that just because title insurance guarantees they will defend against ownership claims, they don't guarantee it will be settled in a particular way. There's a theoretical possibility that an agreement can't be reached that keeps you in the house you thought you bought legally- like in this story the buyers got their money back but didn't keep the house that wasn't theirs https://www.thetitlereport.com/Articles/Title-Insurance-at-W...

> I will note that just because title insurance guarantees they will defend against ownership claims, they don't guarantee it will be settled in a particular way.

Of course, insurance doesn't guarantee you won't have a covered loss. Insurance compensates you if you have a covered loss.

When I've purchased real estate with title insurance, the offer from the title company has been pretty specific about what risks are covered, what risks are specifically not covered, and what the dollar limits are for covered losses. There's a lot of paperwork involved in purchasing real estate, but the title report and the title insurance offer are worth taking the time to read.

I've read the terms of title insurance and no, you can't hold them liable if it turns out you don't get the property as intended. It's basically useless.

It makes sense that you can’t hold an insurer liable for the very thing they are selling you insurance against. The insurance exists to make you whole if you, e.g. pay earnest money and then someone disputes your title.

patio11 wrote a bunch about this: (https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/working-title-insuran...)

I couldn’t keep reading this. Why is that thing so insane?

> how is ownership established if there is no single source of truth?

There is: the county clerk in the county where the land is located.

No, the county clerk records aren’t a “single source of truth”. In the US system, it is possible to convince a court the county records are wrong, and order them overridden-which makes them not the single source of truth.

By contrast, in the Torrens system, whatever the government records say are final. If you are the innocent victim of a mistake by the government (or a fraud against it), the government has to compensate you; but you don’t actually get the land back if it has since been sold to an innocent purchaser.

> in the Torrens system, whatever the government records say are final

First, it doesn't seem like that's always the case, based on another post upthread talking about a land ownership case that went to the high court because of an error in the government's records.

Second, since there is no single government for the entire world, any government trying to implement a Torrens system is still going to face the problem of events happening outside its jurisdiction that its records do not and cannot contain, which affect ownership of property in its jurisdiction. So there cannot be a "single source of truth" in the sense you appear to be using the term, even in the Torrens system.

> is still going to face the problem of events happening outside its jurisdiction that its records do not and cannot contain

Excuse my German ignorance, but my understanding of how it works here is that unless the transfer is notarized, logged and recorded with the local authority, there has not been a legal transfer. So, by that definition of land ownership, no "events outside of its jurisdiction" can take place. Any such agreements become binding only upon their verified registration. A notary is responsible not only for confirming the transfer but also as independent consultant so neither party gets seriously ripped off. (And if they didn't, they would be in serious liability trouble.)

The "share of the database" is managed and owned by the local government, but its records are available all across Germany for authorities to look up. The vector database of lots is public, and there are procedures to request access to ownership documents for various purposes. The procedure is that when you want to buy a certain property, the owner confirms that you have permission to get the official record directly from the land registry, which then become the basis for any serious negotiations as what is recorded there is in fact the single source of truth.

In the three states where I've been involved in or observed real estate transactions, the system is similar in that a real estate transaction must be recorded with the county clerk to become effective. Generally documents are notarized to validate the identity of the signatories, and a notary is expected to confirm that the signatories understand what they are signing.

However, afaik, county clerks do not validate deeds; they will dutifully record any submitted deed if it follows the proper forms. If there is doubt about the validity of a conveyance, the whole history of recorded deeds for a property can be examined and potentially set aside if found to be fraudulent. Adverse possession laws can moot disputes about old conveyances though: after some time, someone who has "color of title", actual possession, and pays property taxes will gain actual title to the property, even if their original deed was deficient.

In a land registry system, the keeper of the registry generally validates that conveyances are approved by the current owner; this doesn't happen in a system of registered deeds. Deeds I've seen don't truly identify the grantors or grantees either. Typically just the first and last names. There are many people with my name, but if you have a deed for my house signed by the Pulitzer Prize winning author who shares my name, you can record it even though it's not actually valid.

Yes, it does sound like typical German bureaucracy to make events like death outside the jurisdiction impossible unless the deceased has obtained prior approval to kick the bucket. :)

Well, I do enjoy the layers of protection implemented here. It sounds like you wouldn't?

