By Andrews McMeel Syndication
Deed theft has become a big business for crooks: They slap their names on unsuspecting homeowners’ titles, then proceed to milk the properties dry. Sometimes they sell the property outright to another unwary party. Other times, they take out a mortgage and sneak away with the proceeds of that loan.
From 2019 through 2023, more than 58,000 property owners reported real estate fraud to the FBI. Victims were cheated out of a combined $1.3 billion, according to statistics collected by the FBI, the National Association of Realtors and EquityProtect, a fraud prevention company. In 2024 alone — the last year for which statistics are available — losses from deed theft topped $173 million and the FBI fielded almost 9,400 reports.
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