My parents have their Hermosa Beach home on the market and recently had an interesting offer come their way. Understandably in this current market people are finding creative ways to buy and sell real estate, but this "creative" offer struck me as an old fangled way around fraud.
The buyers were titled as an LLC and submitted an offer site unseen - red flag number one. The offer was for almost a million over asking - red flag number two. At this point, I realized this was Fraud 101. To overpay for a product and expect a kickback is the oldest trick in the book, what were they thinking? At the close of escrow they wanted the overpaid amount paid back to them, less a little that my parents could keep as a "thank you". Seriously? How has this offer made it this far? Who is this agent who is allowing this to proceed? According to said agent, they have transacted in this manner 9 times and 6 have closed. Well, that could be a lie. Luckily my parents are surrounded by competent real estate practitioners in many areas of a transaction. Aside from their agent, they also have best friends who own their own escrow company, my step mom works in a law firm, and one of my dad's closest friends is a real estate attorney. This "offer", as well as the offerers were gone over with a fine tooth comb. The findings concluded that they were unable to provide proof of prior transactions, and the escrow company they wanted to use went by 6 different business names. The clincher - when asked to provide proof of funds they declined stating "privacy laws" allowed them the keep their funding sources private. I'm laughing at this point, thanking gawd my parents weren't victims.
It's scary to think how many people HAVE been victims of this sort of thing, and wonder if it's going to be a more prominent thing in our industry. It's hard to believe anyone falls for this, but they must or else these people wouldn't think they could get away with it. Watch out, if an offer sounds too good to be true, it IS. 
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Notify the authorities!! This is fraud! Think of the poor couple that buys a home in a neighborhood using seller kick-back transaction values as a basis for their offer. The agent that even suggested that HUD rules be violated should be shot.