Property fraud attacked

Clerk’s website lets owners receive alerts

The Palm Beach County Clerk and Comptroller’s Office recently launched a new service that will notify residents whenever a public document is filed in their name, with the hope that fraudsters will be caught almost immediately.

The new program, called Property Fraud Alerts, is designed to curb property fraud. Residents may sign up for the service by visiting the clerk’s website.

Clerk Sharon Bock, whose office is responsible for storing records from marriages to home purchases to traffic tickets, said the system was designed to catch scammers who file fake deeds and mortgages with the county claiming ownership of a home when it isn’t rightfully theirs.

Identity theft, she said, “is the No. 1 problem in the state of Florida; we are ground zero for this kind of identity theft. Property theft is really a form of identity theft, and now we’re able to allow you to have another way to be able to protect yourself.”

The service allows residents to register multiple names, including business names, to an email and phone number. Whenever something is put into the public record under any of those names — legitimate or not — the registered person would get an alert.

According to the FBI, property and mortgage fraud constitute the fastest growing white-collar crime in the United States.

Palm Beach County officials said they are seeing a rise in this type of fraud but do not keep specific data on strictly property-related cases. It’s become an increasingly difficult problem to deal with recently, Bock said, because many fake deeds and mortgages were