The Red Flags of Real Estate Fraud You Can't Ignore w/ Russell Williams

213: In this episode of the REtipster Podcast, I talk with Russell Williams, a retired house flipper turned land investor. Russell shares his firsthand experience dealing with various types of real estate fraud, including title fraud, wire fraud, and fake checks.

(Show Notes: REtipster.com/213)

We dive deep into the red flags to watch for, how scammers exploit online leads, and why land is a common target for fraudsters. Russell also explains how title insurance can save you thousands and the importance of verifying wire instructions.

Whether you're new to land investing or a seasoned pro, this episode is packed with actionable insights to protect your investments.

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Transcript

1:19

Hey there, how's it going? This is Seth Williams from retipster.com. Today, I'm talking with Russell Williams. And no, he's not my brother or my cousin or my uncle or anything like that. Maybe there's some distant relation back in our family tree. But Russell is a retired house flipper, turned land investor, and a coach for the Jack Bosch coaching program. He specializes in PPC, SEO, and option contracts. He has been generating online leads since 2019. And the reason I'm talking to Russ today is because he has encountered various types of fraud in his land investing journey. And we're going to talk a little bit about his experiences and insights, what he's been through, how to detect this kind of thing if it's coming your way. Just different red flags and that kind of thing. I've had a number of other conversations with other land investors and other specialists about this kind of thing. You can always check out episode 207 with Andy Rouse, the RITipser podcast. Episode 193 with George McCleary, 134 with Eloy Ochoa, and episode 143 with Brenda Flatter. We've discussed various aspects of this problem, but today we're going to dive into it with Russell. So, Russ, how are you doing? Welcome. I'm doing great. Appreciate being here, man. It's been kind of a crazy ride. I think when we went to the mastermind there, the young conference, like I think I was one of two people that were internet in the land business. So it's a different, totally different scenario than everybody who's sending out mail. I think mail is a lot safer, you know, as far as fraud is concerned, but there's things that we need to look out for. But also the internet side is kind of huge. I mean, people are spending tens of thousands of dollars a month on pay-per-click and there's some things that we need to look out for, for sure. Yeah. So when you say mail is safer, you just mean that the leads that respond to a direct mail campaign, is there a lower likelihood or it's less common that that would be a fraudulent seller who responds to that? 100%. And I think within the last two months is the first time I ever heard of any situation from a piece of mail. And I think it was stolen mail. In my house, when we were living in San Antonio, on our little ring camera, we saw people stealing our mail. Wow. That's crazy. Yeah. And so one of the things the title companies are doing right now, though, which is kind of cool, is that if it's vacant land, they are sending out a mail piece. They might get them because I'll buy my property and then I will go ahead and sell, get a piece of mail. It says, hey, we noticed a transaction that's been opened with whatever title company, First American, whatever it is, if you're not selling your property, please call us. And that was the exact scenario with another coach of Jack Bosch. She's all mail. And the real seller actually got a letter in the mail. So I think his mail got stolen. Those people tried to impersonate him. And then they got a letter of mail and they called it like, hey, no, no, no, this was not us. I've actually heard that. I know that's one of the things title companies are doing now to try to combat this title fraud thing is when they have a seller coming to them, try to sell their property, they send mail to the registered address of that seller to find out where they live. I don't know that it's totally foolproof. It sounds like your mail can get stolen, but like most of the time that would catch the issue. Yeah. If they open their mail in time within the 30 day or whatever it is, you know what I mean? And these fraudsters want to like, obviously want to close as fast as possible. So it sounds like you've experienced this firsthand. Why don't you tell me about maybe like the first time or the worst time or just paint the picture of what happened? Like, where did this person come from? What kind of fraud was going on? At what point did you detect it? How could you have caught it earlier? Tell us about that. Yeah, the first time it was kind of brutal, you know, and I laugh about it now, but it was an online lead. You know, it was a pay-per-click lead. They sell your land fast and they jumped on a, on our web form submitted. We talked to the, I talked to him personally. And what's common in these fraud cases is there's some type of urgency, right? There's like this guy was, his wife was, had cancer and they needed to go to California to have the cancer treatments. And they were trying to raise money to pay for all these treatments. And which was weird though, the lot was in Houston and Houston has a really, really good. That was the first red flag. You know, I was like, there's a really, really good cancer center in Houston. And I was like, well, why would you go to NIMI with some form of like, you're trying to put a deal together. Your mind wants to go that direction, right? Like, let's put this deal together. And so he's in California. He says he's got a sign in California. That's fine. We do remote closings all the time. He knew a lot about the property, which is one of the rare things. You know, a lot of times you get this person and you're like, you get a call and, you know, it could be some like Italian name. And you get somebody who