And now with an important alert, home title fraud is one of the fastest growing white-collar crimes in the country. Criminals can make millions on your house without you even knowing it. And to help you keep your property safe, we’re speaking with one of those criminals who was once on the FBI’s most wanted list, 8 On Your Size Beth Russo, live with this story. Very interesting story Beth. And a super interesting conversation with this former federal prison inmate. Now just take a second to think about how much paperwork it takes to purchase a home. We’re talking about hundreds of pages.

Now this fraudster tells me all he needs is a couple of sheets of documents and he can be making thousands off your home while you’re living in it without you ever knowing. I have had 27 driver’s licenses in six or seven different states. Matthew Cox is settled in the Bay Area after spending more than a decade in federal prison. I was basically responsible for $15 million in title fraud. According to the FBI, it’s one of the fastest growing white-collar crimes in the country, especially in areas like Tampa where the housing market is hot. Hey gang, you know it’s becoming increasingly common for thieves and con artists to get away with their schemes thanks to outdated procedures and holes in cybersecurity.

And the rate at which these processes are changing, I mean it just isn’t keeping up. People are losing their homes and life savings to insanely long legal battles trying to undo the mess created by these situations. So today I’m bringing you a solution to protect your biggest asset. The FBI recently reported that one of the fastest growing crimes in the United States is that of home title theft. People are losing hundreds of millions of dollars each year to thieves who know the simple trick to put the land and property of other hard-working Americans in their own name.

Insane, I know, but what’s even more insane is you’ll find out is just how easy it is to do. One of the craziest cases of title theft happened in San Diego. You baseball fans are going to love this. Petco Park, home of the Padres baseball team, it literally became the property of a mentally ill man for a period of time. According to the San Diego Tribune, Daris Devin McQuay took legal title to the downtown ballpark away from the city in the Padres. Two years ago, by just walking into the San Diego County recorder’s office and submitting a properly filled out deed transfer.

Now apparently this happened so easily because of outdated security measures. But the growing cybersecurity threat makes thefts like these even easier. However, the good news is that a simple and effective solution is indeed available to us all. Retired FBI agent and Turley Talks sponsor Arthur Fitzenmaier of Home Title Lock is here to break down how something this crazy could happen to an entity like the Padres stadium and how your home is actually even easier to take without the proper protection. Not only that, but he’s offering 30 days of home title protection completely free.

24-7 completely free. You can’t go wrong with 24-7 free security gang. So be sure to click on that link below and take advantage of this wonderfully generous offer. So Arthur, welcome. Thank you for taking the time to join me today. You know, Dr. Steve, as the stories go, this one is one of the more bizarre ones that you could hope to encounter here. You have a mentally disturbed man who is probably a pretty bright guy who actually gets kicked out of the area where Padres ballpark is, Petco Park in San Diego, and he decides to take a residency near the county recorder’s office in that building, in the administration building.

And somehow he figures out that if you can fill out a form which you can get online, you know, go to someplace where you get free access, you can probably print out a copy of the deed, the title for Petco Park. He figured out how to fill it out. It’s a very simple thing. It’s a one page document, California. By the way, I live in San Diego area, so this is, you know, I know the details and watch this thing unfold. He actually filled this thing out. I think it costs $30 to file in San Diego.

Some places it’s, you can file these things for as little as 10 bucks and steal somebody’s home. I mean, it doesn’t have to be your home. It can be property anywhere. You know, if you’ve got a condo on the 34th floor, they can steal that too. So if you want some property, first of all, pay attention to the fact that your title is a public document. Anybody can steal it, copy it, forge your signature, which is the first felony, and then file it by paying in San Diego, I think it’s about 30 bucks, and if it’s properly filled out, the county recorder in almost all the jurisdictions in the United States is required to file the document.

They can’t say, ah, it doesn’t look right to me. If all the forms and blanks are filled in, then that has to be filed, and that’s what happened here. This guy had it all filled out, and two years later, the Padres decided to refinance $125 million of their original construction loan, and they got all set to do it, got approval for the loan, and when they went down to pull the title to make sure it could go from the Padres back to the Padres, since the lien was by the lender, they found out that the title wasn’t in their name anymore for two years, and had been sitting there with McQuaig’s name as the owner of the property.

Now, unfortunately for him, he picked one of the highest-profile properties in San Diego, and the police got involved, the district attorney got involved. The courts got involved, and the court eventually decided that McQuaig was mentally disturbed, and they sent him to a facility. So the Padres had to go through the court process to get the park back in their name so they get $125 million loan to pay off the construction loan. I mean, that’s expensive, if you think about just how much it would cost to float $125 million for five or six weeks.

So, you know, even if you had that one-bedroom condo on the 34th floor, if somebody did this to you, they take it out of your name, you do not have any option. You can’t get on there and say, well, no, it’s really mine, it’s not whoever this is. You’re going to have to prove it, and they’re going to say to you, look, you’ve got to get an attorney because we can’t just change these things because you tell me. So, you know, here’s the deal. Get an attorney, and we’ll see it at the courthouse. Now, if you understand, this is civil matter, it’s not a criminal matter.

