Slashdot Mirror
Identity Thieves Steal Homes
westcoaster004 writes "Identity thieves in Canada have begun targeting the homes of their victims. Recently, several cases of mortgage and title fraud have involved identity theft; several individuals have had their houses sold without their knowledge. Ontario's land-registry system does not currently protect homeowners from such fraud, but instead favors banks, mortgage companies, and purchasers. The provincial government is however working to solve the problem."
Maybe someone should start selling off the titles for ontario's land titles departments or of their local members of parliament.
Pretty sure you'd find their response to these actions would change rather quickly methinks.
I'd go for drawing and quartering someone who did this.
This is quite new and has just hit the news this summer. The provincial government is acting quickly and I'm guessing it won't be a problem by Christmas.
If someone registers a mortgage against your property it is because the bank thinks they are you. That means the bank is responsible for correctly identifying the owner of the house. If they are not sufficiently careful to correctly identify the real owner of the property, they are negligent. They can be sued for negligence. That can get a jury involved. There's no jury in Canada that will believe that a bank, who participates in the theft of your house, wasn't negligent. My wag is that we won't have many more cases of house theft because the banks will see the writing on the wall and change their procedures.
Yeah it's scary, but the mechanism is very simple.
Fraudulently transfer ownership to the criminal.
Sell the property to a third party, take the money and run.
The thing I don't understand is how the owner loses it. If someone steals your car and you can prove you're the origional owner you get it back. With a house it's quite simple to prove you're the owner.
It must be an interesting loophole to avoid this. Otherwise people wouldn't care. If someone comes to my door claiming they own my house I should tell them to screw off. If I purchase a house in one of these scams, it's why I have title insurance.
I also don't understand how they can't track the hundreds of thousands of dollars back to the fraudsters? If they can't track this money, why do they require reporting of all transactions over $10k? It obviously doesn't work.
The Notary Public who notarized the old guy's supposed signature on the Power of Attorney is the one who screwed up and should have to pay. It's HIS job to positively verify the identidy of the signer - and he obviously did not do that. Title should be transferred back to the original owner and the (innocent) buyer should be made whole by the Notary's malpractice insurance policy.
Identity thieves in Canada have begun targeting the homes of their victims.
It isn't new, it's been going on for years. It's just starting to hit the media. It made the news recently in Ontario because identity thieves falsely sold a house out from under the real owner. A bank issued a mortage against the house, and when no one made payments, tried to reposses the house. The appeal courts ruled in favour of the bank, saying that even though the house sale was fraudulent, the real owner is still responsible for the payments. The Ontario government is working to change the law.
Another common fraud is to buy a run-down house for 75k. Get some building permits, then sell it to someone else for 100k. Get some building permits, then sell it to someone else for 150k. Get some building permits, then sell it to someone else for 200k.
Then, get a mortgage on the property for 175k. The bank/mortgage lender sees all these transactions documenting the increase in the value of the house, and in the overheated housing market, doesn't want to lose the business. Lots of people do this legitimately - buy a run-down house, fix it up, and sell.
Of course, none of the transactions were real, the house was being bought & sold between the same group of people, and it is still the same run-down house worth 75k. People tend to have less sympathy for the bank, they usually say the bank should have sent a home inspector to examine the property.
but I am a licensed Real Estate Broker in New York state (something I did in the process of earning my CE degree). In NY State at least and most lien theory states this sort of fraud is next to impossible especially if your bank still holds a mortgage lien on your property. In a lien theory state the bank never owns your property they only have a lien against it and while they can sell the lien they can NEVER sell your property unless they go into foreclosure proceedings in which case you should have paid your bills.
Furthermore lien theory states make it difficult to commit title fraud because for a title transfer to occur everyone who may have a lien on a particular propery (govt, bank, plumber etc...) has to have their lien satisfied. I'd love to see someone commiting fraud convince a bank that they should relinquish their 250K+ lien on a property they stand to make big $$ on by either collecting the interest of selling on the secondary mortgage market (fat chance).
As far as title/mortgage fraud goes I really wonder what kind of screwed up system Canada has. A quick search for "real estate" "title fraud" is completely filled with links about canadian real estate and almost no other country. Not that I have anything in particular against Canada, half my family lives there, but that is very telling.
