June 3, 2025, updated June 4, 2025, Rick Green, Keene Sentinel Staff
Imagine returning from vacation and discovering that an impostor has sold or rented out your home and fraudulent documents filed with the county now indicate you no longer own it.
Called quit claim deed fraud, or home title fraud, this is a scam that is being perpetrated on property owners throughout New Hampshire, and elsewhere, according to the N.H. Attorney General’s Office.
NH Attorney General’s Office says “Take Precautions”
Assistant N.H. Attorney General Nancy A. DeAngelis says residents should take precautions to avoid falling victim to fraudsters who forge documents and transfer real estate into their name.
The scammer, or “title pirate,” would then seek to make money by getting a mortgage on the property or selling or renting it. The true owner would have to go to court to untangle the mess.
“What is scary about these transactions is that they are clandestine from the perspective of the actual property owner, who has no idea that any of this is happening,” DeAngelis said in an interview Tuesday. “Whatever we can do for people to try to develop their awareness of this, we want to do.”
The scam is carried out by someone forging a fraudulent quit claim deed, a document that purports to transfer ownership of a property to a new person. They will then try to record that document with the register of deeds in the county where the real estate is located.
A gathering of friends leads to discovery
DeAngelis cited one case in New Hampshire in which a real estate agent was at a gathering with friends of a property owner and mentioned that she was listing the property for sale. Through further discussion, it became clear that the supposed seller was an impostor.
“Someone caught on to the fact that the property had been marketed for sale and the real property owner did not know about it,” she said. “Sometimes New Hampshire, gratefully, is a small state that way and the right people were in the same room at the right time and luckily they were able to prevent it from being listed and sold.”
DeAngelis recommends that property owners subscribe to a free service offered by county registers of deeds that will notify people every time a document is recorded under their name.
Anna Z. Tilton, Cheshire County’s register of deeds, said people should be aware that there is no need to sign up with a private company to provide this notification at a charge because it is offered by her office at no cost.
“Also, if you’re buying a house, you want to maybe look up the deed and see who owns it and make sure the person who actually owns it is the person that is selling it, and I think some of that onus might fall on real estate agents,” she said.
“Right now in the age of the Internet, people are contacting real estate agents electronically and the real estate agent may never actually interact with a real person.”
The N.H. Attorney General’s Office said in a Sunday news release that such fraud can affect anybody, but that criminals “tend to target vacant lots, property without liens, and property owned by people living out of state.
“Scammers use fake identification and take advantage of remote closings, where parties to a real estate transaction never physically meet in person.”
Not Just in New Hampshire
The Boston Division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation issued a news release on April 1 saying that nationwide, from 2019 through 2023, 58,141 victims reported $1.3 billion in losses relating to real estate fraud.
In that same period, 239 people in New Hampshire lost $4,144,467 as the result of this fraud, along with 1,567 people in Massachusetts losing $46,269,818, 224 in Rhode Island for $4,852,220 and 262 in Maine for $6,253,008, according to the FBI.
“Folks across the region are having their roots literally pulled out from under them and are being left with no place to call home,” Jodi Cohen, special agent in charge of the FBI Boston Division, said in the release.
The FBI also said that often these scams go undetected until after money has been wired to a scammer in the fraudulent sale and the sale has been recorded. Like many Internet scams, it is hard to find the perpetrator, who may be in another country.
In addition to signing up for alerts for property transactions, the N.H. Attorney General’s Office recommends that people:
Set up a Google Alert for your property address, so you can see when someone posts something on the internet about your property
Regularly monitor real estate marketplace websites like Zillow, Redfin, and Realtor.com to see if your property is listed for sale.
Search for your property address on social medal platforms such as Facebook to see if there are any posts about the property.
Periodically visit your property or ask trusted neighbors to report any unusual activity on or around your property.
Contact your title insurance professional to discuss whether insurance is available to cover losses associated with deed fraud.
Contact:https://stayconnectednh.org/resources/
Brandon H. Garod, Senior Assistant Attorney General
(603) 271-1217 | Brandon.H.Garod@doj.nh.gov
Nancy A. DeAngelis, Assistant Attorney General
(603) 271-1300 | Nancy.A.DeAngelis@doj.nh.gov
Rick Green can be reached at 603-352-1234, extension 1435, or rgreen@keenesentinel.com.
