After the passage of SB 1110 earlier this year required county recorders in Arizona to provide a system for notifying people when any document is recorded in which the person is a named party to the instrument, several counties have begun rolling out their alert systems.

U.S. Attorney Roger Handberg announced Carlos Ferrer, 46, of Tampa, Fla., pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit bank fraud. Ferrer faces a maximum penalty of 30 years in federal prison.

A Miami, Fla., man pleaded guilty to a scheme in which he stole more than $31,920 from the District of Columbia’s HomeSaver program, a foreclosure prevention program administered by the D.C. Housing Finance Agency and funded by the U.S. Department of Treasury.

One of the fastest-growing real estate cyber fraud schemes in 2023 is seller impersonation fraud, where someone finds a vacant or non-owner-occupied property and attempts to impersonate the property owner and sell the property. Using public records, business email compromise and good old-fashioned persistence, these fraudsters try to trick the Realtor, title company and buyer into thinking they are the real owner of the property and can sell the property, all before the real owner gets wind that their property is being sold. You can be part of stopping this crime in its tracks.

The hopeful seller of property in Nevada sued the title insurer that was to perform escrow services to facilitate the sale of property. He alleged the title insurer violated its contractual obligations under the residential purchase agreement.

The Broward County, Fla., Property Appraiser’s office and the Broward County Sheriff’s Office announced the arrest of a man during an undercover operation at a title company in Cooper City, Fla.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network published a Small Entity Compliance Guide to assist the small business community in complying with the beneficial ownership information reporting rule.

The National Security Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency released a Cybersecurity Information Sheet , Contextualizing Deepfake Threats to Organizations, which provides an overview of synthetic media threats, techniques, and trends.

An Osceola County, Fla., mortgage loan officer was sentenced to time in federal prison for bank fraud and aggravated identity theft charges involving forging judges’ signatures.