[HN Gopher] 221 Cannon Road Is Not for Sale
___________________________________________________________________
221 Cannon Road Is Not for Sale
Author : mecredis
Score : 126 points
Date : 2026-02-03 16:56 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (fredbenenson.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (fredbenenson.com)
| ajcp wrote:
| > 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"?
| rwmj wrote:
| 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
| lateforwork wrote:
| 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.
| maciekkmrk wrote:
| Is this something a title insurance could help with?
| lateforwork wrote:
| 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
| unyttigfjelltol wrote:
| 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....
| thekevan wrote:
| 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.
| teeray wrote:
| 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.
| jgoldshlag wrote:
| 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
| teeray wrote:
| 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.
| zamadatix wrote:
| 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.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Who's paying for it? Are they working for free?
| bluGill wrote:
| 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)
| margalabargala wrote:
| That's a lot of work plus money transfer paper trail for
| something like this.
| teachrdan wrote:
| For those like me who didn't know:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confused_deputy_problem
| thekevan wrote:
| 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.
| emptybits wrote:
| 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
| x0x0 wrote:
| 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.
| jjmarr wrote:
| 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
| nine_k wrote:
| 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.
| wrs wrote:
| 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.
| ghaff wrote:
| 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.
| bluGill wrote:
| 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)
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| But how do they verify your identity? Most places I've
| lived used nearly useless forms of identity verification
| anjel wrote:
| 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
| bluGill wrote:
| 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.
| ryandrake wrote:
| 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.
| the_fall wrote:
| There is a database. The insurance covers things that
| aren't in the database. Claims are exceptionally rare, so
| it's pretty cheap.
| dcrazy wrote:
| 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.
| weinzierl wrote:
| _" 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.
| raini wrote:
| patio11 wrote a bunch about this:
| (https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/working-title-
| insuran...)
| pdonis wrote:
| _> 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.
| skissane wrote:
| 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.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> 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.
| rcxdude wrote:
| 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)
| pdonis wrote:
| _> 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).
| rendx wrote:
| > 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.
| toast0 wrote:
| 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.
| labcomputer wrote:
| 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. :)
| xenadu02 wrote:
| 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.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| 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.
| mandevil wrote:
| 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.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> 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.
| parsimo2010 wrote:
| > 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.
| semiquaver wrote:
| > You can't hold it against us if that happens
|
| No, what you describe is the entire purpose of owners
| title insurance. The idea that it "only covers previous
| owner" is false, it covers a wide variety of title
| defects.
| parsimo2010 wrote:
| 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...
| toast0 wrote:
| > 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.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| 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.
| ggm wrote:
| 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.
| mcherm wrote:
| 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.
| cmiles74 wrote:
| The federal government never enumerated the power to manage
| a national credit agency and yet we have several.
| peaseagee wrote:
| The federal government doesn't manage any national credit
| agencies.
| skissane wrote:
| > 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.
| the_fall wrote:
| 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.
| jerf wrote:
| 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.
| rwmj wrote:
| 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.
| rationalist wrote:
| 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.
| bluGill wrote:
| 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.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| Optionality. There is also a lot of cheap land in the US, so
| it often isn't a large investment.
| emptybits wrote:
| 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.
| eszed wrote:
| 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.
| talloaktrees wrote:
| does that mean someone was paying into your social security,
| essentially boosting your benefit amount when the time comes?
| stackskipton wrote:
| 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.
| m463 wrote:
| 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.
| plagiarist wrote:
| 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.
| WarmWash wrote:
| >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.
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| 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.
| Lerc wrote:
| 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.
| brightball wrote:
| 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.
| kstrauser wrote:
| 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.
| recursive wrote:
| 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.
| Lammy wrote:
| This exact thing happened to me once at the hotel bar in
| the Santa Clara Convention Center / Hyatt Regency Santa
| Clara.
| kstrauser wrote:
| Not especially, I don't think. It's incredibly common
| according to everything I see online.
| recursive wrote:
| I guess I'm just lucky.
| NoSalt wrote:
| 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.
| teeray wrote:
| Periodic reminder that "identity theft" is the financial system
| gaslighting you into thinking their poor decisions are your
| fault.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| This is a Mad Libs autopilot reply which has nothing to do with
| the article.
| ElevenLathe wrote:
| 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.
| fortran77 wrote:
| That's why I downvoted and flagged it -- along with your
| content-free response.
| DannyPage wrote:
| 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...
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| 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)
| compiler-guy wrote:
| After years of legal wrangling and headaches she came to a
| settlement that may or may not have been her originally
| preferred solution.
| wplu wrote:
| Another story of a title transfer scam:
| https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/title-pirates/id290783...
| juancn wrote:
| Like most people, I've had my identity stolen once or twice in my
| life.
|
| Huh? It's not as common. I don't think I've been victim of it
| ever, unless it's way more common in some other countries?
|
| Much less on a property deal where identity and ownership are
| heavily scrutinized.
| IhateAI wrote:
| 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.
| rationalist wrote:
| 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.
| IhateAI wrote:
| 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.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| 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.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| The scammer isn't trying to get the earnest money, they are
| trying to get the full sale price.
| IhateAI wrote:
| 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."
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| 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.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| 6. If questioned, they disappear.
|
| Seems like this isn't really a problem? Who sells land without
| questions?
| silisili wrote:
| 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...
| clarkmoody wrote:
| The FBI won't get involved unless it's politically advantageous.
| marssaxman wrote:
| 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 could all go harass each
| other and leave me in peace.
|
| I suspect that the speculators are scammers anyway: they never
| respond to my questions.
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| > 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.
| mcherm wrote:
| They are busy assisting ICE with hunting down immigrants.
| engineer_22 wrote:
| Having recently been the victim of burglary, twice, I was
| shocked and dismayed at the lack of response from the
| authorities...
| Xeoncross wrote:
| You're just a citizen. Why would any of the three-letter
| agencies work on what you need?
| some_random wrote:
| 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.
| stackskipton wrote:
| 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?
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| 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.
| toast0 wrote:
| 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?
| sharadov wrote:
| 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.
| ivraatiems wrote:
| 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.
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