Your dream plot of land may be nothing more than a scam.
Lisa Shaw has been selling properties in suburban New Jersey for more than two decades. When she was contacted by a Canadian citizen living in England to get help selling his Randolph, NJ plot of land, she didn’t immediately suspect something fishy was going on.
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She told ABC News the property owner claimed his wife was ill and he needed the money to pay for her care. So Shaw did what she usually did. She asked for documentation from the seller, and he sent over copies of driver’s licenses. She then proceeded to look for a buyer.
What she didn’t know at the time was that the identification cards were fake and she would ultimately end up falling victim to a real estate scam — one tied to an alleged international crime web that authorities say involves fake documents ranging from Canada to Vietnam.
The FBI reported a 500% increase in vacant land fraud over the last four years, according to the ABC News report from September.
Real estate scams are sweeping the Northeast, FBI Senior Agent Christopher Peavey recently told CBS13. The news station reported on another case of scamsters pretending to be landowners and using fake drivers licenses in Maine, where over 260 people have lost a combined $6 million to real estate scams since 2019, per FBI data.
If your land is fraudulently sold like this, you have to file a civil lawsuit to reclaim what’s yours. “… because you’re taking a property that someone lawfully owns, most of the time they’re going to get it back. It’s the headache, the hassle and this third-party victim who thinks they’ve purchased it, so there is a lot of loss that can occur,” said Peavey.
In December, Atlanta News First Investigates also discovered sham sellers near Barnesville, a rural county south of Atlanta.
“That set off the red flag”
The Randolph property Shaw was being asked to sell was actually owned by a couple from Texas. When the driver’s licenses arrived, they had the names of the real owners, but the wrong addresses. Those IDs turned out to be totally fake.
"Everything looked fine," Shaw said. She listed the land and received multiple offers, and no one had any reason to believe there was a scam at play.
"No one suspected it, not the attorneys, not myself, not the title company," she said.
Shaw’s seller was told the highest offer he received was $140,000, and he immediately accepted. The seller provided paperwork showing he had gotten the deed notarized at the U.S. embassy in Vietnam. Payment arrangements were made, with the seller asking for the $140,000 to be split evenly across two bank accounts.
But the title company had trouble submitting the second payment.
"That set off the red flag," said Shaw, who explained that the title company was then able to get in touch with the son of the real owners of the property. "We knew it was definitely identity fraud."
But by then, the initial $70,000 payment had already gone through. The seller has since vanished, and the new buyer is now in a pickle.
Although the buyer is listed in municipal and county tax records as the property’s new owner, it’s unclear as to who really owns the land, since the actual owner never agreed to sell it.
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How to avoid real estate fraud
When it comes to real estate fraud, the stakes can be very high, and victims stand to lose a lot of money. So it’s important to know what red flags to look out for and what to avoid.
"Your gatekeeper is essentially the realtor who has to verify who is selling the property. Once it’s in the process where it’s going to a title company, they’re very sophisticated with docu-sign, with impersonating notaries public, that it’s almost impossible to stop it once it’s down the road," Peavey said to CBS13.
Make sure the real estate agent meets the seller in person, even though it’s not totally uncommon to conduct real estate transactions remotely, and not every sale from afar will be fraudulent. Another red flag to look out for is a seller who seems to be in a sudden hurry to sell.
What a thorough agent can try to do is go out to the site and ask the owner to verify specific details that would only come from having seen the property in person. If they can’t answer specific questions, it should raise a red flag. They can also ask for copies of recent property tax bills, look up the phone number by reverse search and call notaries to confirm that their signatures on documents are valid.
Landowners should also be vigilant and check property records. They can also set up title alerts with their respective county clerk’s offices so they’ll be informed if a title search comes up. However, not all counties offer this service. Landowners can also set up online search alerts for their properties.
"Vacant land is very easy to steal because not everybody is going to be checking up on a vacant piece of property once a month," said Emily Bowden, executive officer of the Sussex County Association of REALTORS in New Jersey, told ABC News. "Not everyone who owns that land necessarily lives in our area."
Now, Shaw is on a mission to educate other real estate agents about scams like the one she fell victim to.
"If you have a piece of property that someone wants to sell and it’s vacant property, really, really get your feelers up," she said.
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This article provides information only and should not be construed as advice. It is provided without warranty of any kind.
