Vacant Land Owners Victimized By Deed Theft Ring, Scam Involved Parcels Worth $23M

In Riverside County, California, The Press Enterprise reports:

• [Albert] Rivera was one of 10 landowners victimized by thieves who in 2003 and 2004 used forgery to secretly seize title to 25 vacant parcels in Perris, Murrieta, Menifee, and unincorporated areas of southwest Riverside County. Even though the Riverside County district attorney's office successfully prosecuted the forgery ring, the rightful landowners learned that it takes a lot of grief, money and time to undo a phony transaction once it is recorded in the county system. All the victims got their land back, but not without hiring lawyers. Since a recorded deed is presumed to be authentic under state law, they said they were advised to file lawsuits to "quiet title," claiming they had been swindled.

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• Since 2004, she said the Riverside County district attorney's office has received complaints about deed forgeries on about 1,000 properties.

Among those on the hook for the damages is First American Title Insurance Company, who forked out $200,000 on a claim under a title policy it issued to an unwitting purchaser who was left holding bogus deeds on four lots (presumably, there were a slew of other title insurance claims by other unwitting land purchasers).

While the victims of the theft got their property back, they nevertheless sufferred significant losses in the form of:

• unreimbursed attorney's fees for the civil lawsuits they were forced to bring to void the bogus deeds and to "quiet title" to their land, and
• for some, the lost opportunity to sell their land before the real estate market tanked,
• higher property tax bills because the phony sales triggered reassessments (the district attorney had to get a court order to restore the properties to their original assessed value).

For more, see:

• Owners fight to regain land lost to forgers,
• Experts say ownership of land must be proven.

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