The record from the land registry includes things like wayrights for third parties, known ground contaminations, utilities/water/power lines etc. -- all very relevant to me as a potential buyer. I did enjoy the notaries explanations of various aspects, which went beyond reading the contract out loud and making sure we verbally understood what we were going to sign. The process also forces both parties to have written copies of everything prior to the final meeting, which provides another chance to let it sink in and potentially reconsider -- which in our case, we did. Also, they're really trained to verify IDs, not like a random clerk in some liquor store.

I understand one can experience it as "bureaucracy" and "annoyance" in their individual case, but then I wonder how much such people consider the bigger picture and what the benefit of all of it really is, for their own and for societies sake, and what kind of shitshow it would turn into if we got rid of all the "bureaucracy" -- such as described in the very blogpost here.

Even if I (wrongly?) assume I am always on top of things and I will not get ripped off ever, only so-called stupid people will, I really don't need more angry people who fell for scams or made quick decisions that they regret or whose identity got 'stolen' around me/on public streets/in bars. If it was for me, we could add even more such layers of protection, which you seem to see only as "(unnecessary) bureaucracy"?

> First, it doesn't seem like that's always the case, based on another post upthread talking about a land ownership case that went to the high court because of an error in the government's records.

I don’t know what High Court case they are talking about-they didn’t give a citation just a vague recollection-they might be remembering wrong.

But the assumption in the Torrens system is the government database is correct. There are rare exceptions-e.g. the so-called “paramount interests”-but they are narrow and very much exceptional. By contrast, in the US system, a court is totally open to entertaining the argument the county title records are incorrect, in many states there is no presumption against such an argument, and you aren’t required to convince the court some narrowly drawn exception applies before it will consider the argument. (Actually Australia still has something like the “US system” too-we call it “old title”-but old title is extremely rare. Anyone trying to sell an old title lot is going to convert it to Torrens before selling it. I don’t think you can legally sell it until you do so. So in practice the only old title lots left are those which haven’t changed ownership-other than by inheritance-in many decades.)

> Second, since there is no single government for the entire world, any government trying to implement a Torrens system is still going to face the problem of events happening outside its jurisdiction that its records do not and cannot contain, which affect ownership of property in its jurisdiction.

That’s not how it works. Overseas contracts, court judgements, etc - if you don’t lodge them with the land title registry, they don’t legally exist as far as land titles go.

> if you don’t lodge them with the land title registry, they don’t legally exist as far as land titles go.

As I pointed out in another post downthread, that is also the case in US jurisdictions that record deeds: if the deed transferring ownership isn't recorded with the county clerk, the transfer doesn't legally exist.

The difference, at least in many US jurisdictions, as I pointed out in that other post, is that in those US jurisdictions the county clerk does not guarantee that the deed is final, any other legal challenges notwithstanding. For example, I think someone else upthread gave the example of someone making a will in a different state that left property to their children instead of their spouse. When that person dies, yes, whoever is supposed to inherit the property would need to record a transfer deed in the county where the property is located to effect the transfer. But their legal right to do so depends on a will executed in a different state.

In many US jurisdictions, the county clerk is not responsible for checking to see if the person recording the transfer deed has the legal right to do so; that's up to other parties involved. But under the Torrens system you describe, it seems like the government land registry would have to do such a check in order to make the guarantee it makes. But how can it? It doesn't control or have access to things like wills in other jurisdictions that determine who has the legal right to take title to a property.

> In many US jurisdictions, the county clerk is not responsible for checking to see if the person recording the transfer deed has the legal right to do so; that's up to other parties involved. But under the Torrens system you describe, it seems like the government land registry would have to do such a check in order to make the guarantee it makes. But how can it? It doesn't control or have access to things like wills in other jurisdictions that determine who has the legal right to take title to a property.

Commonly what happens-in legally complex situations, they’ll refuse to register the change in ownership; and then you have to challenge their refusal in the local jurisdiction’s courts-which are much better equipped to deal with complex legal issues, especially those involving interactions with foreign jurisdictions than the lands title registry is-and if you convince the court, they’ll order the registry to register the title change.

For deceased estates, they want to see an order from probate court telling them what to do before they do anything (if there is a will which nobody disputes, such an order is basically a formality). They don’t accept overseas court decisions; you need to apply to a local court asking for an order for the execution of the foreign judgement, and if the local court grants it, then the land registry will action it.

