The most susceptible to home thievery are those properties that are paid off, and all you need is a crooked notary. This was more of a vengeful act by an ex-boyfriend that could be unwound a little easier because it had a mortgage and harder to re-sell. Hat tip to SM for sending!
Rohina Husseini had no idea someone could steal a house, but the first small clue that the home she owned for nearly a decade was no longer hers was a piece of junk mail that most of us ignore.
The Springfield, Virginia, mother said she initially tossed the mortgage refinancing offers that began arriving over the summer in the trash, but one detail bugged her: The letters were addressed to another woman. Curious, Husseini said she finally opened one.
“You bought a new house, congratulations,” read the letter addressed to Masooda Persia Hashimi.
“I was like, ‘Wow, this doesn’t seem right,’ ” Husseini said. “I don’t know this person at all. She never lived in my house even before [I moved in].”
In the frantic hours that followed, Husseini discovered the total stranger was now the legal owner of the brick Colonial worth about $525,000 that forms the center of her life with her husband and daughter.
Husseini, who owns a home health-care business, was the victim of a lesser-known crime alternately called house stealing or deed theft that has seen an uptick in some areas in recent years. Scammers gain control of a deed to a home and then attempt to resell the property or to open a line of credit on it.
The results can be disastrous. Unsuspecting homeowners can be foreclosed upon or even find strangers living in an unoccupied property or vacation home that has been sold out from under them.
“Oftentimes, the [scammers] will offer a stolen home at an attractive price just below the market rate for an area so it is snapped up quickly,” said Cynthia Blair, the former president of the American Land Title Association. “They get a cash purchaser … and [the scammers] are off into the sunset with the money.”
Thanks to the junk mail tip-off, Husseini avoided one of those worst-case scenarios, but she is living another nightmare: trying to wrest back control of her home. The process can cost rightful owners tens of thousands of dollars and months of court hearings.
It’s easier than you might think to steal a home.
Husseini’s ordeal began in May. Husseini’s ex-boyfriend walked into a Fairfax City law firm and passed himself off as Husseini, according to Fairfax County police and a lawsuit Husseini has filed. Edress Hamid told the attorney he was headed overseas as part of a military deployment and wanted to transfer control of his home to his wife, Masooda Persia Hashimi, according to the lawsuit.
A woman accompanied Hamid and introduced herself as Hashimi, according to the lawsuit, which names Hamid and Hashimi as defendants. The lawsuit says the attorney failed to check their identities, a basic step that could have headed off the fraud, before transferring the title to Hashimi.
On May 9, Hamid presented the phony deed to the Fairfax County land records office, and Hashimi became the official owner of Husseini’s home, according to the lawsuit. In the weeks that followed, Husseini began receiving the odd junk mail.
Blair said the scam is also popular in markets where homes are unoccupied or there are large numbers of vacation homes, because they make easier targets.
Blair said the best safeguard against deed fraud is title insurance that protects against deed problems, while the head of the Fairfax County financial crimes squad recommended vigilance.
“Property owners should be diligent and check on family members who can’t do their own checks, such as the elderly or those not occupying their houses for a period of time,” said 2nd Lt. Jonathan Stern. “Have a good awareness of your property.”
“Blair said the best safeguard against deed fraud is title insurance that protects against deed problems”
Says the person who will sell you such insurance. What a crock!
“Property owners should be diligent” because your local government bureaucrats are not accountable for participating in a fraud, and if anything goes wrong, it’s totally on you to fix it.
“Blair said the best safeguard against deed fraud is title insurance that protects against deed problems”
Please tell me how title insurance will protect me as a long-term homeowner when someone steals the title to my house and sells it to someone else? I thought it protected buyers from this situation, not an unwitting owner who didn’t even know their house was being sold out from under them fraudulently? There are services that will track your title, they’re just not called “title insurance”!
And don’t forget that great story a few years ago when a homeless dude transferred the title of Petco Park to himself:
http://bubbleinfo.s020.wptstaging.space/2015/12/27/wild-deeds/
Best part was he was too crazy to prosecute!
Agree – title insurance isn’t the deed police, waiting around to be sued every time a scam happens.
They only cough up money when their search of the records misses something from the past.
“The lawsuit says the attorney failed to check their identities, a basic step that could have headed off the fraud, before transferring the title to Hashimi.”
why do I suspect the attorney in this case was in on the fraud?
Regardless, how does one reasonably protect themselves from this type of fraud? or, is this just a sensational article?
No, the threat is real, but limited.
There isn’t any benefit of stealing a house encumbered with a big mortgage – what are you going to do if you’re the thief, start making the payments??
But if the house is paid off, and worth $500,000, a thief can do the switcharoo on the deed and quick-sell it to a cash buyer for $350,000. If the cash buyer is inexperienced and has a big ego, he won’t mind buying it without title insurance and just rush the paperwork through the thief’s bogus escrow company within a few days, and poof – pick up the keys next week. But the keys don’t work, and the old people who own the house will wonder why you are trying to kick them out!
This is the only place where title insurance would detect a problem, and disrupt the fraudulent sale. But buyers will live without title insurance, if the price is right.
Seems like there’s a ripe business opportunity to protect people’s properties from this type of theft. Kind of like a “LifeLock” for your house! Name it “PropertyLock”!