The Howie Carr Radio Network
Meet the Experts: Arthur Pfizenmayer of Home Title Lock
Howie Carr wants every aspect of your life to be as secure as possible, especially in the digital and hackable age. Join Howie as he sits down to talk with the Senior Advisor of Home Title Lock, Arthur Pfizenmayer, who explains the importance of protecting the ownership of your home 24/7. Learn exactly what home theft is and how you can prevent it with Home Title Lock.
- Duration:
- 24m
- Broadcast on:
- 04 Jul 2024
- Audio Format:
- mp3
[MUSIC PLAYING] Welcome to another episode of Meet the Experts with Howie Car, a podcast featuring long-form interviews with guests who have a specialized field of expertise. Most of us think of home security in terms of locks, surveillance, self-defense. But what about your ownership of the actual property? The title to your home, whether you own it outright or are still making mortgage payments, is publicly available to anyone. Former FBI agent Arthur Fitzenmeyer now spends his time as a senior advisor with home title lock, joining the company's mission to prevent the 21st century crime of home title theft. Join Art as he discusses with Howie how this scheme is carried out by cyber thieves and what you can do to ensure you're protected should you be their next victim. Here's your host of Meet the Experts, Howie Car. [MUSIC PLAYING] Welcome to this week's episode of Meet the Experts. And we have a very interesting guest this week. And if you are a homeowner, if you own any kind of property, you're going to want to listen very closely to this, because we're going to be discussing what's become a major problem nationwide. And that is deed fraud. And our guest here today is Art Fitzenmeyer. And he is a retired FBI agent. And he is the senior advisor to home title lock. And that is a company that tries to make sure that your deed is not fraudulently conveyed to someone else. But I'll let Art Fitzenmeyer explain to you exactly what this crime is all about. And I'll leave you with one word before we go to art, and that's Graceland. You've probably read about what happened with Elvis Presley's mansion down in Memphis, how it was almost stolen by people who lifted the deed to Graceland. Almost got away with it. Before we get into Graceland, I'll let Art Fitzenmeyer explain what this problem is all about, what this new type of crime involves, and how you can guard your assets against it. Art, thanks for being with us here today on Meet the Experts. Well, thank you for having me. Certainly a pleasure. And I love the opportunity, Howard, to be able to tell anyone who will listen the vulnerability to their personal assets, the title for their home represents. It's a totally unprotected document on file at your county recorder's office. So anybody who wants to, either online or in person, can go get a copy of it. And that gives them a document that they can then forge. They will forge your name on a document and file a new title at your county recorder's office, reflecting the fact that you sold it, and they are now the new owner. Title represents who is the owner of record. So they then will be able to use that document, showing them as the owner of your property, whether it's your home or some other property that you may have, and use the equity in your home or property to secure loans. Lots of times they'll get multiple loans worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, depending on equity, and quite frankly, right now everybody just about who owns property has huge amount of equity in their property. And it's an issue that mefuddles people, because quite frankly, number one is there is no national federal law called title fraud in defining it as a crime, doesn't exist. - But it's wire fraud, isn't it art? I mean, the FBI is dealing with wire fraud and mail fraud on a daily basis, isn't it? - Oh yeah, well that's part of the problem. People don't understand that there are hundreds and hundreds of cases, I mean this happens all the time. But the problem is that you can't Google title fraud statistics because there is no title fraud law. People who get caught doing this are charged to wire fraud, mail fraud, bank fraud, larceny, forgery, those kinds of things, and that's where the statistics lie. So you may be sitting at home, you know, fed them unhappy thinking, geez, I got a wonderful house and I got a great life. And when I started getting to the end of the road and I want to use the equity here for moving to retirement community or assisted living, you may find out that it's not yours and you can't monetize something that you don't own. The real answer here is finding out that someone has tinkered with your title before the first loan has been paid. If you have home title lock, we have a very powerful software suite that monitors your title 24/7 and the software will notify you if your title is tinkered with, corrupted in any way, shape, or form, and then the software instructs you to call us right away. - All right, before we go any further into what home title lock can provide, I know a lot of people are going to be sitting at home listening to this or wherever they're listening and saying, well, you know, this is ridiculous. They might try to get the title, but they'll never be able to sell the house 'cause they'll lovely real estate agents and they'll be a sign out in front of my yard. I can't do that. Why don't you explain to them that most of this title fraud doesn't involve actually selling the house but getting loans? Tell us how the thieves use it when they've transferred the title fraudulently to themselves. How do they use it? - So when the thief has filed a false title, your kind of records office pretty much everywhere. It's recorded by law to file that document if it's all filled out, no blanks. They have to file it. Are they getting trouble quite frankly? So the thief then knows that on the record that he or his false identity are the owners of