District Attorney Dan Dow said title theft attempts have increased in San Luis Obispo County over the past 18 months.
However, the trend isn’t limited to San Luis Obispo County.
“This is definitely a national problem. There have been reports of very similar activity all across the country,” Dow said.
Dow explained that the fraudsters often target rural properties with owners who don’t live on the premises.
“People that have a piece of property in maybe a rural place and they might plan on maybe moving back to that area sometime in the future but they’re not present on the property,” Dow said.
His office receives tips from various sources, including realtors, homeowners, and the County Clerk-Recorder’s Office.
He noted that the Clerk-Recorder’s Office has limited scope to identify fraudulent documents as they file thousands of documents per month, hundreds of which pertain to real estate.
“They’re not reviewing them for whether or not it’s the true buyer. They’re making sure it’s properly notarized, the names of the deed holders are properly documented, but they can’t look at every transaction and determine if it’s a legitimate transaction,” Dow said.
Dow recommends staying vigilant about suspicious activity and seeking protections like title insurance.
Kevin Irot, Senior Title Officer at First American Title, shared how to identify signs of a scam.
“Look out for any unsolicited texts or emails. The most common way these fraudsters perpetuate land fraud is they’ll hijack an email,” Irot said.
He explained that can be easy to do on escrow emails, which often involve multiple recipients.
“If we’re doing an escrow with a buyer and seller, the buyer’s and seller’s agents, the old lender that we’re paying off, and the new lender that we’re bringing on for the buyer, we might have 12 people on the email trail at one time," Irot said. "So any one of those 12, if they have their email compromised, will have somebody with the ability to look at trails of emails.”
After the email has been compromised, the hacker searches for specific phrases.
“'Wire money,' 'money transfer,' 'escrow closing,' 'property shown' — that pops up on their screen and they’re able to investigate further and maybe insert themselves into the transaction by saying, 'Hi, I’m Jimmy Smith the buyer. Where do I wire my money again?’” Irot explained.
