CLIENT ALERT: Home Title Theft Should you be worried?
• Step 4: They submit the forged deed to the county Recorder’s Office for recording. • Step 5: Once the document is recorded and they appear as the registered owner, they immediately borrow money using your property as collateral. • Step 6: They disappear with the loan money, leaving you to discover the problem only after receiving notices about loans in default and threats of foreclosure on your property. What can you do about it? You may have heard about paid title defense or title lock services advertised on the radio. At this point, we don’t have enough experience with these services. However, county Recorder’s Offices now offer free property alerts that will notify you if any document is submitted relating to your property. This service is provided directly by the county Recorder’s Office (the government office that handles land records and real estate transactions). Good news for our clients: All the counties surrounding our office currently offer this free service, including Butler, Warren, Hamilton, Clermont, Montgomery, Greene, Preble, Brown, and Clinton Counties, as well as many others throughout Ohio and the rest of the United States. How to Sign Up for Free Property Alerts 1. Search online for the Recorder’s Office in the county where you own real estate (for example, “Butler County, Ohio Recorder’s Office”). 2. Go to the Recorder’s Office main website. 3. Look for a section or page that allows you to sign up to receive free property alerts. Depending on your county, this may include registering for what’s called a “fraud sleuth account.” 4. If you later receive any alerts, contact the county immediately and ask them for a copy of whatever filing was submitted so you can review it to confirm whether it’s legitimate. Important reminder: If you purchase a new property in the future, remember to register that new property for fraud alerts as well.
If you’ve heard the alarming radio commercials about home title theft, you’re not alone. We’ve received numerous questions from clients asking whether they should be concerned and if they need to pay for title protection services. While we can’t speak to how common this scam actually is (we haven’t personally encountered anyone who has experienced it), we can explain what the scam involves and point you toward a free tool that can help protect you. How does the scam work? The home title theft scam exploits publicly available land records. Here’s the typical process: • Step 1: The criminal accesses your current deed online for free. (Note: land records have always been public and free to access, but you used to have to go to the county Recorder’s Office in person. Now most counties have these records available online.) • Step 2: They prepare a new deed transferring your property from you to themselves. • Step 3: They falsify your signature on the deed. We suspect criminals are obtaining fake IDs to impersonate property owners and using them to convince unsuspecting notaries to notarize the fraudulent documents.
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