Imagine you’re surfing Zillow. You’re scrolling through the listings when you come to a dead stop.

Your own property is on the site, up for sale, but you never intended to sell.

Twice now a Lakebay land owner has found his Whiteman Road property listed on sites like Zillow and Redfin, said Gig Harbor realtor Paige Schulte. He hasn’t ever put his land up for sale.

The Lakebay land owner is the victim of vacant-property fraud, a scam that’s hit the United States hard since 2022, said Thomas Cronkright, a fraud expert.

Using public records, fraudsters look for unused vacation homes, vacant land or any property that’s listed as unimproved.

They then pose as the owner and contact real estate companies, trying to sell the land or property, Cronkright said.

The criminals will go as far as creating fake IDs to prove their “reliability” to real estate agents, Schulte said.

In late July, Schulte was approached to sell land near the Fox Island Bridge on Warren Drive.

She knew right away something was off. The seller was hesitant to share identification. Yet, an ID was eventually sent and she continued.

“We sent a photographer out there,” Schulte said. “One of the neighbors said, ‘It’s really weird, they would never sell.’”

Schulte’s suspicions were confirmed when the actual owners called, asking about the photographer, saying that they hadn’t ever reached out to sell their land.

Schulte still isn’t sure how the criminal got the landowner’s ID. She’s been contacted by her friends in the real estate businesses in California, complaining about the same issue.

In a survey of almost 97 real estate and title companies in the United States, 56% said they’ve experienced the same scam within the last six months, according to a survey done in 2023.

“In [the first quarter of 2023] they just put the throttle down,” said Cronkright, who’s from Grand Rapids, Michigan. “We have 18 confirmed cases in just west Michigan since March.”

Cronkright is the executive chairman of CertifID, a wire fraud recovery and prevention company. He’s also an attorney and part of the American Land Title Association.

While speaking on the subject with The News Tribune, Cronkright said he had seen two cases of property fraud in his area within the last day.

“It’s done by either text message or email. There’s no in-person communication. Everything is done online,” said Deanne M. Rymarowicz, an associate counsel at the National Association of Realtors.

After contacting the real estate agents, fraudsters will look for a quick cash sale. Many don’t show identification, refuse phone calls or won’t do in-person meetings, Schulte said.

The sharp increase in scams was announced in an advisory in January by the U.S. Secret Service.

Agents can curb the scams by requesting an in-person meeting, being alert for below-market offers and consistently using notaries, the Secret Service advisory said.

The increase in vacant-land fraud is in direct correlation with the current real estate market, Cronkright said. Real estate agents are desperately looking for business, whether it’s a $400,000 home or a $30,000 parcel of land.

“With inventory so low, real estate agents are interested in any type of activity they can get,” Cronkright said. “That may have a lowering-of-guard effect … they may be less susceptible to asking questions.”

Source : TheNewsTribune

The post Do You Own Property? Be Aware of This Scam That’s Sweeping the Real Estate Market appeared first on Amora Escapes.

The US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has sanctioned seven individuals and 19 Mexican companies believed to be involved in timeshare fraud led by the Jalisco Cartel New Generation (Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación – CJNG) in Puerto Vallarta, a major tourist destination in on Mexico’s Pacific coast. OFAC sanctioned eight other Mexican companies that were linked to the same network in March.

The fraudsters allegedly made unsolicited offers to purchase timeshare properties. Once the owners agreed to sell, the fraudsters requested advance payments that they said would cover fees and taxes and would expedite the sale. Once the owners paid, the scammers disappeared, leaving the victims with no buyer and no money, according to a Treasury Department press release.

In another scheme, real estate companies sold units in timeshare developments that were never built, either because the companies simply vanished or because the projects were purposefully planned in protected natural areas and subsequently canceled, a government official working in security matters who did not want to be identified for security reasons, told InSight Crime. The money was never refunded.

This type of timeshare fraud often targets people looking for retirement or vacation properties abroad and helps the CJNG generate revenue beyond its traditional drug trafficking activities.

“They take advantage of the fact that these are usually older people who tend to be trusting and do not follow basic security measures such as asking for references or checking public information about the property,” said the source.

The CJNG also utilized frontmen, people who received payments for using their official ID, or nominees to register the companies carrying out scams, according to documents obtained by VICE. In some cases, these nominees may have been deceased or unaware that their identity was used for criminal activities.

InSight Crime Analysis

The CJNG’s involvement in the timeshare scheme is only the tip of the iceberg concerning their involvement in businesses across the tourism sector in Puerto Vallarta, which has been a goldmine for the group for years.

Hotels, bars, restaurants, and now timeshares are particularly attractive since they provide access to a range of other criminal activities, including money laundering, human trafficking, and drug trafficking, explained the source consulted by InSight Crime.

While the most recent sanctions target a scam operation, drug trafficking organizations are frequently involved in real construction projects to launder money. As a high-traffic tourist area, constructing housing developments or residential complexes in Puerto Vallarta offers criminal groups a sound way to launder investments, said the source.

Criminal groups use frontmen or front companies to make large purchase orders for building materials or finance the construction of properties with dirty money. The cost of a beachfront apartment is high, meaning it is an easy way to legitimize large sums of ill-gotten cash.

The restaurant sector is also crucial to the CJNG’s activities, as restaurants are used as a place of exchange for drug shipments and sales. However, restaurants can also become epicenters of violence and attract the attention of local authorities. For instance, in 2016, two sons of Joaquín Guzmán Loera’s, alias ‘El Chapo,’ were kidnapped — and subsequently released — in an upscale restaurant in Puerto Vallarta, allegedly on orders from Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, alias ‘El Mencho,” leader of the CJNG. Additionally, the former governor Aristóteles Sandoval was assassinated at a restaurant in Puerto Vallarta in 2020. The CJNG was linked to his murder.

Despite the various criminal economies within the tourism sector in Puerto Vallarta, the effectiveness of both international sanctions and seizures of properties by local authorities is questionable. US sanctions will have little impact on the criminal operation but will make accessing the US banking system much more difficult for the accused companies. Seizures made at the local level, “represent minimal damage” to the organization, said the source. “For every ten businesses they target, they have 100 operating, so it’s not very significant.”

The Cuinis, a once-powerful money-laundering wing of the CJNG, used the real estate sector in Puerto Vallarta and other Jalisco beach resorts to launder their drug money for years. The sanctioning of 15 businesses and six individuals linked to the gang by the US Treasury Department in 2015 has done little to curb the CJNG’s use of the tourism sector for money laundering and profiteering.

Source: Insight Crime

The post CJNG Reaps Revenues From Tourist Real Estate Scam in Mexico appeared first on Amora Escapes.