sounds like they're from Haiti. You know what I mean? Like a really thick accent. And you're like, well, tell me about the property. Does it require well and septic? And they have no clue. And we know immediately that this is fraud and we dump it. This guy knew quite a bit about the property. He knew that there were weans on the property. I don't know if he had gone through this with another online land guy or not, but he knew a lot of all the property. So I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. And it was an infill lot in Houston, Texas. And, you know, I was like, we're going to pay cash. You know, I had comps above the 150 range and I threw in an offer at like 90,000. The second thing that is common is that like they very rarely try to negotiate. They just say yes. You know what I mean? And in this scenario, he tried to negotiate higher. So I was like, that's a good sign. You know, it's actually a good sign when the seller is trying to negotiate with you, you know, because then you feel like it's not one of these these fraudsters. So I think we settled at 95 and closed within 30 days. During the title process, there was a number of issues and would seem to fit this scenario. Somebody whose wife has cancer and they're not taking care of the property. There were a lot of like city links like that hadn't been mowed. And, you know, like we had to try to get these things cleared. And me being the guy that just wants to try to help people out, I was like, hey, I think I can get these removed. Give me another 10 days. I think we can remove these. We actually removed something like $7,000, $8,000 with the leans off the property before we closed so that he could get $7,000 more. It's kind of funny at this point. But he closed in California. Thank God. In California, they require, if it's a mobile notary, a fingerprint. And this guy, I didn't know at the time, bought the property, marketed, sold it within two days, upper 100s, like 180, 190. It went really, really quick. You're saying the person that you bought it from or the person you sold it to? I bought it. At 95. And then once I closed on it, and he closed with a mobile notary in California, I put it on the market a week later. I had it cleaned up. I mowed it. I tripped some trees. It took great pictures. It was one of those real close to downtown. You can see downtown. Market it. It sold immediately. I think it was like 180, 190. So it was a six-figure deal. You know what I mean? I was stoked. And it was the summer. And I was like, yeah, all right. Yeah, we got this sold. We spent our summers up in Pennsylvania. And it kind of put operations on hold, knowing that I had a six-figure deal, which is another mistake. I mean, so I enjoyed my summer, you know, like at least that month, there was a 45-day closing, like two weeks before we're about to close. I get a call from a realtor saying, why are you marketing my client's property? Thinking that it was my property, you know? So you got a call after you sold it? Because you were still marketing? After it was under contract. So it's pending now in the U.S. So I'm two weeks from actual closing on the property. And I was like, for everything that I know is I bought it legitimately from a seller with title insurance, the whole nine yards. So I, you know, in my mind, I thought I was doing everything right, but I, you know, I looked over at my wife and I was like, man, there may have been some fraud here. And sure enough, the next day I get a call from an attorney for this client and, you know, he's like, well, you have the deed to my client's property and you obtained it, you know, without him signing for it. So we're suing you. So now, not only do I close that deal, but I'm getting sued, right? I've got a lawsuit it against me because I have the deed and I'm not supposed to. I'm trying to sue you for money because you have- They're suing me to get the deed back in his name. So they just want you to perform that action of deeding it back to them. Yes. Okay. 100%. Yeah. And which I get it, 100%. And I was like, hey, obviously I canceled the deal with the new buyer and I'll sign whatever documents he needs to sign. So file for the title insurance, and I talked to the person in charge, the attorney. And he's like, yeah, well, luckily it was in California. This person's wanted in four separate states for doing this exactly. So he's kind of really good at it. He was a very good fraudster. So this was a deal that you closed with a title company. The mobile notary was the title company's mobile notary. I don't know if it was the title company's mobile notary. I just know that it was a mobile notary in the state of California. Did they catch this guy then? They never told me, you know, but like I got my money back. You know, everything that I had purchased by us, I got back. You know, I trimmed the trees. I mean, you know, I did some things. I lost some money on the deal for sure. Not to mention the profit that I had baked into my mind. My goodness, you didn't self-close this thing, man. Holy cow. I will not self-close. The deals that we get on the internet, we're really searching for that needle in the haystack, that seller with a lot of motivation, that there's a lot of meat on the bone. So that's what you're really looking for when you're scouring the internet or internet leads are coming in. So it was not uncommon to do a six-figure deal from an internet lead. So the money that you got back, that was from the title insurance policy paying up, right? Yeah. They ran that guy's fingerprint and found out that he's wanted in four different stakes. I'm going to say within 60 days, I had my investment back on the property. Wow. Well, that's terrible. And then you've encountered it more times since then, but you've caught it when they've come up or? Yeah. So I got this one where the guys from Hong Kong, so essentially what people would do is they would look for mailing addresses in Hong Kong, out of country owner, and they would try to give you, you know, hey, I want