A seller contacts you about a lot they own out of state. They are motivated, they want a quick cash sale, they will not be able to meet in person, and they have a notary lined up near them. Every one of those details is normal on its own. Together they are the shape of a fraud that hit a quarter of American title companies in a single year.
The uncomfortable part for agents: by the time title catches it, you have already done weeks of work, and in some cases the money has moved. You meet the fake seller first. That makes the front of the transaction the cheapest place to stop it.
How big this actually is
Two sets of numbers matter here, and they measure different things.
The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center recorded 12,368 real estate complaints in 2025, with reported losses of $275,110,419. Alongside it, business email compromise — the category that swallows most wire-diversion fraud — recorded 24,768 complaints and just over $3 billion in losses. Those figures count only what victims reported to the FBI, which is a floor, not a ceiling.
The industry’s own survey is more specific. Research for the American Land Title Association, covering 783 title companies, found that 28% experienced at least one seller impersonation fraud attempt in a single year, and that in one month alone two in ten companies saw an attempt. Of the companies that had attempts, 16% ended up paying claims.
Read those together and the picture is clear. This is not rare, it is not exotic, and it is not confined to big markets. It is a routine hazard of listing property, and most agents will see an attempt eventually.
Why vacant land is the favourite target
The scheme is simple, and vacant land removes almost every obstacle to it.
- Nobody lives there. No tenant, no neighbour, no post arriving, nobody to notice a for-sale sign that should not exist.
- The real owner is not watching. Land held as a long-term investment, or inherited and half-forgotten, might not be checked for years.
- No mortgage, usually. No lender doing its own checks, and no payoff that would alert a servicer.
- Ownership records are public. Anyone can look up who owns a parcel, and from there build a plausible identity.
- A remote closing looks reasonable. Of course an out-of-state owner of a vacant lot cannot come to the office.
The same logic applies to any property where the owner is absent: rentals between tenants, second homes, and estates in probate.
What AI actually changed, and what it did not
Two honest sentences, because this topic attracts a lot of noise.
What changed: forging the supporting material got cheap. A convincing driving licence image, a passport scan, a matching utility bill, a voice on a phone call that sounds like a person rather than a script. The identity documents that used to require some skill to fake now require a subscription. The same tooling that stages a bedroom in fifteen seconds forges a driving licence in about the same time. A remote notarization session where the “seller” appears on video is no longer a strong check on its own.
What did not change: the fraud still has to move real money through a real bank account, and it still has to pass a real closing. The scheme is old. The costume got better.
That matters for how you defend against it. Trying to spot a deepfake by eye is a losing game and getting worse every quarter. Verifying facts through a channel the impostor does not control is not, and never gets worse.
The red flags, in the order they reach you
| Stage | What you see | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| First contact | Unsolicited inbound about a property you did not pitch, usually by email or text rather than a call | Low on its own |
| First contact | Seller will not or cannot meet in person, and deflects video calls | Medium |
| Pricing | Willing to list below market and to accept the first reasonable offer | Medium |
| Terms | Cash buyer preferred, fast close, no financing contingency | High |
| Signing | Mail-away closing with a notary the seller chose, unknown to your title company | High |
| Documents | Identity documents supplied only as images, never presented | High |
| Closing | Wiring instructions to an account in a different name or a different state | Critical |
| Closing | Pressure to close early, or a change to the payout account late in the process | Critical |
The title industry’s own survey confirms which of these carry the most weight: 88% of companies named all-cash transactions and 86% named mail-away signings with unfamiliar notaries as red flags they see regularly. Those two together are the signature.
None of these is proof. Plenty of honest sellers are out of state and want a fast cash sale. The point is the stack: one flag is a coincidence, four is a pattern, and the pattern is what should trigger the checks below rather than a gut feeling.
The four checks that actually work
Every one of these has the same structure: verify through a channel the person contacting you does not control.
- Find the owner’s contact details independently. Not from the email signature. From the county tax record, which lists the mailing address the tax bill goes to. Then write to that address. A real owner gets a letter about their own property; an impostor does not intercept it. This single step defeats most attempts and costs the price of a stamp.
- Call a number you found yourself. Same principle. If the only phone number in the file came from the person claiming to be the seller, it verifies nothing.
- Insist on a notary your side chooses. The mail-away signing with the seller’s own notary is the mechanism, not a detail. If the seller resists a notary appointed by title, that resistance is the answer.
- Treat any change to payment details as an attack until proven otherwise. Confirm it by calling the number you already had, never a number in the email requesting the change. Wire fraud almost always arrives as an update to instructions you were already expecting.
The reason these work is that they do not depend on detecting a fake. They depend on reaching the real person, and the real person is the one thing the impostor cannot produce.
Where the agent sits in this
Title and escrow carry most of the formal responsibility, and the ALTA research shows they catch a good share of it: 46% of companies said preventing fraudulent transactions before closing was at least somewhat common, against 26% after closing. Catching it before is the whole game, and after closing the money is usually gone.
But the agent is upstream of all of it. You are the first person the impostor has to convince, weeks before title sees a file, and you are the only one who is going to look at the property. Two habits cover most of the risk.
The first is to raise it early rather than politely. Telling a seller at intake that you verify ownership on every listing is a normal professional statement, not an accusation, and a fraudulent seller frequently disappears at that sentence. The second is to say something the moment the stack of flags forms. Agents routinely notice this before title does and stay quiet because they cannot prove anything. Nobody is asking you to prove it. Flagging a pattern to your broker and to title is the entire job.
Worth being clear-eyed about the incentive too. Raising a concern risks a commission that was probably never real. Not raising it risks a closing that unwinds, a lawsuit naming everyone involved, and a seller who never sold anything.
Common questions
Is the agent liable if a fraudulent sale closes?
It depends on the state, the facts, and what you did or did not do once flags appeared, and this is a question for your broker and your errors-and-omissions carrier rather than an article. What is consistent everywhere: documenting the checks you ran and the concerns you raised puts you in a far better position than remembering them afterwards.
Can identity verification software catch this?
It helps and it is worth having, particularly for document checks that a person cannot do by eye. Treat it as one layer rather than the answer. Document verification is an arms race against generated forgeries; contacting the owner at the address on the tax record is not, which is why the low-technology step remains the strongest one.
What if the seller is genuinely out of state and offended?
Frame it as standard rather than personal, because it is: “we verify ownership on every listing, and here is what that involves.” Real sellers almost always understand, and many are reassured that the same process protects them from someone selling their property out from under them.
Does this only affect vacant land?
No. Vacant land is the easiest target, but any absent-owner property works: rentals between tenants, second homes, inherited property in probate. The common factor is that nobody is physically present to notice.
Sources
- FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center, 2025 Annual Report. Real estate and business email compromise complaint counts and reported losses.
- American Land Title Association, survey of 783 title companies conducted by ndp | analytics. Attempt rates, claims paid, red flags and prevention timing.
Checked September 2026. Nothing here is legal advice. Liability, disclosure duties and verification requirements vary by state, and your broker and your title company are the people to ask about your own transactions.