In recent years, another area of fraud that has hit Wisconsin is the unauthorized transfer of real property. Fraud occurs when documents are filed with the applicable Register of Deeds Office by unauthorized persons without the real property owner knowing of the property transfer. Once a property has been illegally transferred into an unauthorized name, the bad actors often then sell the property all while the true property owner has no knowledge of the transfer.
Many Register of Deeds Offices throughout Wisconsin have recently made available a free monitoring tool where consumers and businesses can monitor whether a filing has been made under their name. The system does not stop a filing from occurring; instead, an alert will be sent if a filing has occurred for the monitored name. Being sent an alert of a filing will help a true property owner remedy a fraudulent filing sooner than if there had been no alert. The monitoring systems are free and easy to sign up for. If offered, monitoring systems may be found on a County’s Register of Deeds Office website.
Some example include:
