Real estate be careful.

Ripmany's Avatar
yourdesire's Avatar
Thanks for sharing Rip. Sadly this has been going on for a while. Personally I don't think I could even think up a scheme like this, let alone execute it. But there are new scams & scammers popping up everyday. Keep your eyes open & question 90 % of what you see & hear.
There are so many scams its hard to keep up.

I suspect the owner of the property had the address for legal notices to the home address of the tenant. Thst allowed him to just receive the notice of a title action.

Many owners used to live in their home and then moved but dint update the address with their county. Or, many cities counties have a strict form of rent control and some owners do not want to deal with the issue of rent control and to avoid they list their an owner occupant to avoid the issue.

Just keep your mailing address upto date and you will receive all the notices for liens.
I have to say that this should have NOTHING at all to do with the actual owner. That person should be held harmless otherwise the whole system is fucked.

A guy rents a house, defrauds a bank, steals the money from the bank, but the homeowner can be on the hook? Something is seriously wrong here. I have been thinking about this stuff for a while after hearing about hometitletheft.com or whatever. It just doesn't make sense that this can happen (to the homeowner). I am not usually one of those "fuck the banks" kind of person but in this case, it is on them to properly vet their customers. Why do they even have those "Know your Customer" requirements and this shit can go on? Clearly they aren't getting to know their customers even though they go through the Anti-money laundering training. Yeah, sucks to be them in losing that money but don't punish the homeowner and make them the victim. Suck it up and improve your process otherwise go the fuck out of business like you deserve!
Rules very from State to State.

Most States have a requirement for property owners to receive legal notices. This includes everything from tax bills, notice from the county for corrective notices, contractors rights to file a lien, which also includes notices from banks.

If your legal address is not up to date with the county, your just asking for someone to impersonate you and commit fraud. There was a group in Los Angeles who specifically targeted owners by find places for rent, pulling a title report and if the address matched rental addresses they would start there fraud scheme. The law would be against you. The mentioned case was taken all the way to the CA Supreme Court, and the legal property owners lost.