Scammers selling New Orleans lots they don't own by stealing owners' identities

A new real estate scam is sweeping the country, hitting the New Orleans housing market especially hard in the last few weeks.

Scammers have stolen the identity of at least seven property owners and used fake documents to try to sell their land out from under them, according to a local title company that has documented the cases and worked to combat the scam. Anecdotally, real estate brokers and agents reported additional cases of attempted fraud to WWL-TV in recent weeks.

The proliferation of online real estate transactions, in which computerized signatures replace "wet" ink-on-paper sale agreements, is fueling a rise in seller impersonation scams. It's become such a popular scheme in the last few weeks that a national title insurance company is now offering real estate agents and attorneys webinar training on how to stop it.

One New Orleans property owner, Daniel Tan, was planning to build his dream home on a corner lot in the Riverbend neighborhood when he discovered it was under contract to be sold by someone claiming to be him earlier this month.

The sale might have gone through if Tan's neighbors hadn't been looking out for him. Drew Ward lives two doors from the lot and reached out to Tan to say the neighbor living between their two properties wanted to make a higher offer than the listing price of $140,000.

Tan called the listing Realtor, Lynn Dufrechou, and said he was calling about the lot at Joliet and Zimpel streets.

"And she goes, 'Oh, I'm sorry, it's under contract.'" Tan said. "And I'm like, 'It really shouldn't be because I'm the owner, and my name is Daniel Tan and I don't recall hiring you.'"

Dufrechou said she already had a gut feeling something wasn't right. The man purporting to be Daniel Tan had told her he only wanted to communicate by text. When she sent the purchase agreement to the real estate attorneys at Crescent Title for a closing, she warned them she had never met her client.

Crescent Title real estate attorney Lauren Griffin said it's good to be on guard, especially with vacant lots.

"Because they can be anywhere across the country and they don't need to go meet with anyone because it's a vacant lot," she said. "You don't need to inspect a vacant lot with your seller there."

The fake Daniel Tan created a slew of authentic-looking records, including wiring instructions to a bank account in Houston that was quickly closed, notarized sale documents that the notary confirmed had been falsified and a scan of Tan's driver's license with the correct license number and address, but a blue-eyed White man's face on it. The real Daniel Tan is Asian.

Luckily, Crescent Title confirmed with the actual Daniel Tan that his lot was not for sale before any money was transferred by the would-be buyer to the Houston account.

Another would-be purchaser of a different vacant lot in New Orleans wasn't so lucky. He agreed to send a fake seller a $5,000 deposit through Zelle after seeing a scanned image of the purported seller's driver's license. The District of Columbia license showed a gray-haired White man. Crescent Title did more research and discovered the real owner of the lot had the same name on the license, but is actually a Black man.

Again, Griffin noticed some problems before approving the property transfer. The would-be seller claimed to be in North Carolina, used a notary from New Orleans and sent the signed documents from another state, she said. Crescent Title spoke to the notary, who said she hadn't notarized the documents in question, Griffin said.

Crescent Title has implemented new protocols as a result, she said.

"We do have checklists in place," Griffin said. "We make sure we have certain questions that we want to ask all of our sellers and all of our buyers and the agents."

That includes asking sellers for multiple forms of identification and checking prior sales by the same owner to make sure the signatures and photo IDs match.

She said it's more important than ever for buyers to get title insurance, so anything they pay for a bogus sale won't be lost.

Griffin is also advising real estate agents to take certain steps when someone they've never met asks them to list a property for sale.

"Make sure that you're able to meet with them in person. If not, do a zoom call, but make sure that they're visible," she said.