And keep in mind that if any of you have ever received the notification from
any entity, corporation, government agency that your social Security number was compromised right
leading to potential identity theft. And generally when you received that notification, you
are provided the option of receiving you one or two years of free credit monitoring.
You are also at risk for this type of a scam. So criminals
use the identity of the homeowner right using your social Security number in many cases
to sell this home posing as you right from underneath you. You were listening
to Carrie Lets's Financial Survival Network where you get valuable information you just can't find
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welcome you are listening to watching the Financial Survival Network. I'm your host,
Carrie Lutz and hey, it's mid August, and you know, just when
you thought it was safe to go outside, there's a new scam. And
it used to be once upon a time you couldn't steal a house. You
couldn't steal land, you know, things that were permanently affixed. Was very
difficult. You couldn't just march off with a house, I guess, unless
you put it on a trailer and slapped it away. But nowadays the biggest,
one of the hottest new scams is stealing land, and especially vacant land.
Because it's vacant, nobody's checking it out, nobody cares about it until
you go to sell it and you find out you don't own it anymore.
I mean, it's really fascinating these scammers. They are they're thinking of new
things, new scams twenty four seven. And Robert Siciliana, who has spent
a large part of his life breaking these scams and informing you about them,
is with us now, Robert, it's great to have you back. So
land scams. Who would have thought, yeah, so, you know,
this particular scam is really nefarious due to the fact that many municipalities throughout the
country, right, so you have your you know, states do things a
certain way, and then you have various municipalities statewide that might do things a
bit differently. It's how they record information, it's how they put it out
there on the web. For anybody to see. And then from there how
anybody can access those documents, deeds, titles, and so forth and change
them, manipulate them, claim them as their own, and so on,
either by stealing identities or simply by saying that they purchased it. And throughout
the country these scams are proliferating now. Certain municipalities have systems in place to
alert their constituents that somebody has taken out a deed, somebody has registered this
land, somebody has made a sale on this property, and so on,
but many don't. And when you see various services that might alert you on
the side for like twenty five bucks a month, like a whole title lock
type of thing, they may or may not even work in your state or
in your municipality. So I think it's important that you kind we kind of
dig in a little bit understand what these scams look like, what the right
flags might be, and ultimately what things you can and should be doing to
reduce your risk. All right, And as we're speaking, I just want
you to know I've been meaning to do this, and I'm so happy that
we're connecting here because you made me actually do it. I am on the
Palm Beach County Clerk's office website, and I am now signing up for a
fraud alert for my house just in case somebody tries to take out a mortgage
or tries to sell it out from underneath me. So Kerry, do me
a favorite, like while you're there, kind of read through it out loud,
like, let everybody know what that looks like. It sounds like what
it's warning you of. Okay. Property fraud Alert Registration Property fraud Alert is
an electronic notification service that alerts a subscriber via email every time a land records
document is recorded with the requested name, so they're not so much doing it
by the address, but by your name, so obviously in order, and
that is effective because obviously for somebody to steal my property, they got to
convey it from me to a third party. And then it's just putting in
your email address and they want parcel number, of course, which I have
to go look up, so I can't do this now. But you enter
the address you want a monitor and then and then you send a confirmation email
and then you're set. I guess now there's a couple of things about that
that I want to point out. So not every county is going to have
that system in place, So it depended where where you are listening audience,
viewing audience, you may or may not have that option. There may be
third party subscriptions that you can pay for a LifeLock, is it right,
Yeah, exactly, So not every municipality throughout the country has that service.
Now, I think it's really important, like right now that you go online,
any all of you to go online and find out if in fact you
have that option. Now, a couple of things. Number one, what
you want to make sure of is that nobody can actually monitor your indeed your
property in place of you, right, you know, like if somebody else
out there poses as as as a kerry that when it had signed themselves up,
that they would get that suitation, that's problematic. You want to do
that before somebody else does it. All of you if you have that option,
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. I see your point.
