Seth: Hey there, how's it going? This is Seth Williams from REtipster.com. Today, I'm talking with Russell Williams. And no, he's not my brother or my cousin or my uncle or anything like that. Maybe there's some distant relation back in our family tree.

Russell is a retired house flipper, turned land investor, and a coach for the Jack Bosch coaching program. He specializes in PPC, SEO, and option contracts. He has been generating online leads since 2019. The reason I'm talking to Russ today is because he has encountered various types of fraud in his land investing journey. We're going to talk about his experiences and insights, what he's been through, and how to detect this kind of thing if it's coming your way.

I've had a number of other conversations with other land investors and specialists about this kind of thing. You can always check out episode 207 with Andy Rouse, the REtipster podcast; episode 193 with George McCleary, 134 with Eloy Ochoa, and episode 143 with Brenda Flatter. We've discussed various aspects of this problem, but today we're going to dive into it with Russell.

So, Russ, how are you doing? Welcome.

Russell: I'm doing great. Appreciate being here, man. It's been kind of a crazy ride. I think when we went to the mastermind there, the Land Unconference, I think I was one of two people who were internet-focused in the land business. It's a totally different scenario than everybody who's sending out mail. I think mail is a lot safer as far as fraud is concerned, but there are things that we need to look out for.

The internet side is kind of huge. I mean, people are spending tens of thousands of dollars a month on pay-per-click and there are some things we need to look out for, for sure.

Seth: So when you say mail is safer, you just mean that the leads that respond to a direct mail campaign have a lower likelihood of being fraudulent sellers who respond to that?

Russell: One hundred percent. Within the last two months is the first time I ever heard of any situation from a piece of mail. And I think it was stolen mail. In my house, when we were living in San Antonio, on our little Ring camera, we saw people stealing our mail.

Seth: Wow, that's crazy.

Russell: Yeah. One of the things the title companies are doing right now, though, which is kind of cool, is that if it's vacant land, they are sending out a mail piece. They might get them because I'll buy my property and then I will go ahead and sell. They'll get a piece of mail that says, "Hey, we noticed a transaction that's been opened with whatever title company, First American, whatever it is. If you're not selling your property, please call us."

And that was the exact scenario with another coach of Jack Bosch. She's all mail. And the real seller actually got a letter in the mail. So I think his mail got stolen. Those people tried to impersonate him.

Seth: I've actually heard that. I know that's one of the things title companies are doing now to try to combat this title fraud thing. When they have a seller coming to them trying to sell their property, they send mail to the registered address of that seller to find out if they're aware. I don't know that it's totally foolproof. It sounds like your mail can get stolen, but most of the time that would catch the issue.

Russell: Yeah, if they open their mail in time within the 30 days or whatever it is. And these fraudsters want to close as fast as possible.

Seth: So it sounds like you've experienced this firsthand. Why don't you tell me about maybe the first time or the worst time? Paint the picture of what happened - where did this person come from? What kind of fraud was going on? At what point did you detect it? How could you have caught it earlier?

Russell: Yeah, the first time it was kind of brutal. I laugh about it now, but it was an online lead from pay-per-click. It was "sell your land fast," and they submitted our web form. I talked to him personally. What's common in these fraud cases is there's some type of urgency. This guy's wife supposedly had cancer and they needed to go to California for cancer treatments. They were trying to raise money to pay for all these treatments. Which was weird, though—the lot was in Houston and Houston has a really good cancer center. That was the first red flag. I was like, why would you go to California when there's a really good cancer center in Houston?

But you're trying to put a deal together; your mind wants to go that direction. He said he was in California and could sign there, which was fine—we do remote closings all the time. He knew a lot about the property, which is rare. Usually you get someone with, say, an Italian name but they sound like they're from Haiti with a really thick accent. And when you ask, "Does it require well and septic?" they have no clue. That's when we know immediately it's fraud and we dump it.

This guy knew quite a bit about the property. He knew there were liens on it. I don't know if he had gone through this with another online land investor or not, but he knew a lot about the property. So I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. It was an infill lot in Houston, Texas.

Seth: Yeah.

Russell: I had comps above the $150,000 range and I threw in an offer at $90,000. The second thing that's common is that fraudsters very rarely try to negotiate—they just say yes. In this scenario, he tried to negotiate higher, which I thought was a good sign. When the seller tries to negotiate with you, it feels more legitimate.

So I think we settled at $95,000 with a 30-day closing. During the title process, there were a number of issues that seemed to fit his scenario—someone whose wife has cancer and they're not taking care of the property. There were city liens because it hadn't been mowed.

