Yet another Disastrous Consequence of the Digital Revolution
Paul Craig Roberts

The nerds who brought us the digital revolution did so without any thought to the obvious consequences.  Americans addicted to scrolling their cell phones and enjoying social media are suffering from the numerous threats that the digital revolution brings to them.  Not just government spying on them and, if government wishes, setting them up for prosecution.  Not just from being dispossessed of their identity and left with massive bills.  Not just from theft of their bank and retirement accounts. The digital revolution allows thieves to steal our homes. 

Assuming it is not another hoax, the Daily Mail provides the FBI’s account of how it works:   

To protect yourself from the easy theft of your home, you should sign up for a notification alert at the registry of deeds, which will alert you when a document is recorded for your property.  You are most vulnerable if your property is debt free with no mortgage.  If you have no mortgage, take out a small one as your property cannot be transferred from your ownership until the mortgage is paid, if my understanding is correct.  So having to clear a mortgage provides you with a warning that your home is in the process of being stolen.

The digital revolution is the worst thing except for nuclear weapons that humans have ever devised. The Tech morons who gave us this disaster failed to anicipate the disastrous consequences of their work.

Read the report: 

PUBLISHED: 18:27 EDT, 26 April 2025 | UPDATED: 02:04 EDT, 27 April 2025

Urgent FBI warning about cruel scam suffered by thousands that leaves you with just 24 hours to save your home

The FBI is sending an urgent warning to homeowners to be aware of ‘title theft,’ the latest of various moves fraudsters make in order to steal a property owner’s identity and sell their land out from under them. 

The land theft is on the rise, with the FBI saying the scammers tend to prey on the elderly.

‘Our elderly population [are more at risk] because they are more likely to own vacant pieces of land that they have had for quite some time, and they are also more likely to own homes without any mortgages on them,’ FBI Special Agent Vivian Barrios told CBS.

‘Because those have the biggest benefit to the criminal actor.’

In Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Rhode Island, 2,301 victims lost more than $61.5 million from 2019 to 2023.

According to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, nationwide, from 2019 through 2023, 58,141 victims reported $1.3 billion in losses relating to real estate fraud.

In the Boston Division – which includes all of Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island – during the same period, 2,301 victims reported losing more than $61.5 million. In Maine 262 victims lost $6,253,008. In Massachusetts, 1,576 people lost $46,269,818. In New Hampshire 239 people lost $4,144,467. In Rhode Island 224 people lost a combined $4,852,220. 

Time is of the essence and as soon as a victim finds out this has happened, they need to report it, ideally within 24-hours. That makes it easier for the feds to get the money back to the victims.

Plymouth, Massachusetts resident John Grimes got a call from a local attorney about his ‘sale.’

Title pirates got Plymouth, MA, resident John Grimes, who nearly lost his home after he found out it was for sale.

Grimes bought his home six years ago but in September 2024 got a call from local attorney Alan Sharaf informing him his home was for sale. Grimes was shocked.

He filed a fraud report with the FBI. He also signed up for a notification alert at the registry of deeds. That alert is free and will let him know when a document is recorded for his property.

Sharaf said he was looking at a purchase and sale agreement that was supposedly signed by Grimes. He wanted to make sure he was actually selling the home to the ‘buyer,’ who was located in Montreal and had made an all cash over. No one ever answered the phone number listed for the buyer.

Grimes loves his home, which backs onto a cranberry bog, isn’t selling it, and never signed sale papers. 

‘I got a phone call from a lawyer just outside of Boston and he had gotten a request asking him to facilitate a closing with an e-signature. And everything was all set. But it wasn’t my real signature,’ Grimes told the Daily Mail. 

Grimes said if he hadn’t gotten that call, it would have been too late. The lawyer told him that another attorney would have shown up at the registry of deeds, filed a record of a fraudulent deed by Grimes, and he would have had his house taken away. He would have gotten it back but only after months of fighting and tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees. 

‘He advised me to check my credit, contact the FBI, which I did immediately and I had to give them a bunch of detailed information,’ Grimes says. 

‘The bank looks, oh you’ve got a deed, it’s been recorded at the registry as a sale,’ Grimes says.

Once the sale was flagged as fraudulent, the ‘buyers’ disappeared. 

The FBI explained to Grimes how exactly these scammers pull this off. Because most contracts today are done electronically, it’s easy for thieves to do.

First they target a property in the US at random. They send a fake deed they’ve made electronically to a local lawyer they ‘hire’ to ‘close’ on the sale. 

If they’re lucky the lawyer will do business as usual, easily sign off on it, and send them back a purchase and sale agreement. The scammers then claim to the bank that they rushed to pay all cash in competition with other buyers, and now want to take out a loan, which often gets approved because the house is an asset they now ‘own.’ Then they run away with the loan cash, which oftentimes is hundreds of thousands of dollars.

‘You’re the owner. They get a loan and take off with the money. And then I would get a notice that there’s an overdue loan on my property,’ he added. 

The FBI has since sent out a note to realtors and homeowners about the scam, and told elderly people especially to be aware. 

Lisa Vesperman Still, a title underwriter and past president of the New England Land Title Association, said the scammers are so sophisticated with technology it’s become easy to dupe lawyers who are bogged down with work or in a rush.

