BOCA RATON, Fla. — A Boca Raton real estate broker almost lost $200,000 in a fake property deed scam involving vacant land in Deerfield Beach.
It happened Sept. 10. That’s when Marshall Sklar, a real estate broker in Boca Raton, realized something went horribly wrong with a sale he closed earlier that week for a vacant property in Deerfield Beach.
“We got a message from some woman claiming my property was stolen,” Sklar said. “Right away, we looked at our file and we noticed that the contact information, the wiring information and the actual recipient of the wire wasn’t the name of the seller of the property.”
Luckily, the real owner of the property signed up for property fraud alerts using the Palm Beach County clerk’s website. That will alert land and homeowners if somebody is trying to use their identity to sell their property.
“She was telling us this whole story about how she got an alert that her property was transferred without her knowing,” Sklar said.
Alex Hagen/WPTV
It turns out the culprit had created a fake ID using her information.
“In addition to the fake ID, they signed a listing agreement with a Realtor,” Sklar said. “It was a real listing agreement for land they didn’t own.”
Then, Sklar said, a fake deed was filed. Deeds are used to transfer title or ownership to a property.
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