Being the guy who just wants to help people out, I said, "Hey, I think I can get these removed. Give me another 10 days." We actually removed about $7,000-$8,000 worth of liens off the property before closing so he could get more money.

He closed in California. Thank God, in California they require a fingerprint if it's a mobile notary. This guy—I didn't know at the time—bought the property, marketed it, and sold it within two days in the upper $180,000-$190,000 range.

Seth: You're saying the person that you bought it from or the person you sold it to?

Russell: I bought it at $95,000. Then once I closed on it, and he closed with a mobile notary in California, I put it on the market a week later. I had it cleaned up, mowed it, trimmed some trees, and took great pictures. It was close to downtown—you could see the skyline. Marketed it and it sold immediately for around $180,000-$190,000. It was a six-figure deal.

This was in summer, and we spend our summers in Pennsylvania. I put operations on hold, knowing I had a six-figure deal coming, which was another mistake. I was enjoying my summer, and about two weeks before we were supposed to close on the 45-day closing, I got a call from a realtor saying, "Why are you marketing my client's property?"

Seth: You got a call after you sold it? Because you were still marketing?

Russell: After it was under contract. So it's pending now, and I'm two weeks from actual closing. In my mind, I thought I had bought it legitimately from a seller with title insurance, the whole nine yards. I looked over at my wife and said, "Man, there may have been some fraud here." Sure enough, the next day I got a call from an attorney for this client saying, "You have the deed to my client's property and you obtained it without him signing for it, so we're suing you."

Seth: So they're trying to sue you for money because you have-

Russell: They're suing me to get the deed back in his name.

Seth: So they just want you to perform that action of deeding it back to them?

Russell: Yes, 100%. And I get it. I said, "Hey, obviously I'll cancel the deal with the new buyer and I'll sign whatever documents are needed." So I filed for the title insurance and talked to the person in charge, the attorney. He told me that luckily it was in California because this person was wanted in four separate states for doing this exact thing. He was a very good fraudster.

Seth: So this was a deal that you closed with a title company. Was the mobile notary the title company's mobile notary?

Russell: I don't know if it was the title company's mobile notary. I just know it was a mobile notary in the state of California.

Seth: Did they catch this guy then?

Russell: They never told me, but I got my money back. Everything that I had purchased, I got back. I mean, I lost money on trimming the trees and doing some improvements, not to mention the profit I had baked into my mind.

Seth: My goodness. You didn't self-close this thing. Holy cow.

Russell: I will not self-close. The deals that we get on the internet, we're really searching for that needle in the haystack—that seller with a lot of motivation where there's a lot of meat on the bone. So it's not uncommon to do a six-figure deal from an internet lead.

Seth: The money that you got back, that was from the title insurance policy paying up, right? They ran that guy's fingerprint and found out that he's wanted in four different states?

Russell: I'm going to say within 60 days, I had my investment back on the property.

Seth: Wow, that's terrible. And you've encountered it more times since then, but you've caught it when they've come up?

Russell: Yeah. Like this one where the guy was supposedly from Hong Kong. Essentially, people would look for mailing addresses in Hong Kong—out-of-country owners—and they would try to sell, saying, "Hey, I want to sell this." Same story—my wife's got cancer. The passport he sent me... I was like, "Man, I have seen this guy on TV." Sure enough, it was a famous actor. The guy just pulled a photo off the internet of somebody, an actor that lives in Hong Kong, and slapped it on a passport. Put the name and number of the person of record. The passport looked legit if you just looked at it and not the photo.

Seth: I wonder why they would pick a celebrity for their…

Russell: Literally anybody else would be fine. It looked like the Chinese James Bond! But it's funny; you think that asking, "Let me see your ID," would help. We get IDs all the time when we think there's fraud, and then we do a skip search and try to find the number of the real owner. I've sent those pictures to them and they're like, "That is not me." People are able to make some really convincing fake IDs.

Seth: I think it's easier than it's ever been to create a fake driver's license with AI. It's nuts how easy. If you're just asking for a picture of an ID, that is super simple to do. If you want an actual ID, that might be a step harder because you need the material to make it. I've even seen stuff now where you can live on the spot have a deep fake of your face on a Zoom call. You could try to do FaceTime with them and never know because they look like somebody else.

So going back to this example real quick, if I were to say some red flags to look out for, I think I would have asked for the ID up front?

Russell: Okay. On this one, this was the first time I'd ever gotten that far. When I saw the ID, it had the address of the lot on it, not their mailing address.