to sell this. My wife's got cancer, you know, the same story, right? And the passport that he sent me a passport, but like the passport, I was like, man, I have seen this guy on TV, you know what I mean? And sure enough, it was like a famous actor. The guy just pulled a thing off the internet, somebody, an actor that lives in Hong Kong and slapped it on a passport, put the name and number, the phone, I mean, the name of the person of record passport. I mean, it looked legit, if you just looked at the passport and not the photo and the photo threw me off i was like no no this is this is my element i wonder why they would pick a celebrity for their. Literally anybody else you'd be fine it looked like the chinese james bond on it i was like dude this guy's an actor or something but it was funny is you think that you would hey let me see your id you know what i mean and we get ids all the time when we think there's fraud and then we do a skip search and we try to find the number of the real owner and i've sent those pictures they're like that is not me you know what i mean so they're like there's people able to make some really convincing fake ids and then they take that to a notary and then it's done i think it's easier than it's ever been to create a fake driver's license with ai it's nuts how easy like if you're just asking for a picture of an id like that is super simple to do if you want an actual idea that might be a step harder because you need like the material to make it that kind of thing. But I mean, I've even seen stuff now, like you can live on the spot, have a deep fake of your face on a Zoom call. So you could like try to do FaceTime with them and like, you'd never know because they look like somebody else. So going back to this example real quick, like if I were to say some red flags, what to look out for, you know, I think I would have asked for the ID up front. Okay. On this one, this is the first time I'd ever got that far. You know, And I was like, what ended up happening when I saw the ID, the ID had the address of the lot on it. Okay. Oh, interesting. No, not their mailing address. So that had I seen that upfront, you know, ever since we, you know, if we, if we think it's fraud now, we get that ID. And a lot of times that ID is fake. And second of all, you know, I think what I would have done is just kind of dug a little deeper, like really asked a lot more questions. What questions would you ask? Like a little more about the property. How did you acquire it? He knew that there was these liens on the property. So I think that threw me off. Initially, he knew enough to say that like, there's these liens on the property that we need to clean up or just pay. And, you know, I think I would just, now we dig a lot deeper. You know what I mean? We want to know exactly what they know about the property and really find out, you know, but at the end of the day, like whose responsibility is to like, make sure that it is who it is. I mean, ultimately, And ultimately, we're not the ones providing the insurance. It's the title insurance company, right? It doesn't mean that we need to be laxed though, because the worst case scenario is you get in the situation I'm in, you think you're making a six-figure payday, and then instead you get a lawsuit. So you mentioned the foreign accent thing earlier. Does it ever happen when you're talking to these people on the phone and there's just a normal American accent? Like it doesn't throw you off at all? That was the scenario. Okay, gotcha. Everything ever since has been this really thick, and a lot of the calls either come from New York State or Florida. Florida is one of the biggest fraud areas. So you're saying the property is in Florida or the call is coming from Florida? The call is coming from Florida. Okay. So the property could be anywhere, but the call happens to come from Florida? Okay. Yeah. Interesting. Just to summarize what I've heard you say so far, let me know if I'm missing anything. Some of the common traits you see are the red flags is they're in a hurry. There may or may not be a foreign accent, but if there is, there might be a reason to wonder about it. They don't know much about the property. It doesn't match the last name. You know what I mean? All right. Gotcha. So I got you. It's not the foreign accent alone. It's that it doesn't line up with what the last name looks like. John Sniff sounds like, does not sound like a John Smith. Yeah. Okay. And they don't try to negotiate. So they kind of just take the first thing you throw at them. And things that you can do to maybe catch it is, first of all, getting on the phone at all. I think some of these fraudsters don't even want to talk on the phone, period. But then also when you are, you know, ask for an ID earlier on. Doesn't mean they couldn't give you a fake one. But like when they do send it to you, don't just like say, okay, like really scrutinize it. Like, look at the picture, look at the address, like, does it all make sense? And then I guess ask more questions about the property. Just the more you ask, the more opportunities they have to mess something up and, you know, reveal that they're not legit. Right. And then we've skipped trace that, that seller and call those numbers. I gotcha. So let's get traced to the seller. So I've gotten on the phone and, and a lot of times they're, they're targeting the elderly too. So somebody who's you know 70 plus and i get on the phone i was like hey you know i got this guy trying to buy your property like and they're like oh thank you so much you know so we've helped out a number of situations there you know along those same lines what the title companies try to do is just sending like a quick letter to the address of record just verifying that they are indeed trying to sell sometimes i can catch it too. I'm really a big fan of what some title companies are doing, and they accept it in the state of Florida. They're not doing it in Georgia, is the remote online notaries. With Notarize.com, you put in