In your scenario where someone dies in another state, the legal process in Australia is-you apply to the probate division of the Supreme Court of their state of residence for an order of probate. Then you apply to the probate division of the Supreme Court of the state in which the property is located to get an in-state court order endorsing the out-of-state court order as valid. Then you send both court orders to the land title registry, and it will register the change of title in accordance with them. All the land title registry has to do is (a) validate the court order is real (I think they have access to court computer systems to double-check this); (b) in the (very rare) case there is any vagueness or ambiguity in what the court order tells them to do, they’ll reject it and tell you to get another court order with more precise instructions.

In the Torrens system, if you do not register the transfer of property with the government, then the transfer hasn't happened. So whatever else happens in the rest of the world doesn't matter (at least, unless the land itself is annexed by another government).

(And, from similar cases in the UK which has this system, if the land registry fucks up the transfer is still final and this has been upheld by the court, the government may just be liable for damages)

> In the Torrens system, if you do not register the transfer of property with the government, then the transfer hasn't happened.

This is also true of county clerks in the US: any transfer of property in the county has to be recorded on a deed that is submitted to the county clerk and kept on file by them. Otherwise it hasn't happened.

> if the land registry fucks up the transfer is still final

This is the part that might not be the same in all US jurisdictions (though it appears it is the same in some, someone posted upthread about Iowa having a system like this).

> This is the part that might not be the same in all US jurisdictions (though it appears it is the same in some, someone posted upthread about Iowa having a system like this).

As I pointed out in a reply to that comment, that's a popular misconception – legally, Iowa uses essentially the same land title system as every other US state; the main difference is instead of private title insurance, there is a state government monopoly on title insurance. But Iowans use the phrase "title insurance" to mean "private title insurance", making many of them wrongly think their state doesn't have title insurance at all.

Several US states previously enacted Torrens title, but largely unsuccessfully – few titles were ever converted to Torrens, and in almost all of them Torrens title is either repealed or effectively moribund.

The only place under US jurisdiction where Torrens title is fully mainstream, is Guam. Guam adopted it in the early 20th century, around the same time as the US territories of Hawaii and the Philippines did. It survived in the Philippines, but the Philippines became an independent country. In Hawaii, it was successful in a few parts of the state (in particular Lānaʻi), but otherwise largely not.

> any transfer of property in the county has to be recorded on a deed that is submitted to the county clerk and kept on file by them. Otherwise it hasn't happened.

No, the point is that this is actually not true. The transfer has happened as soon as the deed has been executed. There are many reasons you generally want to record the deed in a timely fashion, but doing so is not strictly necessary.

> the point is that this is actually not true

It is in Florida, which is where I live. Florida Statutes section 695.01:

"No conveyance, transfer, or mortgage of real property, or of any interest therein, nor any lease for a term of 1 year or longer, shall be good and effectual in law or equity against creditors or subsequent purchasers for a valuable consideration and without notice, unless the same be recorded according to law"

I can't say whether every US state has similar law in place, but I suspect most of them do, since both the State and the county clerks get revenue from the recording fees.

I would characterize that as a patching of some of the problems that arise from the system, not a changing of the system's underlying semantics.

By my lay reading of that, it doesn't even actually necessitate recording the deed sooner for it to have those effects - rather it just means that the deed needs to have been recorded some time before you get to court.

"Recorded according to law" refers to separate Florida statutes that specify how that's done--with the county clerk in the county where the property is located.

> it just means that the deed needs to have been recorded some time before you get to court.

No, before whatever event happens that might trigger a lawsuit.

For example (hypothetical as far as I know): say I purchase a property from a fraudulent seller. They promise me they'll record the deed after it's signed and notarized by both of us, but they never do so. (Of course I'd be stupid to do things this way, but maybe I'm a real cheapskate and want to save on title company fees.) Then they sell it to someone else. In order for my ownership rights to be protected by Florida law, I would have had to see that the deed was not recorded, and do it myself (and pay the recording fee), before the date of the second sale. Before the date of the court hearing to challenge the second sale would not be sufficient.

It's true that, in a typical closing in Florida (and in every other state where I've bought real property), the closing takes place at the title company's office, their notary notarizes all the documents and gives me copies before I leave, and I get the key to the house at the end of that. I don't have to wait until the deed is recorded with the county to take possession.