Seth: Oh, interesting.

Russell: If I had seen that upfront... Now if we think it's fraud, we get that ID. And a lot of times that ID is fake. Second, I think I would have dug a little deeper and really asked a lot more questions.

Seth: What questions would you ask?

Russell: Like a little more about the property. How did you acquire it? He knew that there were these liens on the property, which threw me off initially. He knew enough to say there were liens that we needed to clean up or just pay. Now we dig a lot deeper. We want to know exactly what they know about the property. But at the end of the day, whose responsibility is it to make sure it is who they say they are? Ultimately, we're not the ones providing the insurance—it's the title insurance company, right?

But that doesn't mean we need to be lax, because the worst-case scenario is you get in my situation. You think you're making a six-figure payday, and instead you get a lawsuit.

Seth: You mentioned the foreign accent thing earlier. Does it ever happen when you're talking to these people on the phone and there's just a normal American accent? Like it doesn't throw you off at all?

Russell: That was the scenario.

Seth: Gotcha.

Russell: Everything ever since has been this really thick accent, and a lot of the calls either come from New York State or Florida. Florida is one of the biggest fraud areas.

Seth: You're saying the property is in Florida or the call is coming from Florida?

Russell: The call is coming from Florida.

Seth: Okay. So the property could be anywhere, but the call happens to come from Florida?

Russell: Yeah.

Seth: Interesting. Just to summarize what I've heard you say so far, let me know if I'm missing anything. Some of the common traits you see, the red flags, are: they're in a hurry; there may or may not be a foreign accent, but if there is, there might be a reason to wonder about it; they don't know much about the property.

Russell: It doesn't match the last name. You know what I mean?

Seth: All right. Gotcha. So it's not the foreign accent alone. It's that it doesn't line up with what the last name looks like. John Sniff sounds does not sound like a John Smith.

Seth: Yeah. Okay.

Russell: And they don't try to negotiate. So they kind of just take the first thing you throw at them. And things that you can do to maybe catch it are, first of all, getting on the phone at all. I think some of these fraudsters don't even want to talk on the phone, period. But then also when you are, you know, ask for an ID earlier on. Doesn't mean they couldn't give you a fake one.

But when they do send it to you, don't just say, “Okay.” Really scrutinize it. Look at the picture, look at the address; like, does it all make sense? And then I guess ask more questions about the property. Just the more you ask, the more opportunities they have to mess something up and reveal that they're not legit.

And then we skip-trace that seller and call those numbers.

Seth: I gotcha. So skip-trace the seller.

Russell: Yeah, I've gotten on the phone and a lot of times they're targeting the elderly too. So somebody who's 70-plus, and I get on the phone and say, "Hey, you know, I got this guy trying to buy your property," and they're like, "Oh, thank you so much." So we've helped out in a number of situations there. You know, along those same lines, what the title companies try to do is just send a quick letter to the address of record just verifying that they are indeed trying to sell. Sometimes that can catch it too.

I'm really a big fan of what some title companies are doing—they accept it in the state of Florida; they're not doing it in Georgia—it's the remote online notaries. With Notarize.com, you put in the last four digits of your social. I have to do this when I sell properties. I love to do it from my home. I don't want to have to go to a notary. But they ask you questions that are based off of your credit report. "Do you own any of these vehicles?" And it's like a 2012 Ford Ranger. And you're like, "Yeah, that's the one." I mean, I feel like the remote online notaries are actually way more secure than just going to a mobile notary.

Seth: Yeah, those are called KBAs or knowledge-based assessments. I agree. I think it's a great idea. You'd think that would be standard practice now, just given that this is a more common thing.

Russell: Some states will do it. You know, I bet these sellers that have a property in Georgia and Florida and sell, like, Florida would do it. And then Georgia was like, "No, we don't do that. We don't allow it." It's not state law yet.

Seth: Do you think they're—I mean, I feel like the answer is no—but do you think at any point in the near future, nationwide or even statewide, they might change how they handle this recording process? Just the fact that the recorder's office, like, they don't really look at a whole lot. If you send them a notarized document and it's not totally messed up, they'll record the thing. They're not going to verify that the notary was legit or that the seller was legit. It just seems like the system itself is just way outdated and antiquated.

Russell: Yeah. The further and more rural you get, I guess the more lax those requirements are. It's rampant. It's incredible. This one Florida title company, when I started dealing with them, I was paying $250-$300 for a settlement fee. Now, if it's vacant rural land, it's $750 per side. And that's because they have to do so much more on land because there's so much fraud, especially in Florida.