And maybe that's why you need a third party service and you actually need to
pay for it, because we know that to govern mints are often very lackadaisical.
But I didn't bother putting in the legal description and whatever else they wanted
a parcel number, but it's still confirmed it and said that I am I
am now protected, Robert, thanks to you. Perfect. So let me
define what a vacant land scam is. So it is an umbrella term that
applies to any attempt to froudgling its sell in real estate that the scammer does
not own. So, while undeveloped land is the most common focus of these
scams, criminals may attempt to sell residential or commercial buildings, condominiums, or
homes. So it's not just the vacant land, although vacant land is an
attractive option. Scammers begin by researching properties through public records, very simple to
do because of course they are public. They first look for properties that are
free of mortgages and leans, and then they look for properties that are likely
to be unoccupied, undeveloped and being unoccupied empty. Long term rentals and out
of season vacation vacation rentals are also among the most pro popular for these types
of scams. Yeah, So they're looking for properties that you don't see every
single day of the week, right, They're looking for you know, properties
that will you know that are I don't want to say neglected, because that
is the wrong term for it, but not monitored like you know, like
a second home like. Yeah, And keep in mind that if any of
you have ever received the notification from any entity, corporation, government agency,
then your social Security number was compromised, right, leading to potential identity theft.
And generally when you received that notification, you are provided the option of
receiving you know, one or two years of free credit monitoring. You are
also at risk for this type of a scam. So criminals use the identity
of the homeowner right using your social Security number in many cases to sell this
home, posing as you right from underneath you. Yeah, and being a
recovering attorney, I can tell you that you're generally your title insurance, which
if you have a mortgage thanks require you to ensure the title for unrecorded leans
and judgments and other stuff that can come up. You're not covered in your
title insurance for this. Yeah. And you would think, you know,
spending you know, two or three four thousand dollars for a title and shrugs
policy, It would be I actually invested in title and shrugs policy, you
know, by default, when I bought the house that I'm in right now
years ago and within you know, three or four years of purchasing the property,
we had somebody that claimed adverse possession over a portion of our properties that
are covered that you were covered for. And man, I think that title
insurance might have dropped. I mean, I know they dropped well into six
figures. I don't know the exact number. I know it was in excess
of one hundred and twenty five thousand dollars that final number was, but that
was like the best two or three four thousand dollars that I've ever spent in
my entire life. And what you need to do is title insurance claims,
especially now that all of the court records and land records and lean records have
been digitized, are extraordinarily rare. And when it's expensive property, the title
insurance company will require you to have a survey which can point out a potential
adverse possession claim. And I've even had it where they walk the property to
see if there were any easements or something that weren't recorded. But the number
of claims is so rare, and basically title insurance is a way to print
money for these insurance companies. They're multi billion dollar entities. They keep getting
bigger and bigger and more and more powerful, and the states require you to
have title insurance, and the federal government does. If you have a mortgage,
the bank will not write you a mortgage without title insurance. But all
this is academic for property theft because you're not covered for it because since any
event that actually happened after you purchased property, title insurance only covers you for
claims that arose actually prior to you purchasing the property, even though they might
be pursued after you purchase it. So basically, probably LifeLock in these companies
will start ensuring you and ensuring title once. Once this thing really takes off
here, you know. There, I think it was Bill O'Reilly was advertising
a service to h that would monitor the title of your home. It's a
real concern, but it's easily provided for. Yeah, you know, while
we're talking about title and those organizations, you know, it brings up,
uh mortgage closing, real estate fraud. So in addition to you know,
vacant land scams. I have been speaking quite a bit recently revolving around wire
fraud as it pertains to mortgage closings, and we're seeing in a number of
pockets of the country where criminals are monitoring MLS transactions. They'll see that they'll
they'll monitor the MLS transactions because a they can log in due to the fact
that they compromise say a real estate agent's identity and they had of his or
her user name and password for the MLS, and so they're able to log
into the MLS and they're able to see all these various transactions and they know
that particular closings are you under contract, houses are under contract. And what
they do them is they will spend time finding out who the seller is,
finding out who the buyer is, finding out of course, who the real
estate agent is. And once they know who the players are, they get
inside the actual transaction, either by phishing the real estate agent, so by
phishing the real estate agent, then get inside his or her email posing as
Google for that matter, and they get inside the email. Now they are
inside the estate agents email using a pass code, using it being their email
address itself pass code whatever it was that was phished through the scam that with
the fish er, the the the scammer was posing as Google. Once they're
inside the email, now they monitor all the scent and received emails and over
time they begin to figure out, Okay, this is the buyer, this
is the seller, this is the particular property. And now they see that
the real estate agents communicating with the buyer, and they will then communicate with
the buyer, posing ads the real estate agent right, and now they begin
to tell and ask the buyer information revolving around the closing and in order to
speed up the transaction. Here are wiring instructors closing and then it's gone.
