This country was founded on property rights. The trail of ownership of property is one of the cornerstones of American jurisprudence. A great deal of our government is devoted to recording property transactions, maintain the integrity of those actions in order to sanctify the sales process.
According to industry insiders from around the nation, the titling companies routinely ask for kickbacks. The going rate for kickbacks is $300 per title according to several posts on real estate blogs.
One title company pro says the whole industry is sinking due to corruption, and that “Unless people with influence in the title industry do something to curtail this kind of hogwash, we are on a sinking ship. Title insurance as we know it is doomed.”(Ibid)
The multi-billion dollar title insurance industry, combined with a network of county recorders across the nation, is supposed to maintain the integrity of the nation’s property transactions. But, many people across the nation say that not only has the network been compromised, but some of the transactions are so tainted that they are no longer valid as accurate renditions of who owns what, making it impossible to legally insure the title.
The deed, that piece of paper upon which your property rights hinge, has been compromised in many states. Deed forgers have generated a multi-million dollar underground network of theft by document deception, which has cost American taxpayers billions of dollars in property losses. And, we’re not even talking about the contributions of crooked county government personnel, yet.
Horror stories about fraudulent deeds abound. Here’s one that’s particularly nasty. In one case of alleged deed fraud, an elderly woman’s home was stolen right out from under her, by people she’d never even seen.
The elderly victim resides in Georgia and owns a home on the 1500 block of West Flores Street in San Bernardino that she was trying to sell. When the victim’s son was listing her property for sale, he discovered that her property had been fraudulently transferred to a female subject with no connection to the victim’s family. The forged deed had been filed and recorded at the San Bernardino County Recorder’s Office and the suspects were attempting to refinance the property for $160,000 through First American Title Company in Santa Cruz, California. (Press Release: San Bernadino Prosecutor’s Office)
In November, Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Alverez announced a major crackdown on mortgage fraud. The state of Florida has some of the highest foreclosure rates in the nation, many attributable to mortgage fraud. The mayor noted that the losses are huge.
Mortgage fraud is a substantial problem in our County with more than 200 reported incidents of mortgage fraud and an estimated $50 million in losses to lenders and other victims. The recent Florida State Statute 817.545 went into effect on October 1, 2007, making it easier to crack down on mortgage fraud, making all parties involved in Mortgage Fraud subject to prosecution. (Press release)
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