the last four digits of your social. And I have to do this when I sell properties. I love to do it from my home. I don't want to have to go to a notary. But they ask you questions that are based off of your credit report. Do you own any of these vehicles? And it's like a 2012 Ford Ranger. And you're like, yeah, that's the one. And so, like, I mean, I feel like the remote online notaries are actually way more secure than just going to a mobile notary. Yeah, those are called KBAs or knowledge-based assessments that I agree. I think it's a great idea. Like, you'd think that would be standard practice now, just given that this is a more common thing. Some states will do it. You know, I bet these sellers that have a property in Georgia and Florida and sell, like, Florida would do it. And then Georgia was like, no, we don't do that. We don't allow it. It's not state law yet. Yeah. Do you think they're, I mean, I feel like the answer is no, but do you think at any point in the near future, nationwide or even statewide, they might change how they handle this recording process? Just the fact that the recorder's office, like they don't really look at a whole lot. Like if you send them a notarized document and it's not totally messed up, they'll record the thing. They're not going to verify that the notary was legit or that the seller was legit. It just seems like the system itself is just way outdated and antiquated. Yeah. The further and more rural you get, I guess the more lax those requirements at all. It's rampant. It's incredible. This one Florida title company, when I started dealing with them, I was paying $250, $300 for a settlement fee. Now, if it's vacant, rural land is $750 per side. And that's because they have to do so much more on land because there's so much fraud, especially in Florida. Why do you think, I mean, I think I might know the answer, but why do you think. Land. Like why is there so much more fraud with land versus houses? There's no, there's no mortgages on them. I gotcha. That's another layer. Like, cause the mortgage company is, is checking in and are they paying, you know, the taxes pay, is their insurance current, you know, like there's another person to sign off on. But if it's vacant, which most of it is, I mean, like, like no loans on it, free and clear, then it's just an easier target. Yeah. That actually makes a lot more sense to me. What you just said in another conversation, they were talking about how another reason that's more common with land is because Because if you put like a for sale sign up on a piece of vacant land, there's like no neighbors around to see it. You could totally fake it that way. It's all that way. Whereas with a house in a neighborhood, like people would just see it and like question it more. 100%. Now, the next type of fraud that I've dealt with, like I think is more serious and is a little more common for the regular land flipper. I think the majority of people, would you say, are just direct mail, right? Like so you're targeting an audience. It's a little harder. If you're on the internet and you're taking internet leads, then you open yourself up to it. These fraudsters, right? But wire fraud is really high on the list right now. And it's very- This is a different thing from title fraud. I mean, they could be linked together, but wire fraud and title fraud are technically two separate things, right? Totally different. And we got in a deal where it just amazed me how technically advanced the fraudsters were. So we had this deal in, it was a deal in Texas. It was up by Dallas. It was a commercial piece of property. The one thing that appeased me, you contact the neighbor and then you get a call back from their realtor. And they want to buy it. I said, man, I just want to do a deal with you. And now we've got this realtor involved, which is a huge part of the problem. Not that realtors don't do a great job in many instances, but this particular realtor's email is the one that got hacked. So I was using a friend of mine's title company. And so they hired an investigator to figure this out. and it was the buyer's agent's email that got hacked. And so what happened is they hacked his email and then they saw this thread, this email thread of where everybody is talking about this transaction. Like, when are we going to close? Like the banker was on there, the mortgage company, the me, this person hacked that and was able to make email addresses that looked similar or almost identical to what other emails. Have you heard this before? Yeah, I have. I've actually, I've gotten scammed this exact same way on eBay before where I sold a camera and eBay has changed up their payment system now. So this can't really happen anymore. But somebody had contacted me separately from the transaction with an email address that looked totally legit. Like, Hey, I just switched my address. Can you send it here instead? And I was just like, okay, I did it. And there you go. 500 bucks gone. Yeah. Well, this was $67,000. Yeah, that's a lot of work. I had sold this property and the contract that was presented to me, and it was a commercial deal. So it was initially a letter of intent to purchase, was an all cash deal. And I had this particular property on an option contract. And it was an option contract that I was actually paying for the seller's taxes and her tax loan. She couldn't pay for the taxes on the property anymore. And I said, well, look, this is a little too risky for me to just take it all down. but I will pay your tax loan and I'll pay while we're under contract for the taxes that are due. And so I was paying her $500 a month for an option contract, which I mean, that's a fair deal. Like I'm, she's taking a little risk. I'm taking a little risk. Anyways, I find the buyer who's the neighbor. They have the neighboring property and then they put a contract in that's all cash. And then so like two, three days before closing, I contact the agent. I was like, is everything ready to go? He's like, I think we're going to need