So it’s going to take probably two years to adjudicate that in any jurisdiction in the United States, and a good real estate law is very complicated, and a good real estate attorney is going to cost you six or eight hundred bucks an hour. And it could take two years or more just to resolve this issue. And at the end of that, if you’re lucky, the judge will have the county recorder put the title back in your name. But you have no recourse on paying the attorney’s fees. So, you know, I’ve had a situation about three years ago now with a family who didn’t have home title lock, by the way, and their title was stolen, and they took it to court, and they fought it, and took them over two years, cost them $50,000 or more.

And when it was all said and done, they had to sell their house to pay the legal fees anyway. So the real answer, quite frankly, is it’s why I’m with this company’s home title lock. You go to home title lock.com, and we will watch your title 24 seven. And I’m not saying we’ve got somebody looking at it. We have the best, most sophisticated software, as far as I’m concerned, on this part of the business. And our software launches it for you 24 seven. If something happens, even a minor thing, you’re going to get an email from our software telling you your title has been disturbed.

And you should call us immediately if you don’t recognize it. And we will help you figure out what it is you call us. We’ll show you the documents online. So here’s the documents that disturbed your title. If you recognize you go, oops, I forgot that home title, you know, lower or whatever. But if you don’t recognize it, then we work, we jump into action right away to help you resolve that and get that title back in your name. And this is so key because if we don’t have that protection, we may not know something like this happened for months.

Isn’t that correct? For months after the fact, if a crook gets a loan on your property, he’s gone. The bunny’s gone. What you’ve got to deal with, they crook down from the lender and the lender is going to knock on your door and say, look, you haven’t paid the mortgage on your property. And so we’re going to get down to the courthouse and get the authority to sell. It’s called foreclosure. We’re going to foreclose on your property and sell it and get our money back. And you know what you’ve got to do. I hate to say it, but you’ve got to get an attorney and fight it all the way.

I know they could do things like asking for handwriting experts and some kind of a financial analysis and all that stuff. Those take lots of dollars to produce as well and the attorney. So you’re looking at something that’s really expensive. Look, for 50 cents a day or whatever it is, you could have home title watching that for you, making sure you sleep well at night. When this company first approached me about doing an endorsement, I looked at it and I said, yikes, I’m at risk. I live in California and everybody has a huge amount of equity in their house.

And with my background, I thought, that may be some smart hat kind of prison somewhere, because they do this in prison, by the way, who just don’t like to make my life miserable because I gave them a 12 year unpaid vacation. So I thought I better, first of all, check my house out and make sure I’m covered. So the first thing I did was I covered my house, my son’s house, my daughter’s house, my mother-in-law’s house, my relative’s house. In fact, in my family, I’ve had one relative who’s had two issues on their title since I put the coverage in place on their house.

They’re in their, they’re in their eighties, which is I’m getting there myself. So I don’t want to be had two instances. One, which a crook who was on bail somehow pledged their house to get his bond from a bail bondsman. And it never hit their title until somebody knocked on the door and they called me and said, what’s going on here? And I looked at it and said, first of all, your title’s fine. That’s why I’ve had everything. But somehow he’s made somebody believe that he owned your house and they would get the money out of your house if he bailed on the surety that he pledged your house for.

I mean, these are things that happen to us all the time. Even something as simple and innocent as a transposed number when the filing is originally filed by the counter recorder’s office can cause you a lot of heartburn down the road if you don’t catch it. If you got home title locked and something gets transposed, when you sign up, as a matter of fact, when you sign up, we’ll make sure that the home that you’re protecting is your home. And now for this 30 day spring, and this is a great deal, believe me, sign up and you get your history of title for your property.

And you’ll look at it and you’ll say, yep, it’s mine and it’s my name. I’m going to sleep well tonight. I mean, it’s really that simple. It’s so interesting because the Petco Park incident was old school, right? I mean, he actually walked in to the county off recorder’s office, submitted, wrote all the paper and so forth. Now in the age of cyber security, cyber threats, we’re dealing with the internet where people don’t even have to be anywhere near your house in order to steal that deed. How does that play into this now? They don’t want your house.

They don’t care about your house. They don’t need to be near it, see it or anything. They’ll get somebody to do a drive by appraisal and they’ll get a private lender who will look at it and say, this house is worth $900,000. When they want $200,000, I’ll get $200,000 back any day of the week if something happens. So that’s how it all happens. There’s so much money involved for the crooks. Why would you do anything else? Why would you steal identity now? Because all the algorithms that the credit cards have and all that stuff, any little wrinkle gets picked up right away.

