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221 Cannon is Not For Sale

fredbenenson.com

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Re: 221 Cannon is Not For Sale

#141

Post by happyopossum »

emptybits wrote: post #7

1. Author lost me at his first sentence: "Like most people, I’ve had my identity stolen once or twice in my life." I am careful and aware of this possibility, but AFAIK I have not experienced this, nor have "most people" I know. o_O Crazy times. 2. I don't even understand how a title transfer could happen without verifying ownership. Is the title system in the USA decentralized or that much different than elsewhere?…

> Is the title system in the USA decentralized or that much different than elsewhere?

As with most things both law-related and US-related, it depends. This type of scam would not work in the majority of states due to various laws, regulations, and bookkeeping (it would be nearly* impossible to sell land you don’t own in California for example).

There are other states (and countries - I’m looking at you Canada) where fraudulent documentation and virtually non-existent title checks allow this kind of fraud to persist.

[*] yes - virtually, not completely. It can happen, but the laws are set up such that the land owner will retain their land, the title fraud victim will be made whole financially by a title insurance company. What this means in practice is that title insurance companies make sure every transaction is legitimate and people don’t have to worry about it.

Re: 221 Cannon is Not For Sale

#142

Post by happyopossum »

kstrauser wrote: post #93
emptybits wrote: post #7

1. Author lost me at his first sentence: "Like most people, I’ve had my identity stolen once or twice in my life." I am careful and aware of this possibility, but AFAIK I have not experienced this, nor have "most people" I know. o_O Crazy times. 2. I don't even understand how a title transfer could happen without verifying ownership. Is the title system in the USA decentralized or that much different than elsewhere?…

In the dark old days before Apple Pay, where it was common in America to hand your credit/debit card to some rando at a restaurant and have them disappear with it for a few minutes, about once a year my bank would call me to ask if I'd been using my card in some far-off locale: "Hi! Are you in Tijuana?" "Not since 1993. Why? What's up?" "So you didn't just try to buy gasoline at a PEMEX there?" "Nope, I'm in San Fran…

I’ve been using debit and credit cards since long before the ‘dark old days’ ended (1992? 1993? Long before debit cards were a common thing), and I still hand my card to anyone who needs it to do their job. I’ve had identity theft happen a grand total of never.

Anecdotes are worthless.

Re: 221 Cannon is Not For Sale

#143

Post by happyopossum »

pixl97 wrote: post #112
b00ty4breakfast wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using a debit card since the Dubya administration and I have never had someone use my card after I ate at a restaurant. I assume you live in a big metro area?

In Texas about a decade ago there was a criminal enterprise out of Houston that was putting swimmers on gas station pumps all over the state. Little towns, big towns, country gas stations. My now wife got hit that way.

Swimming at a gas station pump would be uncomfortably lethal.

Re: 221 Cannon is Not For Sale

#145

Post by drnick1 »

groby_b wrote: post #129
dandelany wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was once common but is exceedingly rare these days. I'm sure exceptions exist, but nearly all Americans now treat this as a Very Secret Number.

LOL. Every single $&@ doctor's intake form: "We'd like to have you SSN".

Yes, I have seen doctors and dentists ask for the SSN, and categorically refuse to provide it.

Re: 221 Cannon is Not For Sale

#146

Post by avidiax »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #135

Since you've discovered law enforcement isn't interested in enforcing the law, you need to set up your own sting and get the scammer to show up where you can arrest them after they commit a crime in your presence.

The scammer will show up to a bar in Bucharest. They are probably not even legally allowed in the U.S.

None of this scam requires the scammer to be in the U.S.

Even the New York driver's license, even if it is real, could be muled. More likely it is just a photoshop.

And even if they do show up to the meet, what are you going to do? Call the police? Will they even show up quickly? When they do, whose photo ID will the believe? Seems like a good way to spend a night at the station while the police sort some things out.

Re: 221 Cannon is Not For Sale

#147

Post by bjt »

teeray wrote: post #18
jgoldshlag wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that nearly all of the people doing this don't even live in the country where the land is being sold from. A simple sign would probably be quite effective

True, but you can still do a confused deputy attack. The fraudster hires a property manager, informs them that they would like to remove the sign because they wish the list the property for sale. Either that or they con a realtor they're working with into doing it. The unknowing realtor, eager for the commission, knows a guy who can take it down.

The idea is just to avoid being the softest target. The scammers attempting this fraud don't want to do all the work you describe. They'll just move on to the next vacant property.

Re: 221 Cannon is Not For Sale

#148

Post by skissane »

pdonis wrote: post #72
skissane wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the county clerk records aren’t a “single source of truth”. In the US system, it is possible to convince a court the county records are wrong, and order them overridden-which makes them not the single source of truth. By contrast, in the Torrens system, whatever the government records say are final. If you are the innocent victim of a mistake by the government (or a fraud against it), the government has to compen…

> in the Torrens system, whatever the government records say are final First, it doesn't seem like that's always the case, based on another post upthread talking about a land ownership case that went to the high court because of an error in the government's records. Second, since there is no single government for the entire world, any government trying to implement a Torrens system is still going to face the problem…

> First, it doesn't seem like that's always the case, based on another post upthread talking about a land ownership case that went to the high court because of an error in the government's records.

I don’t know what High Court case they are talking about-they didn’t give a citation just a vague recollection-they might be remembering wrong.

But the assumption in the Torrens system is the government database is correct. There are rare exceptions-e.g. the so-called “paramount interests”-but they are narrow and very much exceptional. By contrast, in the US system, a court is totally open to entertaining the argument the county title records are incorrect, in many states there is no presumption against such an argument, and you aren’t required to convince the court some narrowly drawn exception applies before it will consider the argument. (Actually Australia still has something like the “US system” too-we call it “old title”-but old title is extremely rare. Anyone trying to sell an old title lot is going to convert it to Torrens before selling it. I don’t think you can legally sell it until you do so. So in practice the only old title lots left are those which haven’t changed ownership-other than by inheritance-in many decades.)

> Second, since there is no single government for the entire world, any government trying to implement a Torrens system is still going to face the problem of events happening outside its jurisdiction that its records do not and cannot contain, which affect ownership of property in its jurisdiction.

That’s not how it works. Overseas contracts, court judgements, etc - if you don’t lodge them with the land title registry, they don’t legally exist as far as land titles go.

Re: 221 Cannon is Not For Sale

#150

Post by cmiles74 »

peaseagee wrote: post #64
cmiles74 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The federal government never enumerated the power to manage a national credit agency and yet we have several.

The federal government doesn't manage any national credit agencies.

I don't see how that matters, the point is that we don't need the federal government's mandate in order to have a national clearinghouse of title data.
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