Seth: Why do you think— I mean, I think I might know the answer— but why do you think land? Like, why is there so much more fraud with land versus houses?

Russell: There are no mortgages on them.

Seth: Gotcha.

Russell: That's another layer. Because the mortgage company is checking if they're paying, are the taxes paid, and is their insurance current? Like there's another person to sign off on. But if it's vacant, which most of it is—I mean, like no loans on it, free and clear—then it's just an easier target.

Seth: Yeah. Seth: That actually makes a lot more sense to me. What you just said in another conversation was that they were talking about how another reason that's more common with land is because if you put, like, a for-sale sign up on a piece of vacant land, there are no neighbors around to see it. You could totally fake it that way.

Russell: It's all that way.

Seth: Whereas with a house in a neighborhood, people would just see it and question it more.

Russell: 100%. Now, the next type of fraud that I've dealt with, I think, is more serious and is a little more common for the regular land flipper. I think the majority of people, would you say, are just direct mail, right? So you're targeting an audience. It's a little harder. If you're on the internet and you're taking internet leads, then you open yourself up to these fraudsters. But wire fraud is really high on the list right now.

Seth: This is a different thing from title fraud. I mean, they could be linked together, but wire fraud and title fraud are technically two separate things, right?

Russell: Totally different. And we got in a deal where it just amazed me how technically advanced the fraudsters were. So we had this deal in Texas, up by Dallas. It was a commercial piece of property. The one thing that appeased me was you contacting the neighbor and then you getting a call back from their realtor.

And they want to buy it. I said, "Man, I just want to do a deal with you." And now we've got this realtor involved, which is a huge part of the problem. Not that realtors don't do a great job in many instances, but this particular realtor's email is the one that got hacked.

I was using a friend of mine's title company, and they hired an investigator to figure this out. They found it was the buyer's agent's email that got hacked. What happened is they hacked his email and then they saw this thread, this email thread of where everybody is talking about this transaction. Like, "When are we going to close?" The banker was on there, the mortgage company, and me—this person hacked that and was able to make email addresses that looked similar or almost identical to the other emails.

Seth: Have you heard this before?

Russell: Yeah, I have.

Seth: I've actually gotten scammed this exact same way on eBay before when I sold a camera. eBay has changed up their payment system now so this can't really happen anymore. But somebody had contacted me separately from the transaction with an email address that looked totally legit. Like, "Hey, I just switched my address. Can you send it here instead?" And I was just like, "Okay." I did it. And there you go—500 bucks gone.

Russell: Well, this was $67,000.

Seth: Yeah, that's a lot more.

Russell: I had sold this property and the contract that was presented to me—it was a commercial deal, so it was initially a letter of intent to purchase—was an all-cash deal. I had this particular property on an option contract. It was an option contract where I was actually paying for the seller's taxes and her tax loan. She couldn't pay for the taxes on the property anymore.

I said, "Well, look, this is a little too risky for me to just take it all down, but I will pay your tax loan and I'll pay while we're under contract for the taxes that are due." And so I was paying her $500 a month for an option contract. I mean, that's a fair deal—she's taking a little risk, and I'm taking a little risk.

Anyway, I find the buyer who's the neighbor. They have the neighboring property and then they put a contract in that's all cash. Then like two, three days before closing, I contact the agent. I was like, "Is everything ready to go?" He's like, "I think we're going to need an extension." I said, "Why?" He's like, "Well, the lender's not ready." Lender's not ready? There was never ever supposed to be a lender. I wouldn't have accepted this price if I knew that financing was an option.

So he had already wired in his earnest money the first time, which was $2,500. And I said, "I need another $3,500 earnest money, non-refundable. Now that I know that there's a lender, I'm not going to play around. We need to close this deal because I'm paying this, and this lady's needing to close. She's hard up for cash. She can't pay her loan for the taxes."

They agreed and wired in another $3,500 to the title company. We pushed it back another 30 days. Well, we get close to closing and I'm sending emails asking, "What is going on? Are you going to wire the money in or not?" I get this email back that says, "Still having problems with my banking. I'm sorry. I just need two or three more days." And I just lose it. I called the broker and said, "What is going on? I get this email from your client saying that he's got banking problems." He's like, "Let me look into it." I said, "We're not extending this any longer. That earnest money is mine."

He calls me back like 15 minutes later and says, "He never sent that email." I'm like, "What are you talking about? I'll forward it to you. Here's the email." And he's like, "That's not him." And that's when we all discovered—the guy who actually ended up intercepting the wire was trying to buy time. Because I think they need like 24 hours to get it out of that new account into their account.

