SPEAKER: Rotarian Katrina S.
Hatboro Rotary member, Katrina Sullivan, realtor for Compass, shared an important fraud alert program that all Montgomery County residents should sign up for. She also shared a video for members to watch with instructions on how to sign up. This program is Montgomery County's Fraud Alert System, Fraud Sleuth, which allows residents to sign up and be informed of any activity against their property by alerting the property owner shortly after a document matching the criteria completed in their user profile is recorded. This tool is being offered to allow Montgomery County property owners to be involved in combating fraud. Together, constituents and the Montgomery County Recorder of Deeds office are taking a proactive step in fighting fraud.
Fellow Rotarian, Jillian Barton, estate attorney and founder of Barton Law, highlighted this program as part of her recent blog interview with Hatboro's Anne Anastasi, founder of Genesis Abstract. Anne shared that this program is in response to an ongoing and increasingly concerning scam occurring in estates after the death of a loved one. Criminals record forged deeds from the estate of the decedent transferring the property to their own entity and then they either quickly flip the property to a third party, or they borrow money using the property as collateral and walk away with the equity (and of course, they disappear). All of this can happen in a matter of weeks before the family has had time to grieve. Residents and estate executors are being encouraged to sign up for alerts to monitor this criminal activity.
As a realtor, Katrina was particularly concerned to learn of this growing and concerning scam, but this scam should be of concern to all of us. For instructions on how to sign up for Fraud Sleuth, Montgomery County’s free fraud alert system, click here: https://www.montgomerycountypa.gov/2909/Fraud-Protection and watch the video for easy-to-follow instructions.