On Jan. 14, a new Sedona property listing for an empty lot located at 550 Windsong Drive, near the Amitabha Stupa and Peace Park, appeared on the Arizona MLS system. The 4,792-square-foot parcel was priced at $180,000, and was listed by Magdalena Romanska of Russ Lyon Sotheby’s.
Six days later, on Jan. 20, the listing disappeared.
Instead of being removed due to a quick sale or a change of mind on the owner’s part, it turned out that the listing was taken down when the listing agent discovered that her apparent client was actually impersonating the owner.
Romanska stated that the property’s putative owner claimed to be the wife of professional skateboarder Tony Hawk. The claim seemed plausible, as Tony Hawk was married to Erin J. Hawk from 1996 to 2004, and the owner of the Windsong Drive parcel, according to Yavapai County property records, is Erin Jennifer Hawk.
Erin Hawk, the California owner of the Windsong Drive parcel, has confirmed that she was formerly married to Tony Hawk.
Nevertheless, the impostor’s claimed identity later became one of the “red flags” that triggered Romanska’s suspicions. Romanska noted that she has worked with celebrities in the past, who always had handlers or lawyers to manage their real estate transactions. None dealt with her directly.
“Nothing was awkward then,” Romanska said of her initial interactions with the impersonator. At the imposter’s suggestion, she had recommended a listing price of between $155,000 and $185,000 for the parcel, “not crazy high, not crazy low,” to which the pseudo-owner responded by agreeing to list it for $180,000. The imposter then completed the required paperwork and a property disclosure.
The red flags continued to build up. Another agent told Romanska that the lot was part of a homeowners association, which Romanska saw was not listed on the property disclosure. Nor, she noticed, was the fact that the parcel already had a sewer connection in place.
Romanska also observed that her would-be client’s phone number, which had a 919 area code, did not match the listed number of the property’s owner, with a 760 area code. While the client would call her and respond to texts and emails, she was never able to reach the client by phone herself, being redirected to a recording each time she tried.
“It was a very clever way for that fraudster,” Romanska commented.
The imposter further offered what Romanska called “a very common psychological bait” by attempting to establish a connection with her victim. As Romanska was born and raised in Poland, her pseudo-client claimed to be traveling in Poland — another assertion that Romanska questioned when she realized that the timestamps on the messages she was receiving were not consistent with the eight-hour time difference between the western United States and Europe.
Her suspicions left Romanska with a problem. Once a property is listed for sale, the listing cannot be taken down without the owner’s permission — unless, of course, the real owner had never listed it in the first place.
“You cannot really do it right away when you have a gut feeling,” Romanska said. “So I told everybody to wait on writing an offer.”
Since she had an example of the putative seller’s signature available on her electronically-signed paperwork, Romanska contacted the title agency that had previously handled the property to confirm if the owner’s signature they had on file matched the one she had received. She also reached out to the president of the HOA, who contacted Erin Hawk and confirmed that the listing was fraudulent.
“He was kind enough to call me the next morning,” Romanska said.
After she notified the Arizona MLS of the fraud, she said, they were “super cooperative” and removed the listing very quickly.
Romanska has since received an email from the title agency commending her on having done a good job of catching the fraud based on the early signs. At the same time, she is unsure about how to prevent this from happening again. She floated the idea of insisting on two pieces of ID from sellers in the future, but then dismissed it as probably ineffective.
“Every teenager has a fake ID,” Romanska chuckled.
“When we get into these kind of fraud situations, it’s almost impossible to track these guys down,” Sotheby’s manager Tod Christensen said. “We’re just glad to be able to nip it in the bud.” He pointed out that an investigation would come within the jurisdiction of the FBI rather than local police, and added that the legal owner of the property would be the appropriate person to file a complaint.
“What’s a little shocking to me is that no identification was required by Sotheby’s to list this lot,” Erin Hawk said. “I think that some T’s were not crossed and some I’s were not dotted.”
The first Hawk heard of the attempted sale was when her HOA president contacted her to ask if she had in fact listed the property. Hawk owns an adjoining home and had bought the property to preserve the views and open space, with the idea that her kids might one day build on it, so he was surprised to see it listed.
“I’m a little surprised there hasn’t been more followup with me,” Hawk added. “My husband’s going to check in with them this week.” She suggested that owners of undeveloped property Google their lots once a month to keep an eye out for fraudulent activity.
“As fraud becomes more rampant in our communities, we just have to learn to adapt,” Hawk said, referring to recent waves of high-end property fraud in Phoenix and Park City, Utah.
Hawk plans on filing a police report on the incident in the near future.