record for that property. Now they can get drive by appraisals and they can get hard money lenders or look at it. And, you know, let's say you have a house that you have a $400,000 mortgage on and it's now worth $900,000, which is not a stretch anymore these days. That hard money lender will look at that and then somebody's gonna try and take out a $200,000 loan using your equity. And they'll look at that and say, the house is worth $900 to a million bucks. I'm gonna give out $200,000 at 10% or whatever. And they'll say, no matter what happens, I'm gonna be able to afford calls and at least you might do $100,000 back. It's a no-brainer to loan 200 grand if you have 500,000 in equity. So it's gonna be easy for the thief to get a loan on your property. And then tell us what happens next. The money's gone, the thief is gone and in about 90 to 120 days, that lender's gonna wonder why they haven't received mortgage payments on that. I'm sorry, I'm sorry to laugh, but it's, yeah, I mean, this is just horrible. What happens? Go ahead. - It's a nightmare. It's a legal, emotional, and financial nightmare that'll take you years to straighten out. But at the end of 90 or 120 days, somebody's gonna knock on your door and say, look, you haven't paid this loan. If you don't pay it, we're gonna take you to court, get an order to foreclose on your home and sell it so we can get our $200,000 back. And you're gonna go to a police and say, you know, I've been defrauded. The police will say, look, this looks like a dispute between you and your bank, you better get an attorney. And then the nightmare begins because you're gonna be off to the courthouse with a real estate attorney and in case it'll probably take two years, at least have a judge hear it. So it's gonna cost you 30, 40, 50, I've heard $50,000 to litigate this, to have a judge tell you that the house you own can go back in your own name. In the meantime, it's cost you $50,000 or the judge may not believe you and I've heard this happening on one or two occasions and he lets the lender sell your house in order to recover their $200,000 loan. I mean, it's very complex and what you need to do is stop this before that first loan goes out the door. - And now the next thing people are gonna say is, well, this doesn't happen very often. Well, the fact is, if you read the newspapers or go on the internet, it happens a lot more and it's happening more and more all the time. So let's talk about Graceland as the most obvious example. Tell us what happened with the Elvis Presley's estate in Memphis. - When that occurred, it was like a personal note as somebody who had assumed the identity of the Presley heir who used the Graceland parcel as security on a large loan. Now, it wasn't the actual owner. There was a false title file, but it was filed in Los Angeles by some foreign entity. It didn't even show up on the records had they gone further into the transaction before they got caught. They did apparently sign a note for two or three million dollars to forget the actual number. The forgery was completed, but it was filed in the wrong place, it sounds like. And when somebody actually took a hard look at this, they realized that there was something wrong and the real owner of the record realized that her identity had been stolen and used to secure the loan from the lender. Now, the lender obviously thought that they had a coup there 'cause that's one of the more available properties that are the residents of the United States. - Yeah, it's a tourist attraction. Now, if Graceland had had home title lock, the kind of service that your company provides are at Fitz and Meyer, how could Elvis's granddaughter, whoever has the title to Graceland, how would they have been notified? How could they have prevented having to go in the court and go through all these headaches to regain control of Graceland? - They would have been notified as soon as the new title for that parcel was filed, the minute was filed. And you don't get a loan on a property if you aren't listed somewhere as the owner of record. And we watched their title, we watched the title for Graceland 24/7 and they would have been notified immediately that a title document had been filed changing the ownership. That would have instructed them to call us immediately. And when we get involved, we start instructing them how to stop any transactions on the property immediately. That way, the first loan is not negotiated and it's not funded. Once it's funded, then you're in big trouble because it's a false identity. There're gonna be someplace with that money that has wide beaches and drinks with a little umbrellas in them while you're in the courthouse, hoping that the judge will give you your property back. - Oh, before we go any further, what should my listeners do if they wanna learn more about home title lock and about the services that your company provides art fits in my ear? - First of all, home title lock does only one thing and we do it better than anybody as far as I'm concerned. We protect your title from being tinkered with in any way, shape, or form 24/7. So if you go to home title lock.com and you sign up now and because of dealing with you, they'll get 30 days of free coverage and more importantly, they'll get to see the fact that their title is in their name. So you sign up, you'll get 30 days of free coverage for your annual subscription and then you'll know number one titles in your name and you'll also know if something happens, you're gonna be notified in time to rent the real damage being done with somebody using your equity to get money out of your property. And that's what you gotta do. You gotta know right away and you gotta act. And with us, we will walk you through it step by step, making sure that you know where to go and how to get there so to speak. We'll give you the roadmap and we'll sit beside you and negotiate all the turns and exits and all that stuff to make sure you know