from the easier-than-physically-stealing-it dept.
Submitted via IRC for chromas
Junk mail helps woman discover her home had been stolen
Rohina Husseini had no idea someone could steal a house, but the first small clue that the home she owned for nearly a decade was no longer hers was a piece of junk mail that most of us ignore.
The Springfield mother said she initially tossed the mortgage refinancing offers that began arriving over the summer in the trash, but one detail bugged her: The letters were addressed to another woman. Curious, Husseini said she finally opened one.
"You bought a new house, congratulations," read the letter addressed to Masooda Persia Hashimi.
"I was like, 'Wow, this doesn't seem right,' " Husseini said. "I don't know this person at all. She never lived in my house even before (I moved in)."
In the frantic hours that followed, Husseini discovered the total stranger was now the legal owner of the brick Colonial worth about $525,000 that forms the center of her life with her husband and daughter.
Husseini, who owns a home health-care business, was the victim of a lesser-known crime alternately called house stealing or deed theft that has seen an uptick in some areas in recent years. Scammers gain control of a deed to a home and then attempt to resell the property or to open a line of credit on it.
The results can be disastrous. Unsuspecting homeowners can be foreclosed upon or even find strangers living in an unoccupied property or vacation home that has been sold out from under them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 13 2019, @07:10AM (14 children)
this happens.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 13 2019, @07:20AM
Was that secret code for fucking ass shit fuck? Mom and dad are cool but not cool as fuck. Now type your fucking fuck words.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by zocalo on Friday December 13 2019, @10:21AM (8 children)
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bradley13 on Friday December 13 2019, @11:17AM (3 children)
TFA even says that the responsibly attorney just believed the tall tale, and failed to check the people's identities. They're up for a jail term. The attorney ought to up for professional censure and a fine, as well as civilly liable for everyone's expenses.
So it's not really any sort of remarkable story: just ordinary white-collar crime.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 13 2019, @01:06PM
The attorney should be up for disbarment for some period of time (two years maybe). He/she should not be working as an attorney if they are that lax with verification. A two year stint of unemployment might convince them to make some serious changes in how they go about doing their business.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Osamabobama on Friday December 13 2019, @06:08PM (1 child)
Usually, there's a notary involved with such things. For them, it is routine to check id and get a thumb print (in some jurisdictions) to ensure the person signing is who they claim to be.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 13 2019, @09:45PM
In many jurisdictions in the U.S., the attorney (or their assistant) is the notary public. This is not considered a conflict of interest, which flabbergasts me, especially because I am an attorney. The whole point of a notary public is to be an impartial witness to the act. However, a lawyer and their staff are ethically required to carry out the interests of their client within the bounds of the law. As a lawyer, if your client has an interest in that document signed and the results thereof, you and your staff have an interest in that document and the results thereof. In addition, a lawyer has a duty to prevent certain fallout from their actions. Both of those, by definition, means that you are not impartial.
In addition, you put your staff in a bad position. If a lawyer tells their paralegal to notarize a document for clients and they refuse to because the clients fail the identity check, then it makes her, potentially, look bad to the employer for not carrying out their orders. It also makes the lawyer look bad for having staff refuse to do what they tell them. You are also putting them in the bad spot because the staff may have assumed a level of identity verification you did not do, which now puts both of your necks on the line. This means that your staff is in a worse position than the lawyer because they have those problems in addition to the general ones as a legal professional.
That is why I always use a truly independent notary for my clients, as I believe it is the only truly ethical thing to do for both them and myself.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 13 2019, @06:47PM (3 children)
I would hope that this sort of debacle is exactly the sort of thing that would be covered by title insurance.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 13 2019, @08:34PM (2 children)
If you buy the house from the thief, title insurance will pay off your loan.
Title insurance won't really help anybody else. Perhaps the insurance company would try to argue that the house really was owned by the thief.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 13 2019, @09:40PM (1 child)
I'm pretty sure my title insurance covers any question of me owning my house. And that to avoid paying out a stack of money, they will possibly assist my lawsuit against the fraudsters for slander of title.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 14 2019, @03:00AM
>"I'm pretty sure my title insurance covers any question of me owning my house."
Maybe, depending on how you bought the policy. In many cases, the title insurance only protects the lender who holds your mortgage. The protection you get (unless you make other arrangements to get your own policy), is that the title company researches the ownership history of the property in an effort to avoid having to pay out.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by pvanhoof on Friday December 13 2019, @10:53AM (3 children)
Exactly. This is afaik simply impossible here in Belgium. You need two notaries, one for the seller and one for the buyer, to both verify everything before any sale of any house can take place. And the notaries are legally responsible for whatever legal fuckup happens. Which means the notary would pay for all costs to undo the crap he or she caused.
