The headline for original article is kind of misleading. This is only really on the rise in Georgia specifically. And that's only because it's pretty much the only state in the union that doesn't require notarization of things like quit claim deeds and warranty deeds.
So literally anyone can print off a deed that they obtained from a public database, forge the appropriate names, and then have the property "transferred" into their "ownership".
Then they can get a mortgage on it and just not pay it, sell it out from under someone, etc. etc.
I also looked into this SPECIFIC story more as well, because it seemed a little bizarre to me that it escalated to this point because usually mortgage fraud/wrongful forclosure cases are ridiculously easy to win if you're in the right when forged documents are involved.
A decent lawyer and a notary expert are all it needs, and you don't even half to pay for it since 99% of the time the courts will put all the expenses on the other party since they're the ones at fault.
So what happened in this specific case, was that these old people kept getting mail talking about missing mortgage payments, and their house being foreclosed on, but ignored it and threw it away without looking into it. Then refused to leave when they actually got foreclosed on after never taking any action.
If they had just reported the mortgage fraud after the first letter, everything would have been fixed within a week or two max at no cost to them. So while this IS horrible, I can't say they're completely not at fault since they took zero action to fix the situation.
The headline for original article is kind of misleading. This is only really on the rise in Georgia specifically. And that's only because it's pretty much the only state in the union that doesn't require notarization of things like quit claim deeds and warranty deeds.
So literally anyone can print off a deed that they obtained from a public database, forge the appropriate names, and then have the property "transferred" into their "ownership".
Then they can get a mortgage on it and just not pay it, sell it out from under someone, etc. etc.
I also looked into this SPECIFIC story more as well, because it seemed a little bizarre to me that it escalated to this point because usually mortgage fraud/wrongful forclosure cases are ridiculously easy to win if you're in the right when forged documents are involved.
A decent lawyer and a notary expert are all it needs, and you don't even half to pay for it since 99% of the time the courts will put all the expenses on the other party since they're the ones at fault.
So what happened in this specific case, was that these old people kept getting mail talking about missing mortgage payments, and their house being foreclosed on, but ignored it and threw it away without looking into it. Then refused to leave when they actually got foreclosed on after never taking any action.
If they had just reported the mortgage fraud after the first letter, everything would have been fixed within a week or two max at no cost to them. So while this IS horrible, I can't say they're completely not at fault since they took zero action to fix the situation.