My question would be, how does a closing work in jurisdictions that have Torrens title? Does the closing have to take place at the land registry, so they can confirm that everything is checked and valid and recorded before I get the key to the house?

> before whatever event happens that might trigger a lawsuit

I'll accept that interpretation. But that's still just a patch over the underlying semantics trying to eliminate a lot of thorny cases, not a full change in semantics.

For example, let's say 12/31 is a Sunday. The seller wishes to sell the property this year for tax purposes. The seller executes the purchase agreement and the deed on 12/31, and then only records the deed on 1/2 (when the registry reopens). For purpose of taxes, that is still treated as a sale in the earlier year, right?

> My question would be, how does a closing work in jurisdictions that have Torrens title? Does the closing have to take place at the land registry, so they can confirm that everything is checked and valid and recorded before I get the key to the house?

I have no idea. It seems like the main difference with Torrens title is that when the deed is accepted by the registry then you know it is authoritative. So a closing at an attorney's office with delayed recording has the same ambiguity under both systems. The difference would be that when the deed is confirmed recorded under Torrens, that ambiguity has been fully resolved. Whereas under non-Torrens that ambiguity hangs around indefinitely, insured against by title insurance, and eventually [mostly] extinguished by adverse possession.

> For purpose of taxes, that is still treated as a sale in the earlier year, right?

To the best of my knowledge, yes, the date of closing, which is the date on which the deed is executed, is the date of sale for tax purposes. Note, however, that at least in the US, the IRS doesn't check what you claim the date of sale is unless you are audited, and I never have been. What would happen in an audit under your hypothetical, I can't say.

> a closing at an attorney's office with delayed recording has the same ambiguity under both systems.

Yes, that's why I asked if such a closing is even allowed under a Torrens system--it seems like it would defeat a key purpose of the system, which is to make sure that the land registry's records always are the "single source of truth" for who owns what.

I've actually personally dealt with a state's tax authority for a situation where the transfer date was significant, and it was never questioned.

> which is to make sure that the land registry's records always are the "single source of truth" for who owns what.

I think you're coming at this from a tech perspective of fully authoritative digital databases a little too much. Look at the ambiguity that remains after a non-Torrens transfer, and after a Torrens transfer. Eliminating that is the main point of Torrens title. It still can't solve the entire problem and be a "single source of truth" the way we see things in the tech world.

That Florida statute would seem to eliminate a good chunk of that ambiguity as well, but not all.

The IRS is Federal, not state. State tax codes are generally much easier to comprehend. But to describe the US Federal tax code as Byzantine would be to give too much credit for obfuscation to the Byzantines. :-) That's why it's so hard to predict what the IRS would do in the case of an audit (and why there is a thriving industry of tax preparers who claim, with varying degrees of justification, to be able to help you navigate the system).

That's a weird tangential rant.

For one, there is a difference between tax codes and general principles of accounting. I feel pretty confident that if a state tax authority agrees with the deed date being the transfer date, then the IRS would as well.

Also no, state tax codes can be pretty complex as well. On this particular issue, I had trouble finding an attorney who would represent me for less than $10k (while still equivocating about my position!), so I represented myself. It took a half an hour phone call with the tax authority to come to an amicable agreement. A++ would get taxed again.

I've been one to echo negative sentiment about government bureaucracy, but the times I've had to deal with it (federally, not the IRS thankfully but rather a few other agencies) the agents have been generally helpful and empowered to act authoritatively. They're still part of a bureaucracy of course, with some of the laughable things that entails, but ultimately still human beings with some leeway to act.

For the most part I think the negative narrative has been informed by corporate bureaucracies getting really bad (offshoring, IVRs, endless ticket systems, now LLMs, etc) and so we're all assuming that the government simply must be worse. But it's not. (well maybe it is now after the DOGE arsonists brought so-called "corporate efficiency", I don't actually know)

FWIW even in the US system the courts usually won't order someone off land they are living on or using even if this were the case. At worst they would order compensation be paid - which is what title insurance actually covers.

Many states have a statute of limitations anyway. If you live on the land and pay the property taxes for N years everything else becomes irrelevant. Either the title was transferred to you or you squatted on abandoned land for N years: in both cases it becomes yours.