I think it's insane that any legal system can possibly allow this nonsense.
But then again. There are many things insane about the US's legal system, I guess. Glad that I don't live there. Crazy country. Land of the brave and opportunities my ass.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 13 2019, @12:37PM (1 child)
This is nothing. The courts overturned the sale and the perpetrator is going to jail, as they should. There was a rash of this type of scam up here in Canada some years ago and the Supreme Court of Ontario upheld the sales because the bank that financed them would have lost money.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 13 2019, @06:45PM
Must have been many decades ago because the Supreme Court of Ontario ceased to exist in 1990, when it was superseded by the Ontario Court of Justice (General Division) -- subsequently renamed to the Ontario Superiour Court of Justice.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 13 2019, @10:24PM
Oh, please. It simply makes the theft harder to carry out, not impossible. One must then impersonate the actual owner of the house.
There's no such thing as a "perfect" legal system which can account for any and all attempts to derail or attempt a fraud on it. Because there's no such thing as a perfect system.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 13 2019, @02:07PM (3 children)
Careful. This is the Washington Times, not to be confused with the Washington Post or the New York Times. It is a right-leaning sensationalist newspaper of dubious quality. The tagline says it all: "Reliable Reporting. The Right Opinion."
That's not to say that the story is necessarily false, as any given story anybody writes can be good. However, treat it as if you were reading an article in The Sun or The Daily Mail. For that matter, as if you were listening to a story on Fox News.
Assuming this is all true and the article isn't full of spin, this does sound absolutely terrible. The people should be caught and punished appropriately, including the incompetent lawyers enabling this, and the laws should be reformed to prevent this kind of fraud in the future.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 13 2019, @03:00PM
I can't think of a time I was not skeptical of what I read in the news. If you are only "careful" when its the Washington times you are surely falling for various government and corporate propaganda on a regular basis.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 13 2019, @03:38PM (1 child)
As opposed to the Washington Post, that will serve you fairy tales on how Trump is the big bad (Russian) wolf.
Yes, the Washington Times are owned by the Moonies. I've found their reporting tone try to stay closer to neutral once Trump was elected.
(Score: 2) by tizan on Friday December 13 2019, @10:58PM
As opposed to the Washington Post, that will serve you fairy tales on how Trump is the big bad (Russian) wolf. [citation needed]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 13 2019, @02:58PM (1 child)
The victim here is the bank that got scammed, they are trying to put their problem on this woman.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 14 2019, @06:00AM
Exactly, this has absolutely nothing to do with the true owner of the house. The bank gave away money thinking it was a loan for a house and the recipient simply pocketed the money. The house still belongs to the owner and the owner shouldn't have to do anything more.
(Score: 2) by noneof_theabove on Friday December 13 2019, @03:03PM (5 children)
although some banks do mortgages.
Example:
My aunt that I live with recently broke her lower left leg when she fell [83 and early alz] in garage getting int the car.
She is in a wheel chair, with "No Pressure" on the leg for at least 1-2 months and could be worse.
Went to our local Wells Fargo to get PoA papers so I can manage her money [part of early alz is poor money management].
They gave me papers to my account with my sister but NOT my aunt.
ONLY the account holder can get anything.
I will have to get my sister to stop her work and go to the bank with me to set her up.
BUT my aunt will need a $126/day [already had to do this] van with handicap ramp, because she has to be there in person.
So all mortgage whether with you personal bank or a separate company needs so better "proof of being you".
Part of that really good password [ Th!s1smyh0usesoff0kcuF,,!,, ], phone call back to number on record, alternate person/phone contact on file in case you lose your phone.
That is just 2 for starters.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 13 2019, @03:32PM (2 children)
It was difficult to follow but it sounds like you are trying to steal your disabled aunt's house?
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 13 2019, @04:30PM
Indeed. noneof_theabove should probably try resubmitting this once they have learned proper English. First work on the spelling and grammar. Then work on syntax, etc.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 13 2019, @07:22PM
It sounds like you used to write for Microsoft's Clippy. You just missed adding "Can I help you with that?"
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday December 13 2019, @04:59PM (1 child)
Not sure where you live, but it sounds like the paper you need is "power of attorney", which needs a notary to approve. Some notaries make house calls.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 13 2019, @09:51PM
Yeah, fuck dealing with the bank. Call a lawyer, get a Durable Power of Attorney (if it isn't too late, or else a guardianship/conservatorship), then show it to the bank. That way the Aunt doesn't even need to go to the bank and you don't have to deal with some uninformed wage slave with no power to change anything.