In March 2026, the United States Attorney’s office charged eleven defendants with wire fraud in a scheme in which they stole the identities of elderly victims, used that information to obtain title reports for residential properties, then solicited millions of dollars in hard money loans from private lenders by falsely representing the loans as being secured by the elderly victims’ properties. In total, the FBI reported a total intended loss of $17.4 million from this scheme alone. According to the American Land Title Association (“ALTA”), 59 percent of title firms reported at least one attempt at seller impersonation fraud during 2025, which was more than double 28% in 2023.
The types of properties most targeted for deed and title fraud are vacant land, vacation homes, rental properties, and agricultural land. Properties owned free and clear, properties with absentee owners, and properties whose owners recently died are also prime targets. These fraudulent schemes succeed where nobody is watching the title. While a property with a mortgage on it has a lender monitoring the record and mailing statements every month, a property owned outright without a mortgage does not have a bank monitoring it.
