How Your Home Can Be Fraudulently Sold Without Your Knowledge. globalnews.ca

It was January 2022, as fewer properties were being listed and market conditions were tightening in the Greater Toronto Area – this is when police say toronto The owner of the house who was on an extended business trip found out the house was sold without their consent or knowledge.

Toronto police are now looking for two men who are alleged to have impersonated the home owner, hired a real estate agent and listed the Etobicoke property for sale. The house was sold to new owners who took possession. Investigators say the legitimate homeowners didn’t find out their property had been sold until several months later.

How can something like this happen?

Ronald Alphonso, a real estate investor and president of Mortgage Broker Store, says this phenomenon may be more common than one might think.

“Somewhere along the way, a person with access to the land registry system, whether a lawyer or someone else, illegally transferred title from the existing landlords to someone else,” Alphonso said.

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Police say Toronto landlords discover their property was sold without their consent

That land registry system, Alphonso says, is owned and administered by TerraNet on behalf of the Ontario government. Real estate attorneys and others authorized to transfer title and sell homes can access it via a specific keycode.

“If their keycode is taken by someone else or copied by someone else or misused in some way, that person has access to the system and can do whatever they want with it. They Can move one house or a hundred houses,” Alphonso said.

And it doesn’t take long to do it, says Afonso.

“The actual transaction is only a few keystrokes on some computer, so it can happen within minutes, that you are removed from the title,” Alfonso said.

But when exactly does a home owner know that their property has been fraudulently sold? Alphonso says it can happen after a month or even after six months.

“They’ll only know if they actually get a document that says they’re no longer the owner, like a property tax that says you no longer own the house,” says Alfonso.

And by that time, he says, the fraudsters usually leave the country with little or no trace.

This type of fraud is relatively easy to commit, says Alfonso, thanks to COVID precautions. Pre-Covid, customers were required to visit a lawyer’s office while buying a home to sign documents, where they would answer questions and present identification in person.

“Now, you can do what’s called DocuSign or online electronic signing,” says Alfonso. Due to which it becomes difficult for the police to match the handwriting in case of fraud. But what about photo ID requirements?

“You can easily go into Photoshop, just copy a passport, change a picture around,” says Alfonso. “The lawyer is not going to go back and check all the information on that passport. The same thing you can do on a driver’s license. The lawyer is going to accept them at face value.

In the Etobicoke case, police have released only two photos, not the names of the accused. Global News was contacted for more information, but police remained tight-lipped, directing all questions back to them release,

As for how homeowners and buyers can protect themselves from this type of fraud, Alphonso strongly recommends purchasing title insurance.

“It protects the buyer from fraud, illegal transfer of title, and a whole range of items,” says Alphonso. “Let’s say you bought a home 10 years ago. Title insurance is still valid. It still insures you against illegal transfer of your title. So it is for the current homeowner. The buyer (also) can get title insurance. Could – It also protects them in case the title is illegally transferred.

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