‘Seller impersonation fraud by title pirates is happening quite a bit now, and unfortunately a landowner doesn’t often know until the deed from the fraudster to the innocent purchaser gets recorded,’ Still told the Daily Mail.

‘The fraudsters also impersonate vacant land owners, owners of empty vacation rentals or second homes that are mortgage free, using fake identification and information combed from public websites, and reach out to unsuspecting real estate agents wanting to sell “their” property.’

She adds they state it all has to be done remotely, that they can’t meet or appear on a video chat – and certainly can’t come to the closing. 

‘Any ID they provide is a very well done forgery, there are often features on the fake ID that are slightly off from an authentic one, but so slightly off that one has to very closely examine every feature. They need their money wired, and want the property sold quickly, almost always at a price well below market value,’ she added.

Seller impersonation fraud and title piracy are just two of the types of real estate fraud included within those statistics.

The National Association of Realtors has offered tips to help real estate agents and homeowners avoid getting caught in this scam.

Avoid remote closings, if possible, they advise. Ask for in-person identity checks. Request copies of documents that only the property owner would have, including a copy of the most recent tax bill, utility bill, or survey from when the property was purchased, in addition to the individual’s ID.

Send a certified letter to the address of record on the tax bill. Look up the phone number by reverse search or through the phone carrier. Call to verify the public notary and confirm he/she attested to the documents.

They also suggest homeowners sign up for a notification alert at the registry of deeds, which will alert someone when a document is recorded for their property.

Hon. Paul Craig Roberts is the John M. Olin Fellow at the Institute for Political Economy, Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and Research Fellow at the Independent Institute. A former editor and columnist for The Wall Street Journal and columnist for Business Week and the Scripps Howard News Service, he is a nationally syndicated columnist for Creators Syndicate in Los Angeles and a columnist for Investor's Business Daily. In 1992 he received the Warren Brookes Award for Excellence in Journalism. In 1993 the Forbes Media Guide ranked him as one of the top seven journalists.

He was Distinguished Fellow at the Cato Institute from 1993 to 1996. From 1982 through 1993, he held the William E. Simon Chair in Political Economy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. During 1981-82 he served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy. President Reagan and Treasury Secretary Regan credited him with a major role in the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981, and he was awarded the Treasury Department's Meritorious Service Award for "his outstanding contributions to the formulation of United States economic policy." From 1975 to 1978, Dr. Roberts served on the congressional staff where he drafted the Kemp-Roth bill and played a leading role in developing bipartisan support for a supply-side economic policy.

In 1987 the French government recognized him as "the artisan of a renewal in economic science and policy after half a century of state interventionism" and inducted him into the Legion of Honor.

Dr. Roberts' latest books are The Tyranny of Good Intentions, co-authored with IPE Fellow Lawrence Stratton, and published by Prima Publishing in May 2000, and Chile: Two Visions - The Allende-Pinochet Era, co-authored with IPE Fellow Karen Araujo, and published in Spanish by Universidad Nacional Andres Bello in Santiago, Chile, in November 2000. The Capitalist Revolution in Latin America, co-authored with IPE Fellow Karen LaFollette Araujo, was published by Oxford University Press in 1997. A Spanish language edition was published by Oxford in 1999. The New Colorline: How Quotas and Privilege Destroy Democracy, co-authored with Lawrence Stratton, was published by Regnery in 1995. A paperback edition was published in 1997. Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy, co-authored with Karen LaFollette, was published by the Cato Institute in 1990. Harvard University Press published his book, The Supply-Side Revolution, in 1984. Widely reviewed and favorably received, the book was praised by Forbes as "a timely masterpiece that will have real impact on economic thinking in the years ahead." Dr. Roberts is the author of Alienation and the Soviet Economy, published in 1971 and republished in 1990. He is the author of Marx's Theory of Exchange, Alienation and Crisis, published in 1973 and republished in 1983. A Spanish language edition was published in 1974.

Dr. Roberts has held numerous academic appointments. He has contributed chapters to numerous books and has published many articles in journals of scholarship, including the Journal of Political Economy, Oxford Economic Papers, Journal of Law and Economics, Studies in Banking and Finance, Journal of Monetary Economics, Public Finance Quarterly, Public Choice, Classica et Mediaevalia, Ethics, Slavic Review, Soviet Studies, Rivista de Political Economica, and Zeitschrift fur Wirtschafspolitik. He has entries in the McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Economics and the New Palgrave Dictionary of Money and Finance. He has contributed to Commentary, The Public Interest, The National Interest, Harper's, the New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Fortune, London Times, The Financial Times, TLS, The Spectator, Il Sole 24 Ore, Le Figaro, Liberation, and the Nihon Keizai Shimbun. He has testified before committees of Congress on 30 occasions.

Dr. Roberts was educated at the Georgia Institute of Technology (B.S.), the University of Virginia (Ph.D.), the University of California at Berkeley and Oxford University where he was a member of Merton College.

He is listed in Who's Who in America, Who's Who in the World, The Dictionary of International Biography, Outstanding People of the Twentieth Century, and 1000 Leaders of World Influence. His latest book, HOW THE ECONOMY WAS LOST, has just been published by CounterPunch/AK Press. He can be reached at: [email protected]

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