an extension. I said, why? He's like, well, the lender's not ready. Lender's not ready. There's never ever supposed to be a lender. I wouldn't have accepted this price if I know that financing was an option. So he had already wired in his earnest money the first time, which was $2,500. And I said, I need another $3,500 earnest money, non-refundable. Now that I know that there's a lender, I'm not going to play around. We need to close this deal because I'm paying this, and this lady's needing to close. She's hard up to cash. She can't pay her loan for the taxes. Right. Like, and so they agree, they, they wire in another $3,500 to the title company. Okay. And, um, push it back another 30 days. Well, we get close to closing and, and, you know, I'm sending, we're sending emails off and I was like, what is going on? Are you going to wire the frigging money in or not? And I get this email back that says, still having the problems with my banking. I'm sorry. I just need two or three more days. And I just, I lose it. Right. Like, I'm like, this has been way too much. I called the broker and I'm like, what is going on? I'm like, I get this email from your client saying that he's got banking problems. He's like, let me look into it. I'm like, we're not extending this any longer where I'm going to take that money. Like that earnest money is mine. I'm that. Right. And, uh, he calls me back like 15 minutes later. He's like, he never sent that email. I'm like, what are you talking about? I'll forward it to you. Here's the email. And he's like, that's not him. I said, what are you talking about? And that's when we all, you know, the guy who actually ended up intercepting the wire was trying to buy time. Because I think that they need like 24 hours to get it out of that new account into their account. So I got that email from him. And I don't know if this guy got his money back, but it got intercepted. So the third time he had to wire, and this was his down payment, you know what I mean? So I think the sale price was like $240 or something like that. He was putting in $67,000, got intercepted at the last issue. Let me just make sure i'm following this so you said that the agent's email got hacked but these fake emails you were getting were from these from the buyer so from everybody so which is crazy this guy was interjecting himself from everybody so my my email instead of my email is like info at my company harmony land holdings he turned it into info at harmony land holdings all right and it still said my name, Russell Williams at the top. So he was able to manipulate that. So he's sending emails to the other parties pretending to be you? Yep. And then one from the title company pretending to be the title company and one from the lender pretending to be the lender. So he created four separate face emails. So nobody's really talking to each other. He's just intercepting everything and doing smoke and mirrors. Yes, it was completely smoke and mirrors. So when he is asking the buyer to send more earnest money or deposits or whatever it is, he's just got his own bank account that he's telling him to wire it to, right? Yeah. So at the end of the day, well, he didn't want that $3,500. He wanted either the full purchase price or I think at the beginning of it, he was thinking he was getting the whole thing. But then he got a lender to step in. But this guy, you know, the seller, I mean, the buyer ended up wiring money two times and the third time got a different wiring instructions and sent it to a different wire. You know what I mean? So that is the biggest lesson right there. Title companies do not change their wiring instructions. And they say that on every, the bottom of every wiring instructions, these do not change or in the email that you get. Right. So the biggest lesson for this story is always verify, you know, so I always verify, even though this weren't my fun sending, I'm always going to verify anytime I send it in. You know, call the company, look it up on Google first. Don't use the phone number that's in the email. Because if that email is fake, you're calling the number of somebody who's just like, yeah, that's the right one. Send it. When you say verify, what are you verifying? You're calling the bank or you're calling the title company. Where am I supposed to wire this money? Okay. And you're Googling the title company. You're not just taking letters in the email, right? Okay. Cause I've even heard of, uh, some of these fraudsters who like create a fake title company, like a whole website, super elaborate thing. Like it looks legit. So like you could Google it and find a number of calls. Why are fraud, they're just so, they're so technologically advanced. Like they're using everything to their advantage. So it's like, that does not surprise me at all. That might be one argument to use a more well-known title company instead of like a mom and pop, just cause like, it's going to be hard to fake like Chicago title or something like that. Yeah. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. So the funny part of this story though, for me was like, he gives me a call and he says, you know, Hey man, give me a break. Like I'm talking to the FBI. This is some serious fraud. And I was like, bro, like you were the first one to commit fraud on this file. You can't sign a contract saying that you're going to pay cash in two days before closing. Tell me that you're using a lender. That is fraud because I would not have accepted that, that offer. If you look that up, that exact scenario is technically fraud. I was like, please have the FBI call me. I will tell them all about this file. You know what I mean? And so two days later, he wired another $67,000 in the buying property and it closed. So you're saying that the agent committed fraud? I talked to the buyer. The buyer. The buyer committed fraud. The agent said he didn't know anything about the lender until two days before closing. So the buyer committed fraud. Say it one more time. I'm sorry if I followed how they