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Posted by mecredis 3 days ago

221 Cannon is Not For Sale(fredbenenson.com)
316 points | 271 commentspage 2
ajcp 3 days ago|
> He also provided a fake email for my brother: alexanderedwardenenson@out-look.com. Notice the subtle misspelling — “Benenson” without the second “n” in the email, and the hyphenated “out-look.com” domain.

Surely you meant "'Benenson' without the “b” in the email, and the hyphenated 'out-look.com' domain"?

randallsquared 2 days ago||
This is actually a really weird mistake. It's a completely different spelling mistake than in reality, and I wonder if it's an artifact of polishing the post with AI that "corrected" something that was right (or only a vague bullet point) in the original?

(ETA: Another one: referring to "hi good morning" in the images of texts when it's actually "hi <name> good evening").

ahyangyi 2 days ago|||
It is so bizarre that I start to think this is a non-human mistake.

(No I'm not looking at that em-dash)

charles_f 3 days ago||
I had to re-read the email twice and concluded the same.
marssaxman 3 days ago||
For years now I have been regularly receiving unsolicited offers to buy 560 Bluefields Street SE, an undeveloped lot in Palm Bay, Florida. Whether the land is actually for sale, I have no idea; I've never been anywhere near the place, and cannot imagine why anyone would believe I owned land there. I wish I could somehow redirect the speculators who won't stop pestering me to scammers like the ones in this tale, so they would leave me in peace and all go harass each other instead.

I suspect that the speculators are scammers anyway: they never respond to my questions.

briHass 3 days ago|
Check who used to own your place and who owns that lot now and see if any names line up.

I still receive occasional postcards from real estate mogul wannabes for a property out in Colorado (I'm in PA). The previous owners of our house moved to Colorado after they sold us their house, and I assume their name is linked to our address in some gray-market/online DB. Why they wouldn't just send purchase offers direct to the house in CO instead of what they think is the owner's primary address (ours) I don't know, but I'm sure they fire off thousands of these things and don't really care how many are accurate.

estsauver 2 days ago||
This was extremely common as a scam in Kenya, the solution there was an extraordinarily simple tactic:

Put up a big "This property is not for sale" sign on the land.

DanHulton 2 days ago||
I was wondering why that wasn't mentioned once!

The first realtor to walk the land would have noticed that sign in a hurry, I figure.

Cthulhu_ 2 days ago||
But if the scammer lives nearby, wouldn't they just show up and remove the sign? Or pay someone to remove it.
angry_octet 2 days ago||
The best remedy for this is a Land Title Registry, which is a secure database of who owns a parcel of land, and a mandated verification of identity (VoI) standard. You no longer require title deeds, notaries, or title insurance. It isn't totally proof against sophisticated social engineering and gullibility of course, but it is a lot safer.

For registry titles you can also add caveats, that require sign-off from another party before transactions can occur. Unfortunately the contact address is still purely snail mail, no email or phone numbers. If you title has a bank mortgage that will appear as a caveat, requiring the debt to be discharged before it can be removed, and that also involves more ID verification.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torrens_title

https://www.firstlinks.com.au/why-our-torrens-title-property...

consp 2 days ago||
It's not the same as forgery, and maybe less worse, but it's not a panacea. It would still have issues as there is a lot of legacy stuff out there. We have a registry (based on the Cadastre system) and it's not uncommon for there to be disputes about the land borders which are only resolved by a judge and not simply by looking at the data. Maps are old, stuff gets lost, is poorly digitized, etc.
angry_octet 2 days ago||
It's a long term project but if you enforce that new sales use the registry it already makes fraud much harder.
jacekm 2 days ago||
In Poland all transactions related to housing or land must be notarized with both buyer and seller present, the notary is supposed to check their IDs. Sadly it happened a couple of times that scammers presented a fake or stolen ID to a notary who did not recognize the forgery. Nowadays you can mark your personal number (equivalent of SSN) in the central, governmental database as restricted. This prevents notarized transactions, bank loans or issuing SIM card duplicates in your name. When you need a loan or buy a property you just log in to the system (or open the governmental app) and uncheck the checkbox.
kazinator 1 day ago||
> This type of scam targets a very specific vulnerability: vacant land has no occupants to notice a for-sale sign, no neighbors who’d immediately recognize something is wrong, and closings often happen remotely.

Your vacant land could have signs which state that it is not for sale; any online listing is a scam.

It could be something small but easily spotted by a real estate agent or other interested party actually visiting the site, but not so obvious or legible in pictures.

kevin_thibedeau 3 days ago||
Since you've discovered law enforcement isn't interested in enforcing the law, you need to set up your own sting and get the scammer to show up where you can arrest them after they commit a crime in your presence.
avidiax 3 days ago|
The scammer will show up to a bar in Bucharest. They are probably not even legally allowed in the U.S.

None of this scam requires the scammer to be in the U.S.

Even the New York driver's license, even if it is real, could be muled. More likely it is just a photoshop.

And even if they do show up to the meet, what are you going to do? Call the police? Will they even show up quickly? When they do, whose photo ID will the believe? Seems like a good way to spend a night at the station while the police sort some things out.

tgsovlerkhgsel 3 days ago||
A relatively obvious photoshop, unless the date of issue is printed diagonally on genuine ones.
mzs 2 days ago||
Who was the 222nd commentator?

https://imgur.com/a/i5YQ2c4

jdkfishekc 3 days ago||
There's a pretty interesting Japanese show called Tokyo Swindlers that covers some real estate fraud in Tokyo. Not particularly realistic as far as I know but I enjoyed it.
benatkin 3 days ago||
Needs to be a new HTTP status code to go along with 418. Never mind that it doesn't start with the right number.

Also I'm sure glad that scammer didn't manage to buy that cannon!

silisili 3 days ago|
Sadly, incredibly common. It's a shame we don't have better protections for this by now.

Here's another I remember reading recently. I feel sorry for both parties and not sure how I think that should be adjudicated...

https://www.businessinsider.com/property-fraud-lawsuit-fairf...

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