Leelanau County may be seeing another string of scammers preying on vacant landowners, Register of Deeds Jennifer Grant says. Like last year, at least one person has tried to contact a local Realtor to fraudulently sell land that they don’t own in Northport.
Grant says that the scammer identified themselves by the name of the landowner when they called the Realtor, but the Realtor could tell that “Something didn’t smell right” because the call came from a number with a New York area code. When the Realtor tried to contact the owner again, it became clear that the first call was a property fraud attempt by someone posing as the true landowner.
When he became aware of the fraud attempt, the real owner of the vacant property in Northport contacted the register of deeds office, and they informed the newspaper last month. According to michiganpropertyrecords. org, it’s “easy and quick” to find out who owns a Michigan property by name and address, as all documents recorded with the county register are public records.
Grant noted the similarity between this scam and a string of property fraud attempts in Leelanau and surrounding counties in summer 2023. Last year, the register of deeds office received several complaints about similar scams targeting vacant lots in Leelanau County.
It isn’t unheard of for scammers to target properties with homes on them too. Grant said that another register in northern Michigan told her about a fraud attempt on a home in Emmet County last summer.
Grant has told the newspaper that the county register of deeds is “the last stop on the paper trail,” and if a document comes to the office and is considered recordable, they must record it by law. However, the office has a wet ink signature policy where the documents must be signed in person to deter scammers. And the county has a free “fraud notify” service.
In Leelanau County, records are collected on a database on the county government website. On this site, property owners can subscribe to receive “fraud guard alerts” for free. Once a property owner signs up for this service, they receive automated email alerts any time a document is recorded in the register of deeds office using their name.
