Con Artists Are Stealing Homeowners' Identities, Properties
By Lew Sichelman, United Feature Syndicate
June 22, 2008

WASHINGTON -- The sagging housing market has presented swindlers with endless opportunities to prey on troubled homeowners. But even people who are making their payments on time are susceptible to being cheated out of their homes.

How? By stealing your identity, con artists can also steal your house.

In an up-and-coming scam noted by the FBI, a swindler establishes a line of credit in his name based on the equity in a property, then drains the house dry. In another ploy, the con man steals the house by changing the title over to his name and selling it out from under the owner.

Rightful owners really won't lose their houses. But the burden is on them to prove that they are indeed the real owners and that someone swiped their identities to carry out false transactions. And that could cost many hours and thousands of dollars.

Identity theft is the use of someone's name, personal-identifying information and credit history without that person's knowledge, and it is a growing problem. According to the Federal Trade Commission, more than 8 million people fall prey to identity thievery every year, and losses total more than $15 billion annually.

According to the U.S. Secret Service, in half the cases it is a business -- not the individual -- that allowed criminals access to private information. That's why Congress last fall passed the so-called red flag rider to the Fair and Accurate Credit Transaction Act of 2003.

The provision, which takes effect Nov. 1, requires financial institutions, creditors and others who handle personal-identifying documents to develop a program to prevent identity theft. The rider identifies 26 possible signs that companies must look for, including consumer-activated fraud alerts in a credit report, documents that appear to be altered or forged and consumer-provided addresses and Social Security numbers that don't match those identifiers in the client's credit report.

In house stealing, the con artist picks out a home and assumes the owner's identity to create fake IDs, Social Security cards, etc. Then the con artist obtains forms to transfer the property, forges the owner's signature and files the papers with the proper authorities. Before you know it, the government, lenders and even real-estate agents have been tricked into thinking the place is now the con artist's. Often, targets are empty houses, say, a vacation home in a seasonal resort.

In other cases, swindlers steal an occupied house and sell it to someone who is so enamored of the great price that he or she buys based on a few online photos. Or the perpetrators pose as the rightful owners and take out home-equity lines of credit against the property.

In one federally prosecuted case, the thieves obtained false driver's licenses through the name-change mechanism offered by all states. They used those to get Social Security numbers and went from there.

In another case, thieves deposited the proceeds from an illegal loan into a business account so they'd fall under the lender's radar. Perpetrators have also drained home-equity accounts slowly in hopes they wouldn't be spotted.

With the growing threat posed by house thieves, it behooves you to protect yourself against identity theft by, among other things, ordering a copy of your credit report on a yearly basis and reviewing it carefully for questionable entries. Obtain free reports at www.annualcreditreport.com.

Be sure to shred or cut up credit-card receipts, bills and bank statements before tossing them; remove your name from mailing lists for preapproved credit lines; be sure to keep your personal-identification number concealed when using an ATM; contact your creditor or service provider if you notice anything odd with a bill or if the bill doesn't arrive on time or at all; and update your computer's virus software. Also, don't provide any personal data over the phone or via the Internet unless it was you who initiated the contact. Also, don't put your Social Security number on your checks.

Lew Sichelman can be reached at lsichelman@aol.com

Source: Los Angeles Times