It's also entirely possible for a judge to just change the records because they don't like them. It's pretty common in Texas to see deed restrictions removed if the local government doesn't want them on there for example.

But at least in some places in the US that's actually just a log of some kinds of transactions (sales and mortgages): you don't have a normalized field in a database somewhere that spits out "this person owns this spot" instead you have to build up from each individual transaction- plus there are transactions that don't take place on the log, e.g. deaths and inheritance or marriage/divorce that could take place outside the purview of the county clerk.

e.g. a married couple buys a house, then one of them dies, and the will is recorded in a different state and leaves their property to their kids rather than the spouse, that sort of update would not be recorded in the county clerk's office in my state.

> at least in some places in the US that's actually just a log of some kinds of transactions

That's true--but as I pointed out just now in response to another post, since there is no single government having jurisdiction over the entire world, there is always the possibility of events happening outside a given jurisdiction that affect the ownership of property in that jurisdiction. No system of records in a jurisdiction can completely prevent that.

Mostly, each county has its own registry. (In some cases, there is a statewide registry.) This works, because each parcel of land is clearly in one particular county.

Database mistakes on entry happen in Torrens. Rarer, but not unheard of. Tasmanian "owned" and lived on block for decades, when sold found they'd owned the one next door. There's a critical role in acceptance where somebody as agent has to say yay or nay and a Queensland couple had the agent say the wrong outcome when the real owner didn't consent and it went to the high court if I recall.

Torrens is great but CAP theory still applies.

Hence the statement "possession is 9/10ths of the law" - for the vast majority of property that people care about, you prove you're the owner by possessing it

Property tax is also the other 9/10ths - if someone is paying the property tax they're presumed to be the owner unless there's a court fight; and in fact, if you want, in many places in the USA you can get adverse possession by paying property tax on unknown or unwanted property - or buy them at auction by paying the back property tax.

The ones you can easily do this on are all various kinds and forms of worthless land, but hey, it's out there!

The federal government never enumerated the power to manage a national credit agency and yet we have several.

The federal government doesn't manage any national credit agencies.

I don't see how that matters, the point is that we don't need the federal government's mandate in order to have a national clearinghouse of title data.

That’s not what’s being discussed. In other countries that operate under what’s called the Torrens title system, the government maintains an authoritative central land registry. If you wind up in a legal dispute about ownership of a piece of land, the judge looks at the government books and is bound by what they say (with minimal exceptions).

We cannot have such a national registry in the United States. We could have 50 independent ones, but the few states that tried it have given up and reverted.

Since title events, like marriages, can happen outside the US, that only helps a little.

> Unlike most common law jurisdictions, the United States doesn't have a central land registry due to lobbying from the title insurance industry.

These scammers will either (a) start with a stolen identity and see what land that person owns and try to sell it, or (b) find an interesting piece of land and steal that person's identity and pretend to be them.

In either case a 'definitive' database (or lack thereof) is not the problem.

Ontario and BC (e.g.) in Canada have a land registry:

* https://www.ontario.ca/page/overview-land-registry

* https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/housing-tenancy/real-esta...

That hasn't stopped fraud (attempts):

* https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/three-charged-stolen-...

* https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-64547396

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.

It’s turtles all the way down, though — how do you know that last deal had clear title? At some point you’re going to want insurance anyway.

In any case, the US system is already that the government records ownership (not for free, but for a small recording fee) and the title company charges for checking, and for insurance in case they get it wrong.

As just one example of how it can go wrong, here in Seattle it’s common to find out your lot is nine inches smaller than you thought because surveying technology is a lot better now than it was when your deed was written in 1908.

It's complicated. I live on a parcel of a very old property by US standards (early 1800s) that was subdivided shortly before I bought it. Without going into all the details, my neighbor who also lives on a parcel of the original land had a survey done and it turned out there were some significant incursions into other properties.

And we're not talking inches.

But, yeah, even inches (or any liens) can be an issue when it comes time to sell.

The trick with title theft is they target property not closely watched as the author noted, but also worth roughly the legal costs the rightful owner will incur undoing the fradulent transfer.

Prison is crime university and ID theft and related crimes are high yield low risk crimes.

