The Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office has stated that there has been a marked increase in the number of scam calls to Sedona-area real estate agents by scammers who are attempting to sell property that they do not own.
Since then, YCSO has put out a warning about similar attempts.
Scam Attempts
“The scammer begins by asking the agent to provide a market analysis of the property and then immediately list it for them,” the department said in a press release. “In most cases, immediately means either a ‘short sale’ or a cash-only sale with a quick close. The ‘seller’ has been reported to have a heavy Middle Eastern accent.”
“[Scammers are] focusing on vacant land because typically vacant land is owned free and clear,” Stewart Title manager Natalie Kurz said. “It’s not encumbered in any way. The owners of vacant land don’t necessarily live in the area, so they’re not keeping a close eye on it … So scammers will scour the county records for vacant land. Because oftentimes properties with homes on it either have a deed of trust recorded where there’s a lender involved, or they live on the property … In Sedona, to my knowledge, we have not seen scammers target properties that have a home on it.”
In response to the increasing number of attempts at fraud, title companies have begun mailing letters to the owners of record when they are offered vacant land. Kurz said that tactic has prevented three fraud attempts so far this year.
Ron Norfleet, vice chairman of the board of directors for the YCSO Criminal Investigations Bureau, said that the scammers have not been able to successfully close a sale or defraud a title agency in Yavapai County.
“We have seen, in the last six months, at least seven to eight occurrences where an individual will contact us and say that they want to sell this piece of land in Sedona,” real estate agent Josh Meacham said. “We are dealing with a lot of it more and more, it seems weekly. It almost seems there’s sometimes two or three times a week we’re getting potential scam leads for land listings.”
The scammers will commonly represent themselves using email addresses that appear to be similar to the owner’s name and look for other ways to make Realtors believe them to be the true owners.
“[The scammers] are hoping to find a piece of property that maybe has an out-of-state or absentee owner that isn’t going to catch wind at the sale and that they can defraud the title company and us into believing or supplying sufficient information to be able to capture the funds at closing,” Meacham said. “Unfortunately, the local police … there’s only so much they can do it. I’ve been actually educating a lot of Realtors across the state specifically on land fraud and title fraud. It must be brought to the Attorney General of the State and the FBI. Those are the two resources that it needs to be reported to.”
Signs of a Scam
Some of the signs of a potential scam that Carol Roehner, of Coldwell Banker Realty, looks for include people on the phone getting the first and last name of the property owner mixed up because the scammers may not speak English as their first language.
“You can ask them questions about the property and it’s usually vacant land, or ask them about the neighborhood or the HOA, and generally speaking they can’t answer those questions,” Roehner said. “They’ll often use a Google Voice number or ask you to communicate with them on WhatsApp. But for me, the main thing is if it’s someone that I don’t know, haven’t worked with previously, they don’t know someone that we have in common. They just say they found you online. That’s often a red flag for me.”
Another red flag is making the price of the property too good to be true to encourage a potential buyer to close escrow and get the funds wired to them, Roehner explained.
“There was a past client who — I was really surprised because I spent a lot of time with him and his wife showing them properties in Sedona — and I saw that his lot was for sale,” Roehner said. “I texted him and said, ‘Hey, congratulations, I see you’re selling your lot, wishing you luck.’ Because as Realtors we’re not allowed to interfere with other agents’ listings … He called me and asked, ‘What are you talking about? I’m not selling my lot.’ I put him in touch with the agent that had it listed. I also let that agent know that it was fraudulent. They sent me copies of the driver’s licenses that the fraudsters had sent them and asked me to identify the photos. And I said, ‘No, these are not my clients.’”
Sedona appears to be uniquely attractive to scammers because of its high property values and because real estate agents are used to dealing with out-of town owners.
“It’s not news or surprise to us when we are contacted by somebody that says they don’t live in the area,” Meacham said. “I was [recently] at the Land Title Association of Arizona Conference,” said Tyler Newlon, of Pioneer Title. “It seemed like everybody that was there had closed at least one [of these fraudulent sales]. Everybody’s running into these issues, it seems very widespread … It seems like we catch almost one a day right now.”
Real estate agent Brad Bergamini said that many of the fraud attempts seem to be coming from third-party websites that generate leads for real estate agents.
“[We will] check the county website to make sure names match, usually they do,” Bergamini said. “The other thing is that I’ll run that phone number through a fraud detector … The aim is somewhere along the process to collect the payment and walk away with it. Seems like a long shot. But people are willing to do a lot of things for long shots.”
Safeguards
One safeguard will go into effect on Jan. 1, 2025, following the passage of Senate Bill 1110, which requires county recorders to send a notification to property owners when any action is taken against a person’s title.
“The state has documented a disturbing trend over the last few years where people are having their homes sold out from underneath them,” Arizona Sen. Wendy Rogers [R-District 7], who introduced the bill, stated in an April press release. “Homeowners can pay organizations to notify them before this type of deed fraud can occur, but the better solution is to have a county system in place.”
“To protect real estate agencies from falling victim to this scam, YCSO recommends that real estate professionals ask questions to help verify if they are speaking with the rightful owners of the property as well as ask both buyer and seller for photo identification,” YCSO said in its press release. “Real estate agents can also inform the rightful owners about Yavapai County’s ‘Eagle Fraud Guard’ program. This email subscription program allows citizens to proactively monitor and be alerted when a document is recorded in their name or a business name in Yavapai County. When documents are recorded meeting a citizen’s search criteria, an email is automatically generated and sent to the citizen notifying them of the recording along with some basic information about the document.”
Real estate companies confronted with a potential scam are encouraged to contact the YCSO Fraud Department at (928) 771-3299.