So I got that email from him. I don't know if this guy got his money back, but it got intercepted. The third time he had to wire—and this was his down payment—you know what I mean? The sale price was like $240,000 or something like that. He was putting in $67,000 and got intercepted at the last minute.

Seth: Let me just make sure I'm following this. So you said that the agent's email got hacked, but these fake emails you were getting were from the buyer?

Russell: From everybody. Which is crazy—this guy was interjecting himself as everybody. My email, instead of being "info@harmonylandholdings," he turned it into "info@harmonylandholdings." And it still said my name, Russell Williams, at the top. So he was able to manipulate that.

Seth: So he's sending emails to the other parties pretending to be you?

Russell: Yep. And then one from the title company pretending to be the title company and one from the lender pretending to be the lender. So he created four separate fake emails.

Seth: So nobody's really talking to each other. He's just intercepting everything and doing smoke and mirrors.

Russell: Yes, it was completely smoke and mirrors.

Seth: So when he is asking the buyer to send more earnest money or deposits or whatever it is, he's just got his own bank account that he's telling him to wire it to, right?

Russell: Yeah. So at the end of the day, he didn't want that $3,500. He wanted either the full purchase price, or I think at the beginning of it, he was thinking he was getting the whole thing. But then he got a lender to step in. This buyer ended up wiring money two times, and the third time got different wiring instructions and sent it to a different wire. You know what I mean? So that is the biggest lesson right there—title companies do not change their wiring instructions. And they say that on every bottom of every wiring instruction, "These do not change," or in the email that you get.

Seth: So the biggest lesson for this story is to always verify?

Russell: Yeah, I always verify. Even though these weren't my funds being sent, I'm always going to verify anytime I send money. Call the company; look it up on Google first. Don't use the phone number that's in the email.

Because if that email is fake, you're calling the number of somebody who's just like, "Yeah, that's the right one. Send it."

Seth: When you say verify, what are you verifying? You're calling the bank or you're calling the title company?

Russell: Where am I supposed to wire this money? And you're Googling the title company. You're not just taking letters in the email, right?

Seth: Because I've even heard of some of these fraudsters who create a fake title company, like a whole website, a super elaborate thing. Like it looks legit. So you could Google it and find a number to call. Wire fraud—they're just so technologically advanced. Like they're using everything to their advantage.

Russell: Yeah. That does not surprise me at all. That might be one argument to use a more well-known title company instead of, like, a mom-and-pop, just because, like, it's going to be hard to fake, like, Chicago Title or something like that.

Seth: Yeah, 100%.

Russell: So the funny part of this story, though, for me, was like, he gives me a call and says, "Hey man, give me a break. Like I'm talking to the FBI. This is some serious fraud." And I was like, "Bro, like you were the first one to commit fraud on this file. You can't sign a contract saying that you're going to pay cash and then two days before closing tell me that you're using a lender. That is fraud because I would not have accepted that offer." If you look that up, that exact scenario is technically fraud. I was like, "Please have the FBI call me. I will tell them all about this file." And so two days later, he wired another $67,000 in and bought the property and it closed.

Seth: You're saying that the agent committed fraud?

Russell: The buyer committed fraud. The agent said he didn't know anything about the lender until two days before closing.

Seth: So the buyer committed fraud. Say it one more time. I'm sorry if I followed how they committed fraud. What did they do wrong?

Russell: They submitted a contract saying they were going to pay all cash.

Seth: Okay. But they really were working with a lender?

Russell: And two days before closing, they said that their lender wasn't ready.

Seth: Okay. So that wasn't just something the title fraud person was making up. That was actually a real situation.

Russell: That's fraud. Yeah. You can't say you're paying cash and then get an extension because your lender isn't ready.

Seth: Yeah.

Russell: You know what I mean? Because, like, would you take a different number if it's cash or if it's a lender? Right? That's stealing. He's stealing money from me. That's the way I looked at it. And so technically, he knew that if the FBI talked to me, I would tell them about the fraud that he committed on this file. So I had a little leverage.

Seth: So I guess to recap, different ways to catch it—seems like wire fraud is a bit trickier to catch, depending on how sophisticated this fraudster might be. I guess one thing is to look really closely at the email addresses that are being sent to you.

Russell: Look at every single character. I don't know; I use Outlook. So sometimes they'll just say if it's a contact of mine. And somehow they're able to manipulate that. It just says "Seth Williams." And then you would have to click on it and actually look at every letter in the email address. I didn't notice that until I realized there was fraud involved.

