By Marc Shaw
At World Wide Land Transfer, our team is dedicated to helping real estate buyers avoid being taken in by seller impersonation scams. This type of fraud occurs when a scammer finds a piece of real estate – often one that is abandoned or otherwise unoccupied – and forges documents to make themselves appear to be the owner. If they can manage to sell the property before their fraud is discovered, they can make off with the money, and the new “owner” is left to deal with the fallout.
Title insurance companies like World Wide Land Transfer often discover seller impersonation scams, which is why it’s so important to deal with a reliable title company whenever you want to purchase real estate. Our team has the resources and experience to identify seller impersonation so you can back out of the deal before it ends up costing you a lot of money.
Title companies and real estate agents have been reporting an uptick in seller impersonation since the beginning of the pandemic years, so it’s definitely something to be cautious about. Here’s one high-profile example that happened over the summer of 2024 involving some names you might be familiar with:
In 1957, after rocketing to superstardom, Elvis Presley purchased the Memphis mansion known as Graceland, which would become his home until his death in 1977. After Elvis’ passing, the mansion was passed down to his daughter, Lisa Marie, and later to her daughter, actress Riley Keough, in 2023.
Less than one year later, a company known as “Nausanny Investments” attempted to auction off Graceland, claiming that Lisa Marie had defaulted on a loan they owned that listed the property as collateral. Court documents show that Nausanny offered to settle the debt allegedly owed to them for $2.85 million.
Luckily, Keough was able to stop the illegal auction and sue the investment company before Graceland was sold and before she paid the scammers a dime. Unfortunately for Keough, Nausanny does not actually seem to exist, so her lawsuit was unsuccessful, but at least her family’s legendary property was safe once again.
Shortly after the attempted auction, an anonymous individual took responsibility for the fraud. While this person has not been identified, they claimed to have successfully perpetrated numerous such frauds over the years. The scammer said they usually target elderly or deceased victims and use documents like forged birth certificates to claim ownership.
“We figure out how to steal,” said the anonymous scammer in an interview with The New York Times, “That’s what we do.”
It seems likely that this scammer was unaware that the property they were attempting to steal had formerly belonged to one of the most famous musicians of all time and that this particular fraud was unlikely to be successful. Those reporting on the story also speculated that their goal was to receive a quick settlement on the alleged debt rather than selling the property. At any rate, this scammer is still out there, ready to commit seller impersonation fraud involving less high-profile properties.
While the Graceland case was resolved before any actual harm was done, it did cost Riley Keough a great deal of money to prevent the auction and prove the debt owed was fraudulent. For thousands of other Americans who may not have the same financial resources as Elvis’ granddaughter, resolving a case of seller impersonation fraud could ruin their lives.
If you want to prevent seller impersonation fraud from causing significant financial losses, the best thing to do is work with a title insurance company before you purchase any property. An owner’s title insurance policy can protect you from incurring financial losses from an undiscovered lien – like the one allegedly possessed by Nausanny Investments – and can also provide compensation for your court costs related to fighting a competing claim of ownership.
A title insurance company can also prevent seller impersonation before it even occurs! When we perform a title search, we thoroughly check over any public records related to the property dating back decades. If we notice that the signatures of the previous owners don’t match the signatures on the sale documents, we would quickly alert the buyer that the sale could be fraudulent. Our team is trained to pick up on minor discrepancies like this, making us a powerful ally to you during any real estate transaction.
If you are already working with a title insurance company, be aware that not all of them have the same resources as World Wide Land Transfer. Many title companies are owned and operated by a single individual – like a real estate agent – who may not have the time, energy, or access to technology that we do. If you want to be sure that your title search is being conducted rigorously, we can help you no matter where in the country you are buying real estate.
Get in touch with World Wide Land Transfer to help you conduct a thorough title search or to find title insurance for any real estate transaction in communities all across America.
World Wide Land Transfer is a service-oriented PA title company with offices in Philadelphia, New York, and Washington, D.C. With a record of going above and beyond, we are trusted to close everything from complex commercial transactions to residential refinance and purchase transactions.
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