The system doesn't care and such title thefts have been increasing for 15-20 years already

That depends on the state. I live in Iowa where the state records the transaction and verifies everyone's identity. Almost nobody has title insurance because there is nothing to insure. Every other state I've lived in though isn't as good about checking ID and you need title insurance (who is very good about checking id)

The system in Iowa, is instead of getting title insurance from a private insurer (as is standard in the US), you get it from a state government agency (Iowa Title Guaranty) which has a legal monopoly on all title insurance in the state. But people in Iowa say they don't have "title insurance", because the term is defined to mean private insurance, not the insurance issued by the state government. A condition of the state-issued title insurance is you need to provide an attorney's legal opinion that there are no issues with the title, and then the insurance covers the risk the attorney did a bad job, or failed to notice some obscure issue or hidden issue. But this is different from a true Torrens title system, in that title registration is not (near-)conclusive evidence of legal title, only de facto presumptive.

A number of US states historically had Torrens title, but most have repealed it, effectively converting Torrens titles to non-Torrens. Illinois had it – only in Cook County – until it was repealed in 1992. California abolished it in 1955. Virginia abolished it in 2019. Washington state abolished it in 2022-2023.

The big advantage of Torrens title is that it eliminates the need for title insurance, or at least makes it much cheaper. (You can still buy title insurance in Australia, but the Torrens title system significantly reduces the risk to the insurer, resulting in lower premiums–the risk it is covering is not that you don't have title to the property at all, rather risks such as the boundary fences being in the wrong places.) But in those US states which had it, title insurers wouldn't give you any discount for having it, and banks would still insist on title insurance to lend, nullifying the primary practical advantage of the Torrens system–the end result was your property was under a different title system which many didn't understand, which could make real estate transactions appear more complex, discourage buyers and lenders, etc. This resulted in political pressure from landowners on the system to be allowed to move off it, which is what resulted in it being repealed.

I think the US state in which Torrens would be most likely to be successful would be Iowa, since private title insurance is banned there. However, repeated attempts to introduce Torrens in Iowa failed, because the attorneys who investigate the validity of titles saw it as a threat to their livelihoods, and they successfully lobbied the state legislature against the idea.

But how do they verify your identity? Most places I've lived used nearly useless forms of identity verification

That is more or less how title insurance started back in the day.

In 1800 land was sold in person only by people who knew each other, in front of other witnesses who knew everybody in town. It worked great, which is why some states (I assume like CT) never bothered with a registry. In the mid 1800s as land out west started opening up for settlement (skip the whole bad treatment of the natives) investors "out east" wanted to invest in land and ran into a problem: they didn't want to go out to the land, but they knew scams existed so they started hiring trusted people to travel instead and verify they property owner was really the person they were buying from. Some states have a registry and so you don't need that, the state tracks owners and verifies the people buying/selling really are who they say they are.

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.

There is a database. The insurance covers things that aren't in the database. Claims are exceptionally rare, so it's pretty cheap.

For the risk assumed by the title insurance, it's one of the most overpriced insurance around.

> 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.

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...

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.

That still wouldn’t work in most states. The earnest money and the final payment are handled by an escrow company who does all the title verification or works hand in hand with the company doing the title verification. Neither set of funds is ever just handed over.

Again - it varies state to state, as the constitution dictates.

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.

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.

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.

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.

> 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.

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

It'll work in this area of the country (Connecticut, Massachusetts,) because this is a known scam and relators and attorneys know to keep an eye out for this.

The problem is that a 4x8 plywood sign will weather very fast in New England weather. You're better off following the article's suggestion of flagging the property with the court.

BTW: When these scams happen, you can sue for the irreplaceable value of trees removed, especially if you planned on keeping the lot wooded: https://law.justia.com/cases/massachusetts/court-of-appeals/...

"The problem is that a 4x8 plywood sign will weather very fast in New England weather. "

I live in Rochester, NY. Our weather is no better or worse if you are a sheet of plywood outside 24/7. It will last years.

Who can you sue? The scammer?

Might be worth reading this article about the result of a victim suing: https://www.ctinsider.com/connecticut/article/sky-top-terrac...

Regarding the victim, Kenigsberg:

> Kenigsberg received an undisclosed sum. Sky Top Partners gained a clean title to the land, finished the house and made the sale.

> Kenigsberg remains critical of the system that failed to stop the fraud and of public safety agencies that have not found the perpetrators. Under the law it's possible he could have seen the house destroyed and himself enriched more than he was. He prefers to see the case almost as an outside observer, above the fray.