I think you can completely get away from this by making sure you talk to the right person in the title company and verify those wiring instructions before they're sent. And I would say if you're on the sales side like I was, make sure that your buyer understands that too. Because in this situation, it wasn't me that made the mistake—it was him. Had he been informed, "Hey, look, wire fraud is huge." Maybe there weren't the emails. I don't know. Like, make sure you send it to that same account. He wired it twice already before, so there should have been a red flag in his mind.

Seth: I don't know exactly how it's applicable here, but something I've been doing lately is I'll get these emails that just don't quite look right, but they look alarming. There's actually one that keeps hitting my inbox that says like, "You have three unread emails; click here to access this." And I don't click it. I'm just like, this is weird. So you're saying I have three unread emails somewhere else that I can't see and I have to... it just, my gut was just... so all I did was I copied and pasted the email, put it in ChatGPT and said, "I got this email. It seems weird. Is this like a fraudulent email? Is there something I should be worried about?" And it spelled out, "Yes, there are several tells about this email that appear to be fraud." Like for example, misspelled words or odd sentence structure and basically just confirmed, like, "Yeah, don't mess with this. Just delete it."

Russell: Now we got one last one to talk about as far as fraud. I've seen this—it didn't happen to me; it happened to another Jack Bosch coach and we talked about it. Essentially just a fake check.

Seth: Fake in that, like the account numbers are fake or something, or there is no account number?

Russell: So back in the day, I would use Craigslist. And it's like an expanded version of this Craigslist scam where they would be like, "Oh, I love what you're selling. I'm going to have my representative come over there. For the inconvenience, I am going to go ahead and give you an extra $200." You will have a cashier's check ready. And so they give you this fake cashier's check and then they take the product and then you find out that the cashier's check is bogus. Well, this was for a property that was like a $3 million property in Idaho.

And so this was their earnest money and it was like a $350,000 earnest money check. She showed me the check. It looked 100% legit. The way the scheme goes is that they send in this earnest money check, they start doing their due diligence, and then they say, "No, it doesn't fit. Send me my money back." And they're hoping to hit it right in the sweet spot where it looks like it's showing up in their bank account.

The buyer sends this check and then the seller receives it. The seller tries to deposit it. This was sent to the title company.

Seth: Okay. So the title company deposits it?

Russell: Deposits the earnest money check.

Seth: But there's no real money there, right? So nothing happens?

Russell: There's no real money. I think that there's a portion where it artificially shows that it's cleared their bank.

Seth: How would that happen? If the money isn't there, how would it?

Russell: Yeah. It seems like it would work in the Craigslist scenario, right? The product's gone. Fake check, product gone. This is like, here's a fake check, but I want my money back because the due diligence didn't check out. And they try to do that within a two- to four-day time horizon where that check is clearing.

Seth: And when they want their money back, they want the title company to just take money from their account and send it back?

Russell: Exactly. Yeah. And it was weird. I mean, cause we were scratching our heads for like two days. We're like, "Is this a legit buyer?" And it was a hard buyer, but they had a U.S.-based cashier's check from a major bank. We looked at everything you would expect a cashier's check to have. But that happens. You can search it on Google - real estate transactions with cashier's checks. That's why most of the title companies now are not taking cashier's checks. They're like, "You want it wired."

With all these red flags—like, hey, call and confirm—nothing ever happened there. They caught it before they sent it out. I think that's more of a numbers game. They call it—I'll send out 50 fake cashier's checks; maybe one of them I'll get, you know. And they go for these higher dollar deals.

But that came off LoopNet, so like mysterious leads that you get off of online buyers too, I think you might want to scrutinize a little bit. I know we all want to sell a piece of property, but I think we need to scrutinize that buyer a little bit too. It's something to look to raise that flag on, especially foreign buyers saying they're going to send in a cashier's check.

Seth: Did you say something about when the buyer is foreign at all? Is there a problem that can come up with that or is that not really a problem? Is it just when there's wire fraud or cashier's check fraud?

Russell: I think that's specifically more with impersonating the seller. That's when it raises the red flag for us. Like, Mike Scaramucci is my seller, and it sounds like somebody from the Bronx with a real deep, heavy accent. And they don't know anything about the property. That is a huge red flag.

I wouldn't say that just because somebody has a foreign last name, you have to redline them or something like that. But I think you may want to look in and dig a little bit deeper. Florida is like a weird case. You pull data in Florida, look at the last names there—there are a lot of foreign owners in the state of Florida. So I think that's one of the reasons why fraud in Florida is one of the highest, why you need to get a witness.