committed fraud. What did they do wrong? They submitted a contract saying they were going to pay all cash. Okay. But they really were working with a lender? And two days before closing, they said that their lender wasn't ready. Okay. So that wasn't just something the title fraud person was making up. That was actually a real situation. That's fraud. Yeah. You can't say you're paying cash and then get an extension because your lender isn't ready. Yeah. You know what I mean? Because like, would you take a different number if it's cash or if it's lender? Right? Yeah. That's stealing. He's stealing money, right, from me. That's the way I looked at it, right? And so technically, he knew that if the FBI talked to me, that I would tell him about the fraud that he committed on this file. So I had a little leverage. So I guess to recap, different ways to catch, seems like wire fraud is a bit trickier to catch, depending on how sophisticated this fraudster might be. I guess one thing is to look really closely at the email addresses that are being sent to you. Look at every single character. Is it the same one? You have to click on it. I don't know. I use Outlook. So sometimes they'll just say if it's a contact of mine. And somehow they're able to manipulate that. It just says they set Williams. And then you would have to click on it and actually look. Every letter in the email address. So yeah, look at that. I didn't notice that until I realized that we had that. There was fraud involved. I think you can completely 100% get away from this by making sure you talk to the right person in the title company and verify those wiring instructions before they're sent. And I would say if you're on the sales side like I was, make sure that your buyer understands that too. Because in this situation, it wasn't me that made the mistake. It was him that made the mistake. Had he been informed, hey, look, You know, why are thoughts used? Maybe there wasn't the emails. I don't know. Like, make sure you send it to that same thing. The same one you did. He wired it twice already before. So it was like, there should have been a red flag in his mind. I don't know exactly how it's applicable here, but something I've been doing lately is I'll get these emails that just don't quite look right, but they look alarming. There's actually one that keeps hitting my inbox that says like, you have three unread emails, like click here to access this. And I don't click it. I'm just like, this is weird. So you're saying I have three unread emails somewhere else that I can't see and I have to, it just, my gut was just, so all I did was I copied and pasted the email. Put it in chat GPT and said, I got this email. It seems weird. Is this like a fraudulent email? Is there something I should be worried about? And it spelled out, yes, there are several tells about this email that appear to be fraud. Like for example, misspelled words or odd sentence structure and basically just confirm like, yeah, don't mess with this. Just delete it. Delete. Click. so i mean if you ever have a gut feeling about that whether it's an email you can copy and paste or just like a situation that seems weird like just tell it to chat gpt and ask its opinion and it might i mean either confirm or deny that you should or should not be concerned yeah i love that i love it now we got one last one to talk about as far as fraud i've seen this didn't happen to me it happened to another uh jack boss coach and we talked about it and uh essentially just a fake check. Like a fake earnest money check that you run into that. Fake in that, like the account numbers are fake or something, or there is no account number. I guess the short answer is no, I've not, but explain how it was fake. So back in the day, I would use Craigslist, right? And so it's, it's like a expanded on this Craigslist game where they would be like, Oh, I love what you're selling. I'm going to have my representative come over there for the inconvenience. I am going to go ahead and give you an extra $200 or whatever it is. You will have a cashier's check ready. And so like they give you this fake cashier's check and then they take the product and then you find out that the cashier's check is bogus, right? Well, this was for a property that was like a $3 million property in Idaho. Okay. And so this was their earnest money and it was like $350,000, you know, earnest money check. She showed me the check. It looked 100% legit. And so I guess the way the scheme goes is that they send in this earnest money chat. They start doing their due diligence, right? And then they say, no, it doesn't fit. Send me my money back. And they're hoping to hit it right in the sweet spot of where it looks like it's showing up in their bank account. And then they wire the money out. The buyer sends this check and then the seller receives it. The seller tries to deposit it. It's the title company. This was sent to the title company. Okay. So the title company deposits it? Deposits the earnest money check. But there's no real money there, right? So nothing happens? There's no real money. So I think that there's a portion where it artificially shows that it's cleared their bank. How would that happen? If the money isn't there, how would it? Yeah. It seems like it would work in the Craigslist scenario, right? The product's gone. You know what I mean? Yeah. Fake check, product gone. This is like, here's a fake check, but I want my money back because the due diligence didn't check out. And they try to do that within a two to four day time horizon where that check is clearing. And so when they want their money back, they want the title company to just take money from their account and send it back. Exactly. Okay. Yeah. And it was weird. I mean, cause like we were scratching our heads for like two days. We're like, is this a legit buyer? And it was a hard buyer, you know, but they had a U S based cashier's check from a major bank. We looked so like anything you would, you would expect a cashier's checks. But