County responds to scare tactics over lien fraud

by Michael Howell

The Ravalli County Commissioners approved a plan last week presented by Clerk and Recorder Regina Plettenberg to provide a free service for people concerned about fraudulent liens and title transfers being placed against them. According to Plettenberg, her office has received a rash of phone calls from citizens in response to a national ad campaign sponsored by a company looking to drum up customers to provide them a similar service. 

Title fraud is identity theft: someone pretends to be you and transfers your deed to someone else. For instance, Home Title Lock, a company located in Coral Springs, Florida, states on its website that, “With just a forged signature, anyone can transfer your home’s title, enabling them to drain your equity by taking out loans against your property – leaving you with a legal and financial nightmare.” For a hefty fee they will provide 24/7 monitoring to detect any tampering with your title or mortgage and send you a timely alert of any changes to your title. They also claim that their “U. S. based restoration team will spend up to $1 million to fix the fraud and restore your title.”

The Federal Trade Commission, however, issued its own alert a year ago calling home lock insurance, “just a ploy to scare you.”… First know that ‘title lock insurance’ is not title insurance. 

“If you are a homeowner, you might remember buying title insurance when you first bought your house. It protects you against challenges to the title, like a lien you didn’t know about. But ‘title lock insurance’ is different – and it’s not insurance at all. Instead it’s a service that claims to monitor your deed to protect you against title fraud. You’d only find out AFTER your title got transferred to someone else without your authorization. So much for the lock,” states the FCC.

They point out that title fraud is identity theft and states that “title lock insurance” would not stop that. One of the most effective ways to stop identity theft, which is a key component of deed fraud, they state, is to place a security freeze on your credit file with the three major credit bureaus (Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion). It prevents anyone from opening a new mortgage or line of credit in your name without your permission.

The Office of Consumer Protection at the Montana Department of Justice also provides advice about protecting yourself from identity theft by putting a security freeze on your credit information and offers a security freeze form letter and more detailed information about the nuts and bolts on-line.

Plettenberg agrees with the FCC and other consumer advocates and calls the advertising “scare tactics.” She said her office checks deeds before they are transferred and checks the notarization relating to the signatures. She said that if anything were to happen, she would cloud the title and go to the County Attorney, “which is what I would do with one of these anyway.”

“The intent of these ads is to scare people,” said Plettenberg. “And does it happen? I have heard that it does. Do we have incidences like that in Ravalli County? We have not.”

With the Commissioners’ approval, she said she had a plan to provide the same service to county residents for free. She said she looked into it years ago and found it to be too expensive but that prices have now come down. She told the Commissioners she could use funds already available under her current budget to purchase installation of the system for a one-time $4,200 fee and pay the first $600 annual maintenance fee if the Board would agree to include future annual fees in her regular maintenance budget. The Commissioners approved the plan.

So, Ravalli County residents may now monitor their own property title for free by checking with the Ravalli County Clerk and Recorder’s Office on-line. 

“This is for people who, for instance, know their Homeowners Association may be putting a lien on their property but they plan on contesting it, or the guy that installed my carpet is going to put a lien on my property but I’m going to contest it. That way they can just go online and find out instead of calling every week. I think this will be a nice thing to offer because we are getting these kinds of inquiries more and more,” said Plettenberg.