I think the invisible hand of the market has its middle finger extended
--A wise old fart named SC0RN
So - yes, they make sure the owner owns it, not "is this the owner"...
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
I have professional liability insurance as an engineer. I pay about 8% of my gross income for the insurance, and yes, it covers errors and omissions up to what I would make over the next 30 years. If I ever make a mistake that endangers public safety, I would likely lose my engineering license.
Unfortunately, Notaries are a weak link in the system. They really don't have enough information to do their job, the cost for notarizing a document is not commensurate with the risks they could incur, and people aren't really willing to pay more for a formality that generally has little value. Either they need additional insurance, or identity verification needs to happen at multiple levels.
In this specific case, I don't know how you would avoid having multiple tiered documents that would make it impossible to prevent this type of fraud. It becomes a shell game quickly.
Yes - Canada has legalize theft... they do this even if the thief is known. Providing the thief owns a company and gets the vendor to sell on credit he / she is not required to pay for the merchandise. It becomes a civil case and the company in question can go bankrupt long before anyone reaches court. (Of course long before court the money will have been used to pay salaries to the purpetrators for managing the company ...read that as managing the theft).
The thief can claim the merchandise was never delivered even if serial numbers are tracked. Somehow the cops deem the criminal code sections on fraudulent concealment do not apply.
If one says anything about this he runs the risk of being sued for libel.
This can happen even if there is no intention of selling on credit - such as the vendor accepts a company cheque. The thief can stop payment on the cheque. A cheque is considered credit. I imagine VISA is also considered credit.
Paying for purchases in Canada is purely voluntary.
Canadian juries can be quite activist. Most people think juries must base their decisions only on the law. That's not the case. The classic case of juries deciding on the morality of a case (rather than the law) was the abortion trials of Dr. Henry Morgantaler. No Canadian jury would convict him in spite of the fact that he was clearly violating the law. The government of the day gave up and changed the law to permit abortion.
So, yes Canadian juries haven't brought in some of the crazy decisions we see south of the border but that doesn't mean that they slavishly follow the law and ignore morality.
Consider what happens when a doctor screws up:
Current money flow: patient to doctor to insurance to lawyer+patient
Proper money flow: patient to insurance to patient
That is, the patient should be buying insurance to cover any errors made by the doctor. Doctors should not be liable. This way, the doctor bills are much lower and the patients can choose what quality of insurance to buy. (with "none" being a legit choice) The doctor doen't need to mess with insurance, and lawyers are less needed.
That'll never happen because we elect lawyers. Doh!
If a doctor does something which is not a legit accident, I still don't want him liable. I generally want him in jail. Mere stupidity means losing the license to practice, along with some sort of review of the school he attended.
Liability turns hospitals into casinos. With the right injury, you get the jackpot. People who want to play that game should be buying their own insurance so that the doctors don't have to be involved.
The proper answer is to steal back. Empty the entire pawn shop, pawn it off elsewhere and see the pawnshop owner complain about his own law.
The other answer involves high explosives but I believe we needn't go that far.
strip the attorney that validated the transaction of his citizenship and forfeit all of his assets, to cover the price of reimbursing the victims, then promptly deport him.
That's a complete human rights violation and unconstitutional in any country that respects the declaration of human rights.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
The U.S. system is very similar to the Canadian central banking system when it comes to monetary policy, but the regulatory structure is different.
While many banks are regulated through the Dept. of the Treasury, they do not borrow money from it. Instead, money is "made" by the Federal Reserve, which is controlled by a governement-appointed, but not controlled, board of governors (similar to the Supreme Court). Banks that are members of the Federal Reserve "borrow" money from it at the rate set by the board. This also controls the rates at which banks lend to each other. The Fed also sets the reserve requirments for banks, which controls how many times any given "made" dollar can be "churned" through the banking system.
If the government wants to borrow money, it does so through the sale of Treasury bills. The Federal Reserve is not involved in that process.
The reason you cannot find any truly "Nationwide" banks has to do with the Federal system of government used in the U.S. Constitution. Basically, to open a branch in a state, a bank must comply with both Federal and State law for that state. This creates something of a burden for a bank looking to expand operations.
Interactions between banks, (like loans and check cashing) are also generally run by the Federal Reserve.
SirWired