She had no idea her home could be stolen. Then she read her junk mail.

[mfcorey1]

Rohina Husseini had no idea someone could steal a house, but the first small clue that the home she owned for nearly a decade was no longer hers was a piece of junk mail that most of us ignore

The Springfield mother said she initially tossed the mortgage refinancing offers that began arriving over the summer in the trash, but one detail bugged her: The letters were addressed to another woman. Curious, Husseini said she finally opened one.

“You bought a new house, congratulations,” read the letter addressed to Masooda Persia Hashimi.

“I was like, ‘Wow, this doesn’t seem right,’ ” Husseini said. “I don’t know this person at all. She never lived in my house even before [I moved in].”

In the frantic hours that followed, Husseini discovered the total stranger was now the legal owner of the brick Colonial worth about $525,000 that forms the center of her life with her husband and daughter.

Husseini, who owns a home health-care business, was the victim of a lesser-known crime alternately called house stealing or deed theft that has seen an uptick in some areas in recent years. Scammers gain control of a deed to a home and then attempt to resell the property or to open a line of credit on it.

The results can be disastrous. Unsuspecting homeowners can be foreclosed upon or even find strangers living in an unoccupied property or vacation home that has been sold out from under them.

“Oftentimes, the [scammers] will offer a stolen home at an attractive price just below the market rate for an area so it is snapped up quickly,” said Cynthia Blair, the former president of the American Land Title Association. “They get a cash purchaser . . . and [the scammers] are off into the sunset with the money.”

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/she-had-no-idea-her-home-could-be-stolen-then-she-read-her-junk-mail/ar-BBXsCka?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=mailsignout

[FM123]

1. Wow.

"It’s easier than you might think to steal a home."

[Backseat Driver]

12. Yup!

[JoeOtterbein]

2. K n R ! Thanks for posting!

[at140]

3. How the heck did scammers steal the deed to the house?

Only method I can think of is the home-owner was delinquent on property tax payment and the assessor auctioned it off.

[3Hotdogs]

5. I doubt that county courthouse clerks examine a deed that is submitted for filing.

When you buy your house, your lawyer, or usually a paralegal, goes to the courthouse, pays a fee of a few dollars and gives the paper to an employee who maybe makes $40k per year. That employee is not certified or even skilled on document forensics. The employee has no idea if the document is valid. It just gets filed on top of the preceding deeds to your property.

Your lawyer probably buys a pad of documents with the heading, "Deed." Your name, the name of the seller and the property description is typed onto the paper. The employee files the paper. Those blank documents are available online.


I can elaborate, but a Republican, down on his luck, might be reading this.

I suspect the real victim is the sucker who "bought" the property. However, the real homeowner will have legal expenses to nullify the false deed.

[at140]

6. I can understand there is always fraud possible,

and as you described, it would be fairly easy to file a change of ownership deed at the county court house.
But the recorded "owner" of the house always gets 2 letters from the assessor every year.
One is for declaring the assessed valuation and the other is the tax bill. If any owner does not receive both of those in any year, he/she needs to alert the authorities. I don't think it would be difficult to trace down the fraud by law enforcement. In other words, any alert home owner can quickly discover the fraud and report it within a 9 month period. Any judge would be on the home owner's side in such obvious case of fraud.

[CloudWatcher]

7. Any judge?

You have more faith in the fairness of our justice system than I do. Google "adverse possession" and try and find the logic, fairness or justice of the laws. Without decent lawyers you're running the risk of being blindsided by weird laws and justice be damned.

[at140]

10. I should have said "most judges"...eom

[Backseat Driver]

13. Not necessarily

I'm currently having trouble with mail delivery. Despite having Informed Delivery, in which incoming mail is scanned a day or two before delivery, important and time-sensitive mailings in standard envelopes but with clear return addresses, probably known to local mailmen, keep disappearing while the junk mail keeps flowing...It's not as though those envelopes were touchy feely for credit cards, cash, or checks, either. I'm more inclined to think "harrassment, intimidation, and outright theft" as I live in a red area/state where digital voter registration lists were delivered up to TPTB and published on-line. In addition, I've lived at this address for over a decade but still receive mailings to previous owners, deceased relatives, neighbors, etc...interspersed with all the crap senior open enrollment solicitations. Since I live in an apt complex which is viewed as an alternative route so postal delivers might draw straws; different day-different truck-different driver. The postmaster seems relatively unconcerned - he'll look into it; mistakes happen. Both he and my senator's aide report other complaints have been filed. Some mail have magically appeared up to a month late, both franked and/or stamped, but without so much as a machine skidmark and not in a baggie chewed up in the sorter - Makes you wonder why one is being targeted.

[at140]

16. I avoid mail delivery like the Plague

Mail is a joke, I get neighbor's mail, they get my mail. Most neighbors will drop it off at my door,
but who knows how much of my mis-delivered mail ends up in garbage can.

I pay all bills on-line, for 25 years now, and never had a single problem.
I sign up for paperless as soon as possible with all transactions involving money.
My bank, my broker, my utility bills, furniture bills, credit card bills & payments are all on-line.
I even pay my property tax on-line. Only use of mail is for personal letters and cards.

[C Moon]

8. "I can elaborate, but a Republican, down on his luck, might be reading this."

[lastlib]

9. OR a republican UP on his luck....!

I'd never put it past one.

If I ever have to shake hands with a repug, I count my fingers afterward.......

[Backseat Driver]

11. I can imagine this could happen to victims of

Last edited Fri Nov 29, 2019, 04:40 PM - Edit history (1)

identity theft with an intimidating and/or colluding real estate broker and careless, compliant notary public. One must also be first at the open or proprietary single-keyed mail box, though the good folks at the USPS get it first. And yes, from the lowly public servant on staff to the honorable appointees of your county, forensics take a back seat to the quick/dirty rubber stamp. By the time one can become aware, violation reporting dates may be long gone causing an even bigger legal mess.

[Backseat Driver]

14. Think you've restructured your mortgage?

after long-term or serial unemployment makes timely payments difficult only to find out those funds were "misapplied," but the teeny-tiny print says they can, while one pours cash money into their black pit of debt? Think Countrywide and bait-and-switch Spectrum loans! Think employers who thwart the stated process of timely receipt of retirement savings being "accidentally mailed to an employer's home where it sits and sits so even the Office Manager can't find it instead of to you directly as specified protocol. Oops, so sorry!

[at140]

15. Scammers are everywhere

combined that with incompetence, one has to be extra alert in all transactions.

[Faux pas]

4. Kickin' with disgust