that you're filing the proper paper in the proper location and the proper timeframe to prevent somebody from negotiating alone using your equity and a forged document. - So let me repeat that. Step one, verify the deed to your home and make sure that it's safely in your name. You can do that for free and you can get 30 days of free protection when you use promo code Howie at hometidallock.com. That's promo code Howie at hometidallock.com. So you get 30 days free if you sign up and use promo code Howie. But if you wanna learn more about this, just go to hometidallock.com. You know, I read the New York Post every day. And this is an epidemic in places like New York City and I see in Atlanta, there've been more than 1,000 homes stolen or attempted thefts. Why is it worse in certain areas that aren't fits in my or than other areas? - Well, first of all, in the large cities, you have a lot of the neighborhoods that are being rehabbed, gentrification, I think they call it someplace, happened in Philadelphia as well, where these homes get dilapidated and they aren't maintained. And then all of a sudden everybody decides they wanna move back into the city. These are structurally very sound properties that you don't need to facelift the updating and all that stuff. So they're a bit of a bargain if you can get one in your name, the crooks understand this, the people who own these homes are lots of times elderly, lots of times they're missing just some of the stop signs like they didn't get a tax bill, they didn't get a water bill, things like that. All flags that they need to see and act on. So if they don't, that makes them unsuspecting victims and they may not even actually live in the house. So in all of these, especially these big cities, where you have these neighborhoods that are now being rejuvenated by a new generation of owners, that makes those areas very, very susceptible to title fraud. And that's what happens on a large scale. And oftentimes these people will buy a house even through a fraudulent title and then end up finding out that the real owners suing them because the fraudulent title has been filed and they don't know about it till it's too late and then their answer is build a court. So you want to avoid that part of it. You want to know right away that something has happened to your title, whether it's somebody filing a lien because the contractor is doing work on that and they will contract or if they're doing a good job, will file a lien before they start to work. Those are all things that will flag it for us and at home title law, we'll let you know right away that lien has been filed or some action has taken place. I've even heard of instances where lots of times realtors will file some kind of a form on your title when they're selling it for you to make sure you don't sell out from under them that they get notified. So the whole answer here, quite frankly how is, you've got to watch what's going on and then one place you need to do it is go to hometidalac.com and we'll watch it for you 24/7. We've got the software and the experience and we've got platinum level customer service. - Most people don't deal with registries of deeds as we call them in Massachusetts very often and they're sleepy places. People just go in there and it's fairly routine work and no one pays much attention to what's going on until something like this happens. And again, Art Fitz and Meyer retired FBI agent from home title law. Tell us a lot of people are gonna say, well, when I bought the house, I had the title search, that was part of the purchase and sale agreement. So I'm covered because I had the home title search and everything came back right. But tell us how this is different than a home title search. - The title search that you have executed when you buy the home is one of the biggest misunderstandings that most homeowners have. They think they're covered. Well, that coverage ended when you got the keys of the front door. That coverage happens to cover anything that happened before that they didn't catch. You know, like water rights, mineral rights, something like that. We're sitting there on a dress and if they don't tell you about them or if they missed a mortgage or a lean or something like that, it's their responsibility to protect you up until the point you got the keys of the front door. After that point, you have to protect yourself. So if you wanna get on to the recorder's office and check it once a week, certainly that's viable. But if you wanna cover 24/7 with immediate notification if there's any kind of a change, you need to go out there to home title law.com and let us do it for you. Howie, it's like a few pennies a day. As I told somebody the other day when we're talking about this, I said, if you just skipped one of those drive through designer coffees once a week, you'd have more than enough money to pay for your coverage. - If this happens to you, you're gonna be in a world of hurt financially and emotionally, 'cause this is like, this is really horrible. You're home, they're trying to steal your home. A burglary is bad enough, but think about your whole house being taken away from you or attempted taking it away from you. So let me ask you, so we were gonna say, well, how does home title law cover the whole country like this? I mean, how can they assure me that they're gonna let me know if a thief tries to steal my house or my title? How does home title law work? - It's not magic, quite frankly, it's good hard work. We have access, they're essentially three really major databases for titles in the United States. So everybody files a title and it gets digitized by your counterclockers office and goes into these major databases. We monitor your property by our software, integrating with those databases to cover your property and any activity that occurs on your property at the counterclockers office that affects your title. You know, you talk about your credit cards and