Land Title Fraud, The Reality In my experience, successful frauds relating to Land Titles which affect the registered owner of the land, are extremely rare. Probably less then 10 in this province in the last 30 years. To put that in context, the Land Title Office processed at least 15 Million Transfers of Land, Mortgages and Releases of Mortgage in that time period. Why so few? There are a number of factors. One is that the technical knowledge to successfully prepare Land Title documents is held by relatively few people. The other is that even if the criminal possessed the necessary knowledge to prepare the documents, that is the easier part of the completing the fraud, they must make money to succeed in the fraud and that is much more difficult. Lets examine the process. There are two major types of Fraud which could impact a home owner. The first is where the criminal fraudulently sells the land, the second where he fraudulently places a mortgage against the land. Both are really forms of Identity Theft. Fraudulent Sale of Land:
Given the amount of Identity Fraud reported in the news this all sounds scary, however such a fraud would be next to impossible to pull off against most owners because they are resident on the property or there is a house or another building on the property. No realtor can sell or buyer will buy unless they can be shown the property, buildings included! The only way the above scheme can work is if the property is bare land, preferably with an owner who lives very far out of town. However, if you own land as an investment, you should protect yourself, especially since recent changes (Nov 25, 2005) to the Land Title Act mean that you are no longer entitled to the ownership of the Land where a Fraud Artist has sold to an innocent third party. Instead of retaining ownership of the land you will receive the market value of the land. Fraudulent Mortgage of Land:
While this type of Fraud is getting more popular, you should be aware that the Law in BC has been long settled in such matters, the owner of the land is not liable to the mortgage. The Bank is the one being defrauded. This is not to say that the owner will not have to endure some hardship proving that they did not take out the mortgage. Protecting Yourself:
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