You would think NAR would be upset that someone other then themselves are parting you from your money Kelly McGovern .

You do good in this world, Kelly McGovern - thank you for taking the time to do the research and notify the owners. 

Re the NAR - they don't give a 💩 about anything unless it serves them. 

Kelly McGovern neither Realtor.com, Zillow.com nor other sites ever respond. Scammers do tend to use some of those sites to scam Realtor.  Every call I receive, I search the number on Forewarn or Google it to try to make sure it is not a scammer. If someone pretends to be the owner of a property, ask for license number and copy of an electric bill. There was an Agent who took a listing, and the scammer provided a fake ID, the deed did not match his first and last name. The scammer had added a middle initial. We need to be so careful more than ever.

Those property owners certainly appreciate the fact you took steps to let them know they were unknowingly being scammed, Kelly. Well done!

Hello Kelly McGovern you did great job notifying the real owners. Thank you for warning and sharing.

Hi Kelly - thanks for getting this out there for other agents!!!

To stop scammers from accessing agent information you would have also have to stop real potential buyers from seeing agent information.   We've had the same happen in my office via our own website as well as zillow, realtor.com contact forms as well.  We all use forewarn and it has been helpful.  

Thanks for sharing this experience.

Good job.  Those o us in the industry who act proactively help maintain the integrity we need to have towards the public.

I have had 2 scammers from REALTOR.COM recently, and they fit the profile to a tee. I asked pointed questions that they would not answer. One went on to another agent who actually listed the lot. I called the agent to give her a heads-up, and she called me back after she confirmed it was an imposter to thank me for alerting her.   

You can go into the dashboard they have for leads and report them as spam.  I've done that before with lenders and such that have used R.com to solicit business.  From what I've heard other places, R.com will refund any money those "leads" cost you.

Realtor.com, like zillow, likely does not care.  They are all about collecting peoples info to that they can sell leads to real estate agents and false info makes people contact them.

Kelly, way to go & share thank you Kelly McGovern ...who can beat you with her little pinky, you scammers & spammers

Yep scams are up, I've been Facebook hacked 4 times this year, I've had to cancel 2 credit cards due to fraud since December and I've busted "fake" agents asking for  day codes for entry to the properties I'm selling. I don't give out day codes to anyone but my tradesmen and appraisers that have been verified. Everyone else that says they're an out of area agent (which is typically how the scam starts) must register legit credentials on SentriConnect App in order to be coded in, part of our Sentri Lock Box Security. I have no idea whet they'd be planning, given most of my listings are vacant...but it is so crazy how on guard you have to be these days. Always of course, but much, much worse since the pandemic.

I have had a few Realtor.com leads that turned out to be flakes and a wasted of my time.

Thanks for the heads up!  It's so sad that there are so many scams out there these days.

Kelly McGovern hi Kelly.... this has been going on for a while in my area. We continue to be warned about doing our homework if we get a call like that. I suspect you won't be speaking to anyone at Realtor.com any time soon. If you're not buying a service from them, they don't speak with you.

Land scams are happening here too, I hear.  Luckily, never saw any of this.  We have to be so careful anymore with these scams!

I researched and found the real owners, then alerted them to the scam. I pointed them to my blog about Protecting Your Title in MA, which explains how to set up an alert at the registry of deeds for exactly this kind of situation.  

Good girl! Finding the owner and that a. they're not selling and b. they had no idea is a great service . . . educating them on how to protect themselves is gold!

Same thing been happening here in VA. Scammers target absentee owners that live in other states. So much info about the real owners is online, it makes it easy for the scammers to impersonate the real owners. I've tuned 3 in to our local Sheriffs dept. I've tried get the scammers to meet me at the property, but they always have an excuse why they can't meet. At the beginning of their scam, all they can be charged with is identity theft.

Our local association has purchased the app "Forewarn" for the members. This app enables users to check a phone number to see who actually owns it and find out any criminal issues connected with that number. It has been proven to be a very effective tool in determining whether or not the person on the other side of a phone number is trustworthy or not.

I have to be honest—this is pretty upsetting to see happen again. Over the past 3 years, I’ve dealt with four of these exact situations. Each time, something didn’t feel right, so I dug deeper and was able to track down and speak with the actual property owners.

In all four cases, the real owners had no idea their property was being used like this. One situation was especially concerning—the scammer even sent over a fake ID that matched the real owner’s information almost perfectly, except for the photo.

I’ve also contacted the police about this before, and unfortunately, there’s not much they’ve been able to do. What makes this even more concerning is that I personally know of a local deal here in Maryland that actually made it all the way to settlement—fully transferred and funded—before anyone realized what had happened.

There’s definitely a pattern with these too—it’s almost always vacant land with no mortgage attached.

Given all of that, I’m not comfortable moving forward without proper verification directly from the true owner.

Thanks for the heads up and for alerting others. Good to know re being able to protect your title; worth looking into in my state. 

IF it comes with a phone number that does not match the name in Forwarn it is a SCAM.  I search Forwarn first before I even respond to the request for me to call.