that happens. You know, you can search it on Google, like, you know, real estate transactions with cashiers. That's why most of the title companies now are not taking cashier's checks. They're like, you want it wired. With all these like you know red flags like hey call and confirm nothing ever happened there they caught it before they send it out i think that's more of a like you know a numbers game they call it i'll send out you know 50 fake cashiers check maybe one of them i get you know and they go for these higher dollar deals but um that came off a loop net okay so like mysterious like leads that you get off of online buyers too i think might you might want to like scrutinize a little bit I know we all want to sell a piece of property, but like, I think we need to like maybe scrutinize that buyer a little bit too. It's something to look to raise that flag on, you know, especially foreign buyers saying they're going to send in a cashier's check. Red flag. Did you say something about when the buyer is foreign at all? Is there like a problem that can come up with that or is it, that's not really a problem. It's just when there's wire fraud or cashier's check fraud. I think that specifically more with like impersonating the seller. I think that's when it raises the red flag for us. You know, it's like Mike Scaramucci is my seller, you know, and it sounds like somebody from the Bronx. You know what I mean? With a real deep, heavy accent. And they don't know anything about the property. Like that is a huge red flag. Like, no, this is totally a problem. I wouldn't say that just because somebody has a foreign last name that you have to like redline them or something like that. But I think that like you may want to look in and dig a little bit deeper. Florida is like a weird case. You pull data in Florida. Like you look at the last names there, like there's a lot of like foreign owners in the state of Florida. So I think that's one, another one of the reasons why like, like fraud in Florida is like one of the highest, why you need to get a witness. You know what I mean? How annoying is that? Is there ever title fraud issues when you are selling property? It sounds like the title fraud happens when you're buying a wire fraud happens, or maybe it's the cashier's check fraud happens when you're selling, right? Does it ever cross over where it's like title fraud happens when you're selling? Maybe that's just not how it works. Title fraud happens when you're buying. Yeah. I mean, you would never have somebody like, I'm just thinking through it. It doesn't seem like you'd ever have that on the sell side, the title fraud part. I had one deal where on the sell side, you know, somebody had filed a memorandum of contract on me. They had a six-month contract. I actually bought it in 30 days. So the seller had talked to multiple people. And that seller ended up, I talked to the title attorney. I filed title insurance. And the guy was like, well, let me see if this guy sues people. And this particular land investor had four open lawsuits against sellers in Harris County alone. I thought that was kind of a little shady. You know what I mean? I'm wondering, because I know some land funders, and I've even gotten into land funding myself, and sending wires is a very normal thing. This is how you fund land deals. But every time you send a wire to anyone, there is some risk there. Like, what if you're sending it to the wrong person? I wonder, to verify a wire recipient, even if a title company isn't involved, I guess maybe one option would be to make sure if you're funding a land deal, wire directly to the title company and then call the title company, make sure they're real. But even on the title company thing, it's like people can make fake title companies. So how do you like break through that and make sure you're talking to a real one there? It amazes me that there isn't some type of like wire insurance. What if you paid like, well, you read the stuff from the bank when you hit that send button, you know, it's like you're verifying that this is all correct and we may not be able to get this wire back. What if there was like a two to five dollar charge per wire to insure it? Maybe the losses on something like that would be too high for it to be viable. I don't know, but I've always thought like, that seems like it would be a great business idea is like provide wire insurance. Yeah, that's a good point. I can see what you mean. Even if it was like, I don't know, 3% of whatever you're wiring is some high amount. But like, hey, I just want to be really sure. Like, it seems like a valid idea to me. Would you hit that and you click that button and you, are you 100%? You've got all those numbers, right? You know what I mean? Like, you know, you think about people, you know, that may be getting up in age, having to send wires and stuff like that. I don't know. That's fascinating. Not in a good way. But it's good to know about this stuff, though. I mean, is one of the key lessons just like always use a title company, period? If something horrible happens, they would kind of be the buffer of protection for you. Yeah. And so I had this one deal in Lehigh Acres, Florida. And I'm like buying it for $1,800. This was like the beginning of 2019. So that was a great deal, right? And I'm like, I'm not going to spend another $1,000 to get, you know, I'm just going to close it myself. So when I went to go actually sell it, sell it with a title company, they're like, you missed this, this, and this. You know what I mean? So I had to go back to that previous seller and, hey, then I'll keep you like 500 bucks. I'll be like, clear this up. Sold it for 30, which was great five, six years later. But it told me that I would much rather that title insurance and have somebody else, an attorney, look at this, have eyes on it, make sure it's all done, then self-close anything. That's... I'm not ever self-closing anything again. Do you think there is ever a situation when self-closing may have a sense, even