23 Seconds or 2 Years: You Decide! Preventing Deed Fraud with Philly’s Fraud Guard Alert System

In this episode of Real Estate Talk, we tackle how you can prevent your property getting stolen from under your nose with Jim Leonard, the commissioner of records for the City of Philadelphia.

If you have approximately 23 seconds to spare, signing up for Philly’s Fraud Guard you a long term (and expensive) headache.

Before we dive into the Fraud Guard alert system, let’s walk through what deed fraud is and how it affects Philly’s homeowners; can someone actually STEAL your house?? 

Deed fraud occurs when someone steals your identity, forges your name on a deed, and takes title to your home. Once the deed fraud has been initiated, it can take two or more years of legal proceedings trying to get the title to the home back in the rightful owner’s name. 

Yikes! So what is Philly’s Fraud Guard Alert System and how does it work to protect homeowners like you? 

It's very hard to detect the fraud when it's occurring, because all the signatures are typically forged. What Fraud Guard aims to do is reduce the amount of time between when the fraud happens and when the victim discovers it. The bigger that gap is in time, the more downstream bad effects can happen in terms of the property being flipped to innocent buyers. 

So you’re a homeowner signed up for fraud guard. You get an email alert that something's amiss and click on the link. And then what happens next?

Generally, within 2 to 4 weeks of when the documents are recorded and an individual who signed up will get that alert, they can click on a hyperlink and then look at the document and determine if it's legitimate or not.

You'll be brought to our public facing, web based portal, where you can look at all of the real estate. You'll see that document at no cost, and if it's fraudulent, the Dept. of Records has resources on their website that will direct you and how to file a fraud report with their department. From there the Dept. of Records  can help guide you or the victim to appropriate legal resources and also assist you in getting to law enforcement.

That sounds super easy and helpful, and a good way to avoid an expensive long-term headache. When you click on the website, you enter in your first and last name and your email address and you're signed up! It takes about 23 seconds. Anybody who owns a property in Philadelphia should sign up for the service.

If you have approximately 23 seconds to spare, please search Philadelphia Fraud Guard from your browser and sign up. Agents, encourage your clients, buyers and sellers, to register for alerts because there’s absolutely no reason not to!

Listen to the full podcast to learn which homes are most likely to be targeted for deed fraud, and what steps you can prevent to stop it from happening in the first place (besides signing up for Fraud Guard).