The buyer receiving a communication from the real estate agent, thinking that it is
the real estate agent, because well, it's the real estate agents email from
an account, from an email address that they've communicated with dozens of times over
the past you know, month, two months, three months, whatever,
has no reason to believe that there's anything you know, gammy going on because
it's the real estate agents email. It's a thread that they've seen before.
The buyer then goes and performs the duties based on the instructions that the real
estate agent provided, and that dollar amount could be anywhere from you know,
ten thousand to a million dollars, yeah, or no fortune. That's why
these two title companies now actually calling up confirming this stuff and confirming the wires
and everything else, because they could theoretically be left holding the bag. But
the problem is is that that same wire fraud may not go through. The
title insurance company may have no idea that this is happening, the real estate
agent may have no idea that this is happening. Any of the lawyers involved.
Why I did this is happening because it's all happening between either a compromise
title companies email, a compromise lawyers email, a compromised real estate agents email,
and the buyer. And it's funny because there's a realtor here in Palm
Beach County that I work with on occasion, and all of a sudden,
I start getting texted from somebody who's pretending to be the head of the agency,
but I know that the language is off, and I like call her
up and I say, what's going on here? I'm getting this. She
says, yeah, we got somebody poosing here, sending texts out, spoofing
texts and spoof text or is a dangerous poofed emails? Robert, You know,
yeah, And that's easy to do because right on your iPhone, right
on your Android device, you can get access to apps that will smoove the
phone number in which you're calling from to be any global extension, any phone
number with an actualent tip of the individual or name of the company, along
with whatever that phone number might be. Caller ID spoofing is a common tactic
the criminals use, and there are a feed based services online in through the
app stores to be illegal and the telemarketing guys do this spoofing all the time.
Oh gee, I got a area code. It's right by mine the
exchange. They must be in my town. It must be somebody I know.
You pick it up and then they're pitching you. So you've got to
be basically, don't answer any calls if you don't know who it is,
all right, because it's probably going to be a scam or a telemarketer.
And don't send any money out based on a email without first doing a voice
verification with the person you know. Yeah. So the mortgage closing wire fraud
scam is reaching billions of dollars a year. Wow. And the basic tips
that revolve around prevention basically end up in the hands of the buyer because it's
the buyer that holds the bag. They're old in the money, so they're
in and while title companies are real estate agents and attorneys, they all have
their due diligence that they need to be performing. It's the buyer, It's
you and I that are the potential victims. It's our bank accounts that ultimately
a compromise. So all of you paying any attention any time in the course
of your life going forward that you're in the process of buying a property,
and it means communicating with somebody on the peripheral of a closing for a mortgage
related transaction. Number One, simply enough, never ever, ever wire money
to any bank account unless you have gone through every possible channel you can to
determine it is a legit communication, and that means calling every single person involved
in the transaction to confirm the legitimacy a of the request for a wire transfer
and be to the designated account in which that it is being sent to.