Your house, you’re on your own. So don’t be on your own. Sign up for Home Title Act. This is a great deal, Steve. You’re bringing to everybody and 30 days, but most importantly, that history of title will give you a little bit of comfort. And you know what? If you were to just dodge one of those designer drive-through coffees one a week, you’d have coverage for Home Title Act coverage for the week and have money left over. So it’s really that cheap. Home Title Act also provides the support if, you know, God forbid your title does get stolen, correct? It’s a holistic approach to protection.

We have what we call a Triple Act plan. It’s monitoring 24-7, alerts, incident alerts if something disturbs your title, and restoration staff who will help you get the title back in your name. It’s really that simple. And for the price of a cup of coffee a week, I mean, it’s foolhardy not to really sign up. And that’s the way I feel about it. And you know what? You don’t think it’s going to happen to you? Well, it’s happened to my family twice. Not to me directly, but I’m glad to say, but it can happen.

And it’ll be the most unimaginable thing to you financially if you don’t know about it right away. Once that first loan is negotiated, you’re in deep trouble. And, you know, within 90 to 120 days, your life is going to take a nightmarish turn legally, emotionally, and financially. And you will never forget it, but you may never ever really completely recover financially as well. The money it takes to get it back in your name can be knee buck. More than the house when all is said and done. It’s more than the house. Certainly a lot more than home title lock.

If you had a $400,000 loan on a $900,000 house and they take out another $300,000 or something, and the only way you’re going to get it is to remargage. And now the interest rates are 7% instead of 3%. You’re looking at a nightmare financially and not to mention emotionally. So how would you like to have a $2,000 mortgage have to go to $5,500, some crazy figure like that? What would that do to you? And in the meantime, if you’d spend 200 bucks for your annual coverage right now with home title lock, you’d be home free.

You know, you would be able to, yeah, darn close to literally, you know, just skip that cup of coffee and you’re in business. It’s that simple. Don’t be, you know, what to say, penny, pound foolish and penny wise and pound foolish or something like that. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Don’t wait later to be to regret that you didn’t do something now when you could have that kind of idea. And you’re giving your viewers and listeners a real big heads up and a nice opportunity to get that 30 days free and a real clean look at what their title looks like.

Most people probably don’t even know what a title is. It’s true. I didn’t, I didn’t before I met you guys. I didn’t know what my title was and then you guys just showed it to me and said, take a look. That’s your title. That’s all it is. This little piece of paper online for everybody to see and they can change it if they want. I mean, if you’re watching this, don’t get caught flat footed. Listen to the man. He’s telling you what you need to do to really secure your, look, probably 75% of your personal network is your house.

Right. And if you lose that, that 300, 400,000, you may have in some various accounts, not going to get you very far. Right. Exactly. Exactly right. Sign up, do it. Click on the link below, bite the bullet and do it exactly. And then it’s 30 days free. That’s the beauty of it. You get to try it out. Tell us what’s included in that, what it looks like for our listeners who are trying to keep their homes safe from this kind of stuff. What is those 30 days free? It’s our title lock protection.

You get our, our full 30 day regular program actually. And it’s, it consists of three parts. It’s called title lock. Simple lock is one is the monitoring 24 seven, which is makes this whole thing work. We have very powerful privately developed security program that monitors this stuff and a national data, national database. We don’t, we don’t go any place near your, your county recorders office. This is all in our national database. And the second part of it is alerts. If something touches your property’s title, you’ll get an immediate alert from our software and it will instruct you to call us right away.

And then when you call us, we will be able to pull up for you to view the actual transaction that has disturbed your title. And if you don’t recognize it, then we have restoration services and these people are, we’re talking about platinum quality people. They’re quite frankly, um, you know, I have to say I do all the backgrounds on all of them. So I know they’re pretty good people, but they, they are so concerned and understanding and so, uh, efficient and making sure that your property stays in your name. And that’s what you want for $200 a year, 50, 60 cents a day.

It’s amazing. Yeah. Yeah. I, I love, yes. Definitely implore them. Don’t waste it. Don’t, I mean, don’t, don’t wait till later to regret you didn’t do something when you could have. That’s when all is said and done. Gang, if you’re diligently checking on your home’s title with your county office, uh, you know, I mean, then you don’t have to worry if you’re always looking every, every other day or whatever. All right. Go away. You’re good. But if you’re like the 99.99% of us who can’t diligently and regularly check in our home’s title with our county office, you know, we could all be the next person evicted from our home drowning in legal fees.

So let home title lock be the 24 seven cyber watchdog here on your behalf. So click on that link below or go to home title lock.com. That’s home title lock.com. And as of today, for the next 30 days, you’re going to have totally free 24 seven protection. There’s absolutely nothing to lose. So click on that link below right now and enjoy the security of feeling protected. Arthur, thank you so much for being with us. It’s fascinating stuff. Thank you so much. It’s my pleasure. I’ve enjoyed it until your viewers listen to the man. [tr:trw].

See more of Dr. Steve Turley on their Public Channel and the MPN Dr. Steve Turley channel.