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June 14, 2025 14 mins
Scammers are always going to try and find a way to steal your hard-earned money, your personal information, your medical details - anything they can get from you. These days, that also includes your home and property, and they're doing it through "quit claim deed scams". It's happening in New Hampshire, so Senior Assistant Attorney General Brandon Garod talks with Nichole this week about how this scam works and share steps you can take to make sure your property isn't stolen from under your nose.
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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:07):
From WBZ News Radio in Boston. This is New England Weekend.
Each and every week we come together right here, we
talk about all the topics important to you and the
place where you live. It's good to be back with
you this weekend. I'm Nicole Davis. Scammers are always going
to try to find a new way to steal your money,
your personal information, I mean, at this point, even your
own property from right under your nose. They're actually doing

(00:31):
that through what's called a quick claim deed scam. These
people have literally found a way to steal your home
or your property through your local town hall or the
state system. And there's actually a really good chance you
might not even know it's happening. It is in New
Hampshire more than it should be. Brandon Garad, the state
Senior Assistant Attorney General, is here to talk about it

(00:51):
and share some steps you can take to make sure
your property is not hijacked up. Brandon, if you could
break down a little bit more for us to start
what exactly a quick claim indeed is.

Speaker 2 (01:02):
Sure when we talk about quick claim deed fraud, what
we mean is scammers who are forging documents in order
to effectuate a what appears to be the legal process
that is required for the transferring of a piece of
real property from one person to another. So, you know,
if you had a legitimate quick claim deed, like if

(01:24):
I want to give my house to somebody, I would
do a quick claim deed, you know, giving my real
property or my home to somebody else. That would then
be recorded with the Register of Deeds and the county
that I live, and then you'd have a legal transfer
the ownership of property by quick claim deed. But the
fraud is happening mostly as a result of the ability

(01:48):
to have real estate transaction closings and recordings remotely that
was instituted, you know, back when COVID nineteen was prevalent
and nobody could do things in person the way that
they used to. Folks are doing such a convincing job
of falsifying these documents that they're being able to actually
record quick claim needs that are forgeries, transferring property from

(02:13):
the true owner of the property to themselves, sometimes without
the owners even knowing.

Speaker 1 (02:18):
Wow, that's kind of scary actually, And I mean, how
are these scammers getting to people? Are they just casting
a wide net and helping somebody bites or that they
won't find out.

Speaker 2 (02:27):
Well, they're not actually contacting the people, so the people
play absolutely no role in it. What we see and
the reports that we're getting is most of the time
the property that's involved is property that is potentially undeveloped
or property where you know, like vacation homes where nobody
is there. Frequently they seem to be identifying these properties

(02:52):
whereby you don't have frequent eyes on them, so you
a neighbor wouldn't be able to say, oh, this people
at your property. It's more remote property sometimes that's undeveloped,
you know, a second home or a piece of property
that you know is going to be developed in the future.
They're identifying these pieces of property and then they're just
falsifying documents forging the figure. They're figuring out who owns it.

(03:18):
They're crafting documents that purport to be a transfer of
ownership from the true owner to the scammers, and then
they're filing them with the Registry of Deeds, which effectuates
a legal transfer of property when you know recorded, and
that once it's recorded, it gives the person all sorts
of ability to you know, rent the property out for

(03:39):
money to take out mortgages on the property. Which is
really the scariest aspect of all this is, you know,
somebody could have a property that's paid for and full
and then without their knowledge, it's completely mortgaged by a
scammer who takes the money and runs and the property
owner is stuck to pay those mortgages back.

Speaker 1 (03:56):
And you talk about a lot of undeveloped properties and
vacation homes, I mean New Hampshire full of both of those.
I think of coost County. You know, if you've got
like a little home up there in you know, the
north Woods or something like that, and you only go
for a couple months in the summertime, then you're off
to wherever you're not thinking about it. So New Hampshire
is rife with opportunity for these scammers.

Speaker 2 (04:16):
I think that's right. And I think the most you know,
this is not a New Hampshire only problem. I think
that this is a problem in many states, and that
all states you know probably have you know, different groups
of property or types of property that's just the susceptible
as the properties you just identified here in New Hampshire.

Speaker 1 (04:33):
That's true. So how do people generally find out that
they've become victims of this scam.