It is under the control of all of the professionals in which that you know,
like and trust, and in some cases I recommend going into the actual
offices all those involved, meeting with the people, the real estate agent,
the title attorney, the lawyer, whoever it might be the buyer the seller
meeting in person, those who ultimately benefit from those transactions, opposed to just
communicating over the phone, just communicating via email, actually meeting on site in
parson, those transactions being done on site. Listen, you know what is
it Like thirty forty years ago, mortgages weren't processed unless you're actually in person,
out of say things and loan, right yeah, right, Today they're
done virtually digitally. No people ever, you know, see each other,
touch each other, smell each other, nothing. It's all done completely anonymously
across the country. That's dangerous and it's ripe for fraud completely eight. And
you know, in certain states, like where you have attorney states, it's
actually another layer of protection because then the attorney gets the funds. It's up
to him, he's ensured if he screws up, hopefully, And you know,
this is this is serious stuff here we're talking about, you know,
really serious. And I can't express this boy even in an even in an
attorney based state like Harre in Massachusetts where I'm at again, like just because
that's the case, and just because that attorney if if he or she gets
hoodwinked it's but it's the buyer ultimately, like if if if the bad guy
skirts that closing attorney and goes directly to the buyer, No, no insurance
is going to fix that, you know. So let's talk about the red
flags. Are gotting a vacant land scam and look for so a couple of
things, things that you as a as an attorney, as a buyer,
as a seller, as a real estate agent, whoever you are in the
process. Things to look out for, Like the seller refuses to meet in
person. Uh, this should always be a red flag for any trains action.
Scammers may claim to be too busy or to be out of the country
and will claim that they cannot attend the closing. They'll also resist a video
calls and prefer to communicate solely by text or email. That's the same thing
with like a romance scam, all the same exact thing scams or all the
rage, all the rage and the pig butchering scam. Man, that is
a huge one huge and it is the exact Sammo. Right, you meeting
with somebody online, communicate with them male or female. GAO strength doesn't make
a difference. You know, you could even be chatting with them, you
know, either via I AM or even using an actual video call, right,
and over time you get to know, like and trust that person.
Heck, you might even be engaging in some virtual sex with this person over
I avoid that at all costs. But yeah, in over time, you
beginning to actually develop rail feelings with this person, right for for numerous reasons.
That's called I've got fishing exactly. And once they try and start talking
about hey, all in, by the way, I'm making a ton of
money in crypto. Yeah, you have a bond with this person, Okay,
and they may turn you on to a legit website where you can actually
invest some money in. And when I say legit website, like it's a
fully functional website and it looks like you're making money. But yes, all
on your money. This is happening like all over the world. One other
scam that we're going to cover next time, Robert, when we have you
on next month, business loan scams, all right. I had a member
of the community asked me about them, and I made the mistake of like
signing up for one with my phone number. I have gotten probably several thousand
calls in the past two years. Oh man, I couldn't even believe it.
And I was like, I was never going to take out these loans.
I was just exploring it to pass it on. I did a piece
about it. But you know, they're proliferated and they're just legal loan sharks.
The ones that are real. They get like twenty five percent a week
interest with the vig you know. Yeah, and they have you on what
they consider is their sucker list. Obviously you're heads above the rest. But
yeah, it's unfortunate because now your your phone's you know, flung. I
can't get rid of them. You know, I cannot get rid of them.
So hey, Robert, where do we find you? How do we
connect with you on the web? So I am a few different spots.
You know, Robert Ciciliano. You just google Robert Ciciliano roberts in the showt
com. Yeah, that'll be in the notes. Also, you could see
you online at protect now LLC dot com, protect now llc dot com or
Robert Sileano dot com. All right, and in the show notes. Hey
you've got a question for Robert myself, email k l at carry Lutz dot
com. We'll get you an answer and while you're on the site Financial Survival
Network dot com. In the show notes, you'll find the link to Robert's
sites and sign up for your free newsletter. Robert always a pleasure. Thanks
for stopping by, HEK youbody appreciate you. Thanks for listening to carry Lutz's
Financial Survival Network, your solution to today's trying times. For the latest,
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