But will the title company make them whole? That's what the 20 pounds of paperwork consists of - they document that they aren't responsible for anything, and you get to pay them a lot of money for saying so. (And they get to act really important...at the closing, and around town.)

Do they have fraudulent title companies?
It looks to me this would be difficult to do?
All the properties I own have gone through a title company.
I guess I’m asking, how does this scam work?

Seems like the likely target would be tracts of vacant land, unoccupied houses, rentals, etc. that are likely not visited very often by the owner.

Seems like the likely target would be tracts of vacant land, unoccupied houses, rentals, etc. that are likely not visited very often by the owner.

There has been an uptick recently in Property Titles being fraudulently changed into another name and then sold. While researching companies that you can pay to monitor your property I ran across an article that said some counties offer Consumer Notification Services. So when I checked my county (Williamson) they do offer the service for free and it took about a minute to sign up. You may want to check your own county to see if they offer it.

Friends were happy. They found a buildable, 7,500 SF lot down at a highly desired in town neighborhood and were surprised the pricing was actually under the Appraisal District's listed value of $632,500. With a price set at $625,000, they imediately contacted the realtor who represented the out of town owners and submitted a full price cash offer which was immediately accepted. Closing quickly set up at title company with sellers handling thier end remotely. They timely produced notarized documents and accepted payment. That was on July 8th. On July 26th, the purchasors got a phone call from the title company. The real owners of the land were actually disputing their appraisal value with the Appraisal District and were informed, they no longer owned the lot. That was "news" to them. Someone, from somewhere, had contacted the local real estate agent representing themselves as being the owners, never met with the realtor, got the property listed, forged signatures and used a notary stamp that had been withdrawn from the state earlier this year. "Evidently", the oriiginal notary has no idea as to who these people are or how they got that stamp.

The title company has to make this situation whole, but let this serve to all - BEWARE. There is some real scum out there and some of it is rather highly sophisticated.

Nope, buyer to friend story. Won’t make the local paper. Bet this happens more than people know.