Seth: Are there ever title fraud issues when you're selling property? It sounds like the title fraud happens when you're buying, wire fraud happens, or maybe it's the cashier's check fraud that happens when you're selling, right? Does it ever cross over where it's like title fraud happens when you're selling? Maybe that's just not how it works.

Russell: Title fraud happens when you're buying.

Seth: Yeah. I mean, you would never have somebody like—I'm just thinking through it. It doesn't seem like you'd ever have that on the sell side, the title fraud part.

Russell: I had one deal where on the sell side, somebody had filed a memorandum of contract on me. They had a six-month contract. I actually bought it in 30 days. So the seller had talked to multiple people.

And that seller ended up—I talked to the title attorney. I filed title insurance. And the guy was like, "Well, let me see if this guy sues people." And this particular land investor had four open lawsuits against sellers in Harris County alone. I thought that was kind of shady.

Seth: I'm wondering, because I know some land funders, and I've even gotten into land funding myself, and sending wires is a very normal thing. This is how you fund land deals. But every time you send a wire to anyone, there is some risk there. What if you're sending it to the wrong person?

I wonder, to verify a wire recipient, even if a title company isn't involved— I guess maybe one option would be to make sure if you're funding a land deal, you wire directly to the title company and then call the title company to make sure they're real. But even on the title company thing, people can make fake title companies. So how do you break through that and make sure you're talking to a real one?

It amazes me that there isn't some type of wire insurance. What if you paid like—well, you read the stuff from the bank when you hit that send button, you know, it's like you're verifying that this is all correct and we may not be able to get this wire back? What if there was like a two-to-five-dollar charge per wire to insure it? Maybe the losses on something like that would be too high for it to be viable.

I don't know, but I've always thought, like, that seems like it would be a great business idea—provide wire insurance.

Russell: Yeah, that's a good point. I can see what you mean. Even if it was like, I don't know, 3% of whatever you're wiring—some high amount. But like, hey, I just want to be really sure. Like, it seems like a valid idea to me. Would you hit that button and you click that button and you're 100%? You've got all those numbers right, right? You think about people that may be getting up in age, having to send wires and stuff like that.

Seth: That's fascinating. Not in a good way. But it's good to know about this stuff, though. I mean, is one of the key lessons is to always use a title company, period? If something horrible happens, they would kind of be the buffer of protection for you.

Russell: Yeah. So I had this one deal in Lehigh Acres, Florida. And I'm buying it for $1,800. This was like the beginning of 2019. So that was a great deal, right? And I'm like, I'm not going to spend another $1,000 to get... I'm just going to close it myself. So when I went to actually sell it with a title company, they're like, "You missed this, this, and this." So I had to go back to that previous seller and be like, "I'll give you like 500 bucks to clear this up."

I sold it for $30,000, which was great five or six years later. But it told me that I would much rather have that title insurance and have somebody else, an attorney, look at this, have eyes on it, and make sure it's all done than self-close anything. I'm not ever self-closing anything again.

Seth: Do you think there is ever a situation when self-closing makes sense, even if it's like, you're going to buy it for 50 bucks and sell it for 500 bucks? Is the answer, you shouldn't be doing those deals?

Russell: Yeah, that's a good point. I can see what you mean. Even if it was like, I don't know, 3% of whatever you're wiring—some high amount. But like, hey, I just want to be really sure. Like, it seems like a valid idea to me. Would you hit that button and you click that button and you're 100%? You've got all those numbers right? You think about people that may be getting up in age, having to send wires and stuff like that.

Seth: That's fascinating. Not in a good way. But it's good to know about this stuff, though. I mean, is one of the key lessons just like always use a title company, period? If something horrible happens, they would kind of be the buffer of protection for you.

Russell: Yeah. So I had this one deal in Lehigh Acres, Florida. And I'm buying it for $1,800. This was like the beginning of 2019. So that was a great deal, right? And I'm like, I'm not going to spend another $1,000 to get... I'm just going to close it myself. So when I went to actually sell it with a title company, they're like, "You missed this, this, and this." So I had to go back to that previous seller and be like, "I'll give you like 500 bucks to clear this up."

I sold it for $30,000, which was great five or six years later. But it told me that I would much rather have that title insurance and have somebody else, an attorney, look at this, have eyes on it, and make sure it's all done than self-close anything. I'm not ever self-closing anything again.

Seth: Do you think there is ever a situation when self-closing makes sense, even if it's like, you're going to buy it for 50 bucks and sell it for 500 bucks? Is the answer, you shouldn't be doing those deals?

