A home sale is a large amount of money moving slowly between people who mostly communicate by email. Criminals noticed a long time ago.
The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center logged 12,368 real estate fraud complaints in 2025, with $275.1 million in reported losses, and business email compromise, the scam behind most wire fraud, accounted for another $3.04 billion across all industries.
Most homeowners assume this is a buyer's problem. It used to be. The newer scams go after owners, including owners who have no plans to sell.
The Target Is Increasingly the Owner
Seller impersonation fraud is exactly what it sounds like. Someone pretends to be you, lists your property, signs as you, and tries to collect the proceeds. The American Land Title Association's 2026 study, published in September, found that 59% of title companies reported at least one seller impersonation attempt in the prior year, up from 28% in 2024. Firms also reported that spoofed contact information is common, and a majority said deepfaked images or voices are at least somewhat common.
The targets are predictable. Title companies named vacant land most often, followed by absentee-owned properties, homes owned free and clear, and properties whose owners recently died. In other words: the rental you inherited, the house your parents paid off, the lot you forgot you own.
Sea Cliff Example
In September 2026, the San Francisco City Attorney sued to undo a series of deeds on a Sea Cliff home valued at $4.4 million. According to the city, a forged deed recorded in July 2025 purported to transfer the house away from its owner, the property then changed hands eight times in 13 months, several of the deeds cited a divorce the city says never happened, and the home was listed for $2.9 million. The city is asking the court to cancel every one of those deeds.
A $4.4 million house in Sea Cliff is not a forgotten lot. Paperwork does not care what a property is worth.
The Wire Is Where the Money Disappears
For sellers who are actually selling, the risk sits at the end. Your proceeds leave escrow by wire, and the classic scam is a convincing email, apparently from escrow or from us, with new instructions for where to send them.
The rules are short. Set your payout instructions with escrow directly, in person or by phone at a number you already have. Treat any email that changes wiring instructions as fraudulent until proven otherwise, and verify it by calling, never by replying or using a number in the email. The Fuller Team will never send you wiring instructions by email.
If money does go to the wrong place, speed is everything. Call your bank immediately and file a report at ic3.gov. In 2025 the FBI's recovery process froze $679 million of $1.16 billion in attempted thefts, and those freezes depend on hours, not weeks.
You Don't Need to Pay Someone to Watch Your Title
You have probably seen the ads for title lock services. There is no such thing as freezing a property title the way you can freeze a credit report. Most paid services monitor public records and send an alert after something is recorded. California regulators describe them as optional, and note that a standard owner's title policy generally does not cover fraud that happens after you buy.
San Francisco already gives you the monitoring for free. Since December 2024, the Assessor-Recorder has offered free online viewing of recorded documents from 1990 forward, after you register and verify your identity. Looking up your own property takes a few minutes and costs nothing.
Alerts are coming too. California's SB 255, signed in October 2025, requires every county to set up a recorder notification program by January 1, 2027, so owners hear about new deeds and liens recorded against their property. When San Francisco's program opens, we will post the sign-up here.
The Boring Steps Are the Ones That Work
- Keep your mailing address current with the city for every property you own, especially rentals and anything inherited. Notices only help if they reach you.
- Look up your property's recorded documents once or twice a year.
- If you own a vacant or rarely visited property, have someone check it and the mail.
- When a parent or relative dies, deal with the title promptly. An estate in limbo is a target.
- Talk to older family members about unsolicited offers and anyone asking them to sign or notarize documents.
- Never sign a deed, quitclaim or power of attorney for someone you have not verified.
Some Scams Arrive as Offers
Most unsolicited texts and letters offering cash for your home are just aggressive marketing. Some are not. Either way, the same rule applies: nobody legitimate needs you to sign something today, wire them a fee, or skip having your own agent, attorney or title company look at it. If you want to know what your home is worth, we're always happy to help.
If It Happens to You
The steps California regulators recommend for title fraud victims:
- Contact the county recorder for a copy of the deed and confirm what was recorded.
- File a police report, and report the identity theft to the FTC and the FBI.
- Notify the California Attorney General's office and file a complaint with the DRE.
- Contact your title insurer if you have an owner's policy.
- Freeze your credit with Experian, Equifax and TransUnion.
Then call a real estate attorney.
Ten False Alarms Beat One Missed Deed
The pattern is simple. Scammers go where the money is large, slow and lightly watched: a paid-off house, an inherited rental, a wire on closing day. A few minutes checking your records, a phone call before any wire moves, and a family that knows to ask first stop most of it.
If a letter, a text or a recorded document about your property looks wrong, call or text us at (415) 416-4699 or email fullerteam@compass.com. Checking costs you nothing, and we would rather run down ten false alarms than miss one forged deed.