Either the parties involved in the sale who should have known better, such as the relator and/or seller's attorney; or the party that took the trees down.

Furthermore, at least in Massachusetts, when you purchase property you also purchase title insurance that protects you against this. I remember very specifically, at closing, that my attorney explained that the insurance was in case someone came around with an old claim to the land.

It would be interesting to find out who and what paid out, because these scams have been going on for a bit. (There was one linked to where a property owner drove by and found a house being built on their land.)

Here's a plaintiff's lawyer now explaining all the parties they are suing:

https://massrealestatelawblog.com/tag/title-theft-concord-ma...

TLDR: The real property owner contacted the town to block the building permit, and then contacted the other people involved in the sale, the documents provided by the scam artist were obviously foraged, but the sale still went through and construction started.

The other major difference between this one and the other link I posted is that the owner was very likely going to build a home on the property when they retired; unlike the other link that I posted where the property was most likely an investment and going to be sold.

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

True, but you can still do a confused deputy attack. The fraudster hires a property manager, informs them that they would like to remove the sign because they wish the list the property for sale. Either that or they con a realtor they're working with into doing it. The unknowing realtor, eager for the commission, knows a guy who can take it down.

There's always something that can happen in any scenario. Social engineering, hiring locals, deeper forms of identity theft, or worse. The possibilities never hit 0, they just become a lot less profitable (and a lot riskier) a scam to try to run.

Yes, locks aren’t there to prevent the determined thief. They are for the 99% of other opportunists that will move on to an easier target immediately when they see your lock is harder to defeat

For those like me who didn't know: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confused_deputy_problem

The idea is just to avoid being the softest target. The scammers attempting this fraud don't want to do all the work you describe. They'll just move on to the next vacant property.

Who's paying for it? Are they working for free?

No, but paying someone $300 is cheap when you hope to get a check for several hundred thousand in a few months. (even if the scam is only to get the earnest money that is still a $300 investment for the final thousand or two you make - with very little work)

That's a lot of work plus money transfer paper trail for something like this.

Presumably the money trail leeds to the Caymon islands or other country where they won't assist investigation.

The realtor might pay for it or even do it themselves. It would take 5 minutes with a reciprocating saw. Or the scammer tells the realtor "never mind that" and the realtor tells the buyer.

I'm sure you could put an ad up on craigslist or fiverr or whatever, one asking for someone to take photos of the property to see if there is a sign, and another to remove it. There's plenty of people willing to do anything for money.

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

> This type of scam targets a very specific vulnerability: vacant land has no occupants to notice a for-sale sign, no neighbors who’d immediately recognize something is wrong, and closings often happen remotely.

Your vacant land could have signs which state that it is not for sale; any online listing is a scam.

It could be something small but easily spotted by a real estate agent or other interested party actually visiting the site, but not so obvious or legible in pictures.

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.

> Reynolds was in for yet another unwelcome surprise: The developer sued her for being “unjustly enriched” by the construction of the home on her land.

> The developers’ lawyer told SFGATE in March that Reynolds appeared to be taking advantage of the developer’s mistake. “Keaau Development Partnership is the only entity that has suffered hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of losses,” Peter Olson said. “She’s trying to exploit the situation to get money from my client and the other parties.”

I'm glad the judge laughed that one right out:

> The court has dismissed that case.

> “The clear motivation of KDP and PJC was to cut corners to reduce construction costs,” the ruling read. “... The encroachment on Lot 114 is so great that the Court finds it has caused the complete destruction of Ms. Reynolds' estate as it had been originally held and enjoyed.”

That's why such thing as "vacant land" shouldn't exist. Have a land -> do something on it. If you don't -> sell it to someone who do, or pay taxes that double every year.

LVT is a much simpler and less destructive version of this idea.

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).

Reminds me about what my uncle told me (not India though): As a foreigner or someone local out of the country for extended period you rent a caretaker and pay them enough so they don't leave the property unattended. And build a fence around it.

> 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

Sorry no it doesn't prove my half joking claim it only documents a single case of a high profile terrorist plot from a small group that was led by an FBI informant, containing another 4 informants and agents, and funded by the FBI in which they had trouble convicting several defendants (despite a 95%+ conviction rate normally) for some reason no clue why.