Speaker 2 (04:39):
Ways that people could find out is, you know, all
of a sudden they have a mortgage on their home,
or you have a house that people are living in
that they didn't authorize to live there. You know, there's
a wide variety of ways. You know, I think most
of it has to do with mortgages. That seems to
be like the most lucrative way for scammers to make
money off these types of scams. You know, you get

(05:00):
a notification of a MORTGAGEE didn't take out, obviously, that's
going to be a warning sign to you.

Speaker 1 (05:05):
And that's going to be downright terrifying because I mean,
it's not like we're in a time right now where
people have a lot of extra money, and that would
just devastate so many people.

Speaker 2 (05:14):
That's right.

Speaker 1 (05:15):
People generally are not going to be going down to
town hall every week to make sure that you know,
their property hasn't been stolen. But what do you suggest
they do to make sure they stay on top of this.

Speaker 2 (05:26):
It's a really good question, and you know, this is
something that we're just starting to learn about. So you know,
our our advice here, you know, this is our best
advice you have to be if you have property, you
can't just check out, you know, if you have you know,
the ability to you know, if you have property that

(05:48):
you don't visit regularly, just you know, check in with
neighbors frequently. Is there any you know, you could say
to a neighbor, if there are people that appear to
be looking at my property, you appear to be visiting
or looking, or cars that are frequently you know, let
me know. You know, things like that just be creating
more of an awareness so that if a neighbor saw
something like, oh, I know, these people aren't here there,

(06:09):
you know, in Florida for the winter, or they don't
get here until the summer, and all of a sudden
there's unexpected cars there that don't belong, that the neighbors
would know enough to say, hey, you know, there's seemed
to be people here looking at your property. You know.
That's one thing that you can do. Another thing is
to just frequently you know, because one of the ways

(06:31):
that people make money off this is to rent property.
You can just google your address and see does it
pop up anywhere on the Internet that you wouldn't expect
it to, like a rental site or things like that.

Speaker 1 (06:44):
Yeah, because there's a few out there right now, and
you've got the big ones like Zillow and Redfin, but
you can even just go on to find out anything
that's posted about your home too, if you put up
what is it, a Google alert, I think it's pretty
simple to do.

Speaker 2 (06:57):
So that's another thing that you can do. I mean,
that's definitely best practices is just setting up a Google
alert that will let you know and people are searching
for your properties. If all of a sudden you have,
you know a number of people that are searching for
it that is more than you'd expect, then you know,
probably the best thing to do is to call the
Registry of Deeds and let them know that, just so
that they're on alert and can flag that property is

(07:19):
one that you know potentially they need to keep a
closer eye on. Another thing that you can do, at
least you're in New Hampshire is each Registry of Deeds
does allow you to put an alert on your properties
so that if anybody tries to file anything using your address,
it'll give you an automatic alert. Sometimes that's effective. Sometimes

(07:42):
we've received reports that that has not been effective. So
I think the thing that people can't do is just
take that one step and then check out. It seems
that that is not enough of a security measure that's
going to prevent this from happening. So it's a good
thing to do. You can't depend on it, but a
combination of that setting a Google alert, visiting your property

(08:04):
when you as often as you can, but if you can't,
routinely put eyes on your property, talking to your neighbors
or whoever lives the closest to that property to just
let them know, Hey, if you see anything, please let
me know. I'm not trying to sell this property. I'm
not trying to rent this property. There'd be no reason
for people to be there looking at my property, and
if they are, I want to know about it. That

(08:25):
really easy conversation, I think can make a meaningful difference
if somebody's trying to pull something.

Speaker 1 (08:30):
And I'm sure it would raise eyebrows too. If say
you have a vacation home and it's usually pretty busy,
and you get the water bill right or you get
the gas bill or whatever, and then all of a sudden,
for a couple of months you just don't get charged,
I'm sure that would be a big tip off as well.

Speaker 2 (08:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (08:44):
Absolutely, if God forbid, somebody has this happened to them
and their property gets stolen and they're just finding out
what do they do next.

Speaker 2 (08:54):
You know, I can't give advice there because every situation
is going to be different ending on exactly what happened.
You know. I think first you have to get an
understanding of exactly what has happened, and I think the
best place to do that is by visiting the Registry
of Deeds. You can get a sense of what, if
anything was recorded or was attempted to be recorded on

(09:17):
your property and depending on how successful it was and
exactly what it did. Many people are needing to seek
legal recourse through the use of hiring an attorney and
using the court system to try to we call it
quieting title to their property. It's another legal ease term
for you know, getting a court to weigh in on

(09:37):
who the true owner of the property actually is.