Russell: See, there are people that sell those with $100 down and $100 a month for the next five years and they make money on it. That's the whole business model in this industry. So I don't want to say no, because I'm sure that they end up running into problems. But if the property value is that low, then how much do you really lose? So I think there is a spot for it, but I don't want to do it and I don't want to target those deals either. I mean, I feel like that's a lot of getting on notaries and pushing paper for a very small amount, but there are people that do that in volume and have VAs that do all that work and are able to make monthly cash flow off of it. So I'm not going to say no, but it's not for me.

Seth: Any other final thoughts on this whole cashier's check wire title fraud issue? Sounds like we've covered it pretty well, but is there anything you want to leave our listeners with?

Russell: Yeah, just be wary. I think if you are doing any type of PPC or SEO, you need to have your antennas up. I think mail is still relatively safe. But you should be wary. And especially the number one thing to take away from this whole podcast is 100% to verify your wiring instructions. Make sure you're talking to somebody at that company because I think that's the biggest risk for all land investors at this point.

Seth: On that whole PPC SEO thing, is there anything worth exploring on that? Like, when did you start doing that and how much better or worse is that from direct mail? Are you focusing totally on that and no more direct mail now?

Russell: No, I think with AI right now, there are people leveraging AI to get their search rankings up much higher than we have in the past. So our results are going down right now and there's more people entering the market and the cost per click is going up. So we're moving back more towards mail right now. When I started in 2019, I ran the whole program myself and I was completely killing it. Like it was really easy, very motivated people. COVID hit, and house flippers who were used to PPC got into the land space and they got into the land space online. And they were able to get better results.

Seth: When we say PPC, are we talking about Google specifically? Are there other platforms like Facebook?

Russell: Yeah, initially, the first year I did it, it was $7 a click. And it took me about 10 clicks to get a response. And then it would take 10 of those responses to get a deal. It was really easy. Now it's like 30 to get a response or someone to give you their number. And then of those people, it's like I need 50 of those to put a deal together. So it's just gotten a lot more expensive from what I've seen. And I've hired experts to run the campaign without better results.

The internet's definitely changing right now. And I don't know how fast it'll change or where it's taking us. But it is not going to stay the same as it has been for the past 20 years. With all these alternatives to Google now that are frankly better in some ways, depending on how you look at it. It'll just be interesting to see where people start going to do their searching now.

Seth: Are we just going to use AI-driven stuff or are we going to use Google, which is more of an algorithm, slash, like, "Hey, I want someone to pay to click on this right now." I don't know.

Russell: But I think for SEO specifically, people are getting their rankings up. They're using AI. They're creating great content. And I have not been able to keep up, you know.

Seth: Yeah, I know on REtipster, it's been really interesting. Traffic has gone way down from what it used to be. But the traffic that's gone down has been stuff that things like ChatGPT can give people a much more direct answer. Like if you want just like a list of stuff, ChatGPT can totally do that.

But the stuff that's still doing really well is stuff that, for example, we've made these blog posts where we talk about the different roof types and door types and window types. And it gives infographic images of each one. Those still do really well because they give you something that's harder to get from ChatGPT. People want a visual understanding of what this thing is.

So I don't know. It's weird. I think video and, you know, if you're able to walk people down through video and teach them something that they really want to learn, that improves your search performance as well. But I think people are still seeking that out. Like you can't go to ChatGPT and be like, you know, it'll give you like an answer, but it won't give you a video of exactly how this went down. Like your video of how you put together a storage facility.

Russell: Yeah, totally. There's something video can do that it's kind of hard to replicate.

But that's it. I think the number one thing is to verify those wire instructions. But if you're online in any way, shape, or form, be wary of those sellers.

Seth: Yeah, no, it's a great lesson. Appreciate you sharing your somewhat painful experiences with us. And hopefully through this, nobody else will have to go through that.

Russell: Yeah, it's funny now. It was not funny then.

Seth: Cool, man. Thanks, Russ. If people want to find out more about you or connect with you, is there a way they can or should do that?

Russell: Yeah, I'm Harmony Land Holdings. I do have a Facebook page. I'm a coach with the Jack Bosch crew. And yeah, info@harmonylandholdings if you want to shoot me an email.

Seth: Awesome. Sounds good. People want to check out links to this stuff; you're welcome to do that. You can go to retipster.com/213. That's where you can find the show notes for this.

And Russell, again, thanks. Wish you all the best.

Russell: Seth, I appreciate you, man. Have a good one.

Seth: Thank you.