You may have seen ads for the anti-fraud service Home Title Lock on national TV, heard them on talk radio, or watched them on social media — often featuring right-wing personalities such as Rudy Giuliani or Newt Gingrich.
The prolific ads urgently warn of a scam called “home title theft,” when a con artist fraudulently claims ownership of someone else’s home to swindle lenders or even sell the property.
In several commercials, Giuliani, Gingrich and other pitchmen claim the FBI classifies home title theft as “one of the fastest-growing” crimes in America. Some marketing materials also showcase people who’ve been identified as “real victims” — a “devastated” Texas cowboy and a Florida-raised grandmother whose “heart-wrenching story of losing her rightfully-owned home is occurring all too often nationwide.”
But the FBI told ABC News it can’t find any evidence that the agency ever described home title theft as one of the fastest-growing crimes. In fact, while some local officials said title theft is quite prevalent in their areas, many other local authorities contacted by ABC News indicated that the crime is rare for them. And court records obtained by ABC News tell starkly different stories about those two “real victims.”
An ABC News investigation of the company’s marketing materials has raised serious questions about several claims made in some of Home Title Lock’s recent ads, which one ad-tracking firm estimates were potentially viewed hundreds of millions of times on TV…