Speaker 1 (09:39):
And what can your office do to help people with
this scam as it's becoming more and more of an
issue in New Hampshire and beyond.

Speaker 2 (09:47):
So I think that having conversations like this is the
most important thing that we can do to help people,
you know, this, like most scams, we believe, is perpetrated
by folks that aren't here. So, you know, if people
aren't here either, usually when I say here, I mean
in this country. You know, it's a very limited ability
for our AG's office or any state AG's office to

(10:09):
meaningfully investigate or prosecute those folks for doing the things
that they did. But, like with most scams, the most
effective thing that we can do as state attorneys general
is generate awareness and put folks in a position to a,
you know, recognize that this scam exists and be aware
to hopefully recognize, you know, if it's happening to them

(10:31):
and their property, to be able to recognize it as
soon as possible, and to be to take all the
necessary steps that we already talked about, setting Google alerts,
setting property alerts, talking to friends and family, regularly looking
through Zilo reds and those sorts of sites. Really putting
people in the best position to understand what scams are
out there and where they're most vulnerable, so that they

(10:53):
can take the necessary steps to hopefully prevent themselves from
ever being victimized.

Speaker 1 (10:57):
And these are important conversations for us to have because
people who are most vulnerable might not have known about this.
People who maybe are seniors, are people who are in
treatment for some reason and don't have eyes on their property.
That often this is something their family and their friends
need to know about too.

Speaker 2 (11:14):
Absolutely, you know, senior citizens are some of our most
vulnerable citizens and most susceptible to most types of scams.
This one's no exception. So you know, I think it's
incumbent on in those situations where you do have senior
citizens who may not have the physical ability to go
visit their property. They may be completely dependent on some

(11:35):
of their family member to have these conversations and take
some of these steps that we've talked about. You know,
obviously there's all sorts of different folks out there with
different capabilities, so it depends, but those will tend to
be the most vulnerable. So always, you know, if to
the extent you have elderly friends or relatives, best to
be having these conversations with them and just making sure

(11:56):
that they're aware of these types of things. That's why
we put the press release out us for you know,
senior citizens, but for everybody. But always makes sense to
give you closer attention than scrutiny to the more vulnerable
sections of our population.

Speaker 1 (12:09):
Oh yeah, I mean scammers are going to scam. I
say that all the time. They're always finding new weird
ways to try and take our money away from us,
and your Consumer Protection Bureau I'm sure is incredibly busy indeed. Yeah. Well,
if people want to find out more about the work
you're doing over at the Consumer Protection Bureau, namely, you've
got a protection hotline, or if they have any questions,
how can they get a hold of your office.

Speaker 2 (12:29):
To anybody that you believes that they've been a victim
of a scam is encouraged to report it to our office,
and they can do it in really two different ways.
We have a consumer complaint portal on our website that
allows people to submit formal written consumer complaints. This can
be really useful when you've been scammed by a business

(12:52):
or a person who is here who we can actually
contact and investigate. But for these types of scams, you know,
filing an actual formal complaint oftentimes, you know, it's good
information for us to have, but it's not going to
be the most efficient way for people to get the
information that they need to get. So we do have

(13:13):
a consumer protection hotline, and if folks have questions about
this or other scams and how to best protect themselves,
strongly encourage them to call our consumer protection hotlines, open
five days a week. It's manned by volunteers who are
happy to assist folks with any questions consumer protection related
questions in New Hampshire they may have. The number is

(13:35):
one eight eight eight four six eight four four five.

Speaker 1 (13:39):
Four Brandon, great information. Thank you so much for all
you and the Attorney General's Offices doing to get on
top of this and hopefully make sure that people are
protected as we deal with these new rounds of scams,
because there's always something, so thank you for that here.

Speaker 2 (13:53):
Very welcome. Thank you for covering this. It's an important
topic and we're greatly appreciative to you and other partners
in the media who you see these releases and recognize
how important it is to run these stories and get
the word out. So much appreciated.

Speaker 1 (14:06):
All right, have a safe and healthy weekend. Please join
me again next week for another edition of the show.
I'm Nicole Davis from WBZ News Radio on iHeartRadio.
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