According to industry estimates, losses from mortgage fraud in Canada range into the hundreds of millions of dollars annually.  Here's one of the SHAMS that are being pulled on registered title owners by organized crime.  The perpetrators gain access the Land Titles Registry and look for properties with large amounts of equity, properties that have little or no mortgage on them.  Then by either transfer the Title into their alias for very little money or pose as the owners of the home with professionally counterfeited credentials they simply apply for a mortgage against that home, possibly your home and now it will cost you thousands to get your property cleared of that mortgage and possibly thousands in Lawyers fees to get out of repaying the mortgage.

 Here's another SHAM pulled on May 3, 2001, Seyed Aboulgasm Rabi and Shohreh Shafiei bought a condo in Toronto. In May of 2004, identity thieves - posing as the owners of the condo - gathered enough fake documents suggesting they had sold the property for $270,000, and took them to a lawyer. The "fake" buyer then secured a mortgage of almost a quarter of a million dollars. Rabi and Shafiei had no idea their home had been sold and the title transferred to someone else.

 In Alberta Canada, Title Insurance is not mandatory; this may not be the case in your part of the country or world.  If you don't have Title Insurance on your home, you would be best advised to sign up for Title Insurance.  This may mean the difference between peace of mind and financial ruin.

 Consider Title Insurance like Fire Insurance, we never expect to have a Fire but we would be foolish not to have Fire Insurance just in case.  Well We wouldn't expect to have someone commit Mortgage Crimes on our property but we'd be foolish not to protect ourselves against this sham, WOW!