all that stuff, we only do one thing, we do it better than anybody. And as we watch your most important asset, your title. And most people don't realize that it's as vulnerable as it is. I steal titles all the time and demonstrations, quite frankly. You can go online, Howie, and get a notary stamp, complete false back in. And they will send you the stamp itself online. And I can generate a title effect. If I had your address, how do I steal your house tonight? And I use a false notary stamp. And I've done this to a lot of people, even high profile individuals like you and they're stunned. They think because they have an important job, an important name that the bad guys will avoid them. Look, they don't need to know you. They don't need to know your house. They don't need to go your house. They don't want your house. They want to take money out using your equity as the security for their loan. And so you got to cover yourself because nobody else will. It's that simple. One of the most prolific house stealing criminals in the US over the last few years have been a guy named Matthew Cox. And he's from the Tampa, Florida area. And he did 13 years in federal prison for stealing over 70, 70 properties. He was quoted as saying, honestly, the only thing that could have stopped me was home title lock. What did he mean by that? - First of all, when he did it back in the day, things were a lot less digital, a lot more-- - Wild West. - Yeah, so when I saw his record, he got 25 or 26 years for what was generally considered white collar crimes, very unusual. And it's because he was so prolific in what he did. And then on top of it all, in the end, he was on the Secret Service Most Wanted list. He just haunted them. So when you start taunting law enforcement, believe me, when they catch you, it's probably not going to be a pleasant situation for you going forward. And that's the case with Matthew. Now, he managed to be paroled after 12 or 13 years. He's turned this life around. I hope and pray that he continues to be a model citizen. And one of the things that was a term of his parole was he started working with law enforcement and authorities to notify people and make them understand how simple it was for him to steal all these homes. And again, he didn't steal the house. He just stole the money. And if you look at him, he's a handsome guy. He's really well-spoken, he's turned this life around. And he is making a point of letting everybody know that he could do it, anybody could do it. - So to go over one more time, Art Fitsen Meyer, he's from home title lock and he's a retired FBI agent. He's the senior advisor to them. So you have a house, and let's say you have a $400,000 mortgage, your house doesn't have to be owned outright to get stolen. You have a $400,000 mortgage on your house. But with the real estate prices going up as they have, it's now worth $900,000. So you have $500,000 equity in the property. So the thief comes in, the new Matthew Cox comes in and he steals, fraudulently transfers the title to your property to himself. And then he doesn't try to sell your house out from under you. He just goes to a bank and says, I own this house and I look at the value and check the assessment and I have $500,000 worth of equity. He doesn't try to take out $600,000. He tries to take out $200,000, $300,000 so it doesn't appear to be suspicious. He gets the money and then disappears. He vanishes and a couple of months later, the bank sends you a statement 'cause they wanna start getting the first payment on their second mortgage, on their home equity loan, whatever you wanna call it, right? And that's when you know that you are screwed. And that's why you need home title lock to stop that terrible moment from happening and it only costs you a couple of hundred bucks a year for the most basic service. - I like to say it only cost you a cup of coffee a week and just as a clarification how with home title like we have one service, one level of service and it's platinum level of service and notifying you of anything that affects your title in any way, shape or form. And we will then work with you to make sure that the title stays in your name. - You need to protect yourself 'cause this is a terrible new crime wave that is engulfing the nation. - People are now beginning to understand that the documentation of this as a crime is hard to get your arms around because various different charges are used to prosecute people who do this. - All right, so the way to try to assure that you won't have this problem of dealing with this attempted home theft and these terrible bills that you didn't run up, you have to verify that the deed to your home, your property is safely in your name. You can do that for free and get 30 days of free protection when you use the promo code howie@hometitlelock.com. Hometitlelock.com, that's the website to go to if people wanna learn more about this. - I couldn't have said any better. - And also at hometitlelock.com, you guys have a lot of on your website, you have a lot of links to stories. This is, again, this is not some scare tactics. If you read regional newspapers, websites, their stories all over the country that this is happening. And not just in Atlanta and New York, but everywhere, I'm just looking at it right now. Here's one in Queens, here's one from Dayton, here's one from Dallas, it's happening everywhere. And wherever you are, you need protection against this white collar crime that's happening. So one last time, hometitlelock, hometitlelock.com and use the promo code howie, and you'll get 30 days free protection when you sign up and use the promo code howie. - Listen to howie, it's sleep better tonight. - Thank you, Art Fitsenmeyer, from hometitlelock.com. (upbeat music) - Thanks for joining us on Meet the Experts with Howie Car. We'll be back soon with more interesting guests, you're sure to learn a great deal from. (upbeat music) (dramatic music) [BLANK_AUDIO]