if it's like, you're going to buy it for 50 bucks and sell it for 500 bucks? Is the answer, you shouldn't be doing those deals? See, there's people that sell those with $100 down and $100 a month for the next five years and they make money on it. That's the whole business model in this industry. So I don't want to say no, because I'm sure that they'd end up running into problems. But if the property value is that low, then like what, how much do you really lose? So I think that there is a spot for it, but like, I don't want to do it and I don't want to target those deals either. You know what I mean? I feel like that's a lot of like getting on notaries and pushing paper for, for very small amount, but there's people that do that in volume and have VAs that do all that work and are able to like make monthly cashflow off of it. So I'm not going to say no, but it's not for me. Any other final thoughts on this whole cashews check wire title fraud issue? Sounds like we've covered it pretty well, but anything you want to leave our listeners with? Yeah, just be wary. You know, I think, you know, if you are doing any type of PPC or SEO, like you need to have your antennas up. I think mail is still relatively safe. But, you know, I think you should be wary. And especially the number one thing to take away from this whole podcast is 100% to verify your wiring instructions. Make sure you're talking to somebody at that company because I think that's that is the biggest risk for all land investors at this point on that whole ppc seo thing is there anything worth exploring on that like when did you start doing that and how much better or worse is that from direct mail like are you focusing totally on that and no more direct mail though no I think with uh ai right now like there's people leveraging ai to get their search rankings up much higher than we have in the past. So our results are going down right now and there's more people entering the market and the cost per clicks are going up. And so we're moving back more towards mail right now. And when I started in 2019, I ran the whole program myself and I was completely killing it. Like it was really easy, very motivated people. There weren't a lot. COVID hit, house slippers who are used to PPC got into the land space and they got in the land space online. And they were able to get better results than what I would say it would get. When we say PPC, are we talking like Google specifically? Is there other platforms like Facebook? Yeah, I was. So initially, the first year I did, it was $7 a click. Okay. And it took me about 10 clicks to get a response. And then it would take 10 of those responses to get a deal. It was real easy. Now it's like 30 to get a response or someone to give you their number. And then it's like of those people, it's like I need 50 of those to put a deal together. So it's just gotten a lot more expensive is for what I've seen. And I've hired experts to run the campaign without better results. The internet's definitely changing right now. And I don't know how fast it'll change or where it's taking us. But like it is not going to stay the same that it has been for the past 20 years. With all these alternatives to Google now that are frankly better in some ways, depending on how you look at it. It'll just be interesting to see where people start going to do their searching now. Are we just going to use AI driven stuff or are we going to use Google, which is more of a like algorithm slash like, hey, I want someone to pay to click on this right now. I don't know. But I think for SEO specifically, people are getting their rankings up. They're using AI. They're creating great content. And I have not been able to keep up, you know. Yeah, I know on the RE tips you said, it's been really interesting. Traffic has gone way down from what it used to be. But the traffic that's gone down has been stuff that things like ChatGPT can give people a much more direct answer. Like if you want just like a list of stuff, like ChatGPT can totally do that. But the stuff that's still doing really well is stuff that, like, for example, we've made these blog posts where we talk about the different roof types and door types and window types. And it gives infographic images of each one. those still do really well because they give you something that's harder to get from ChatGPT. People want a visual understanding of what this thing is. So I don't know. It's weird. I think video and, you know, if you're, if you're able to walk people down to video and teach them something that they really want to learn and that improves, you know, obviously your search performance as well. But I think people are still seeking that out. Like you can't go to chat to PT and be like, you know, it'll give you like an answer, but it won't, it won't give you a video of exactly how this went down. I like, like your video of how you put together a, a video series of a storage facility. Yeah, totally. Yeah, there's something video can do that it's kind of hard to replicate that. But that's it. I think number one thing. Verify those wire instructions. But if you're online in any way, shape, or form, be wary of those sellers. Yeah, no, it's a great lesson. Appreciate you sharing your somewhat painful experiences with us. And hopefully through this, nobody else will have to go through that. Yeah, it's funny now. It's funny now. It was not funny then. Yeah. Cool, man. Thanks, Russ. If people want to find out more about you or connect with you, Is there a way they can or should do that? Yeah, I'm Harmony Land Holdings. You know, I do have a Facebook page. We are, I'm a coach with the Jack Bosch crew. And yeah, info at Harmony Land Holdings if you want to shoot me an email. Awesome. Sounds good. People want to check out links to this stuff. You're welcome to do that. You can go to retipster.com forward slash 213. That's where you can find the show notes for this. And Russell, again, thanks. Wish y'all the best. Seth, I appreciate you, man. Have a good one. Thank you.