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?

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

They are busy assisting ICE with hunting down immigrants.

They're busy redacting the Epstein Files

You're just a citizen. Why would any of the three-letter agencies work on what you need?

> 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”

Just as an aside, you can put as much effort as you want in, there is no guarantee.

My identity was stolen to take out large student loans when I was 3 years old. I learned of it when I was graduated and was trying to take out loans of my own - it was a mess.

I certainly didn't do anything risky as a baby to result in my identity being stolen but it happened anyway.

maybe "appeal to popularity"

It suggests that a claim is true simply because many people believe it to be true

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.

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 was wondering why that wasn't mentioned once!

The first realtor to walk the land would have noticed that sign in a hurry, I figure.

But if the scammer lives nearby, wouldn't they just show up and remove the sign? Or pay someone to remove it.

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.

Also: free random house you didn't want, design, or ask for.

If you've held onto vacant property for years or decades, you may have a specific plan in mind for it (like retirement).

The best remedy for this is a Land Title Registry, which is a secure database of who owns a parcel of land, and a mandated verification of identity (VoI) standard. You no longer require title deeds, notaries, or title insurance. It isn't totally proof against sophisticated social engineering and gullibility of course, but it is a lot safer.

For registry titles you can also add caveats, that require sign-off from another party before transactions can occur. Unfortunately the contact address is still purely snail mail, no email or phone numbers. If you title has a bank mortgage that will appear as a caveat, requiring the debt to be discharged before it can be removed, and that also involves more ID verification.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torrens_title

https://www.firstlinks.com.au/why-our-torrens-title-property...

It's not the same as forgery, and maybe less worse, but it's not a panacea. It would still have issues as there is a lot of legacy stuff out there. We have a registry (based on the Cadastre system) and it's not uncommon for there to be disputes about the land borders which are only resolved by a judge and not simply by looking at the data. Maps are old, stuff gets lost, is poorly digitized, etc.

It's a long term project but if you enforce that new sales use the registry it already makes fraud much harder.

In Poland all transactions related to housing or land must be notarized with both buyer and seller present, the notary is supposed to check their IDs. Sadly it happened a couple of times that scammers presented a fake or stolen ID to a notary who did not recognize the forgery. Nowadays you can mark your personal number (equivalent of SSN) in the central, governmental database as restricted. This prevents notarized transactions, bank loans or issuing SIM card duplicates in your name. When you need a loan or buy a property you just log in to the system (or open the governmental app) and uncheck the checkbox.

Who was the 222nd commentator?

https://imgur.com/a/i5YQ2c4

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.

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.

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

You can also file a restriction registration to prevent anyone from registering a mortgage against the property: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/enter-a-restricti...

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...

On Zillow, you can claim ownership of a property. I'm not sure what notices they give, but I would definitely do that.

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….

Is this what happened with Graceland?

Another story of a title transfer scam: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/title-pirates/id290783...

I wonder if you could take a lien against yourself, it would show up for any potential buyer...

Does title insurance cover it if the sale actually goes through?

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!

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.

>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".

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.

You know what? Fuck this guy. And that one who found a 4-bedroom house on his land that he haven't used for decades.

They didn't do anything with their land and doesn't have any plans for it for the foreseeable future. It's not like a snowblower that sits in your garage unused. It's land, a piece of planet. If you own it, you should use it for something. If you don't, return it back to people.

[dead]

    Like most people, I’ve had my identity stolen once or twice in my life.

Much less on a property deal where identity and ownership are heavily scrutinized.

The FBI won't get involved unless it's politically advantageous.

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.

The scammer isn't trying to get the earnest money, they are trying to get the full sale price.

Well yes, I assume that too. But the article says they'll pocket the earnest money which makes zero sense. Probably another example of someone incapable of writing an article by themselves and used an LLM.

>"7. If they get farther they’ll pocket the earnest money deposit which would have been significant in my case."

Is there a single case of the scammer getting a single dollar from one of these scams? My suspicion is that there isn't. (Everyone who doesn't know the answer and isn't curious should downvote me.)

The global freight carrier storefronts around me all have notary services. I used them to notarize the documents from my last home sale; they glanced at my ID to the extent that they checked it matched the name on the paperwork, and signed off on it.

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.