the dark side of ai
Scammers Are Stealing Homes From Under Their Owners' Noses. AI Is Making It Scarily Easy
Scammers have seized properties from Elvis Presley's Graceland to modestly priced vacant lots. AI tools can help fake deeds or ownership documents.
·
3.5k reads
·
The Lede
Emboldened by AI technology and immense amounts of public information, some scammers have become bolder in their deed theft — also called title theft — attempts, real-estate fraud experts said. Their targets can range from mansion dwellers to owners of more modest homes and parcels of land.
Key Details
- The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center doesn't specifically track deed fraud. However, in 2023, it processed a total of 9,521 real-estate-related complaints.
- "Maybe this brings awareness, and people start to realize that if it can happen to them, it can happen to anybody," Tyler Adams, the CEO of wire-fraud-protection company CertifID, told BI.
- Scammers increasingly rely on AI to pull off their cons, whether the medium is the phone, phishing by email, or a title transfer with a local record keeper.
