What I’m thinking about: How a fraudster walked into a U.S. embassy in the Middle East with fake documents…and walked out with notarized closing papers for our Gulf-front FL deal.
We were literally an hour away from wiring $350K for a luxury infill lot when the title company pulled the plug on insuring the property.
Let me paint you the picture:
Even in this tricky market (and our general aversion to infill lots), the deal looked stellar. Conservatively worth $700K (likely closer to $800K), under contract for $350K.
Seller was Canadian, owned the property since picking it up from a bank for $220K during the 2009 crash (it had previously sold for $1.6M in 2006, and that seller immediately defaulted). Story checked out with having financial troubles, and I personally reviewed every line of the seller call transcripts.
Property had been listed twice within the past 3 years (but for only a few days each time. Unusual, but we are used to loose cannon motivated sellers). Understood FIRPTA withholding tax requirements.
The price we were getting was solid, but not “too good to be true,” and there was some hair on the property, such as burrowing owl nests that would have to be addressed, and an old seawall that would need to be replaced for around $40K. Everything aligned.
The seller seemed to (legitimately) work on oil rigs, off the coast of the EU or in the Middle East. He wanted to complete closing via remote online notarization (RON), but that is only allowed within the US and Canada.
We arranged closing for a 2 day window when he would be back in Canada to handle via RON, before flying to Dubai for 2 months.
Closing was scheduled for a Friday afternoon, but as (frequently) happens, the RON start time was significantly delayed…until 730p ET, obviously after biz hours, and no title co. support. The seller was noticeably irritated, and I couldn’t blame him.
We followed up the next day, and the RON was unable to be completed. His ID was verified, but since he didn’t know his SIN offhand (Canadian version of SSN), notary wasn’t able to proceed.
This was a red flag, but not a deal killer. The seller claimed multiple citizenships, and upon deeper research, an SIN is not a given for every Canadian citizen, and primarily serves a tax purpose, not for ID. The fact that he couldn’t get any support on a late Friday evening was also a mitigating factor.
The land investor who brought us this deal had a scanned copy of the seller’s passport, appeared legit, and they had run it through an anti-fraud check. Plus, this land investor is one of the larger ones in the industry, has encountered scams before, and has checks in place.
There was healthy skepticism, but things continued to check out, including the seller having a legit Canadian cellphone…instead of a VOIP number typical of most scammers.
Either way, the window he was in Canada passed by, and we would have to work through a US embassy in Dubai to get the notarization done.
The seller confirmed an appt at the embassy. In the meantime, we confirmed with title that we could still close without the seller having a SIN, or a US TIN (for the purpose of FIRPTA taxes).
Again, we all viewed this as unusual, but if the seller was trying to skirt by on tax req’s, that wasn’t our problem.
(We also had a history of having closed a foreign seller FIRPTA deal in the past with a seller that didn’t have a TIN, and there were no repercussions from the IRS…and mind you, that was when the government wasn’t shut down, with half the workers furloughed.)
Keeping in mind that FL deals require 2 witnesses on the deed, the seller needed to bring those individuals with him to the embassy.
We were skeptical on his ability to deliver…but he maintained his appt, and sent the scanned copies of all the docs back. Seemed legit, title co. gave prelim approval, and we planned to fund the deal and close 2 days later when the originals arrived via DHL.
Notably, the seller requested funds to be distributed across 3 different bank accounts in Dubai, in installments, but again, this was plausible as we weren’t familiar with how every financial institution works, particularly internationally. And we routinely see limits on wire transfers domestically, especially outbound.
The unraveling happened on funding day.
Title company wanted to confirm wire instructions as the final step before close. The seller provided a U.S. domestic account with someone else’s name on it.
Title co. flagged this, and requested explanation from seller. Seller said they were a joint account owner with that “relative”, and recommended that account so could be more convenient compared to the multiple installments of the Dubai accounts.
I called the title co. VP at that point, asking that since we had come this far, just check into the Dubai accounts, and if legit, let’s close, even if they charge more wire fees to seller for the installments.
The title co. went back to reviewing, then shortly after sent a PDF notice saying, “We cannot insure this transaction. We are unable to provide any further details.”
Nevertheless, even though they can’t typically share details about these decisions (liability concerns), I called them and pushed for info given how deep we were.
They were cagey, but said the bank accounts did not check out, and said, “We are very confident this is not the true seller. Multiple flags throughout, and we cannot risk insuring this. The seller package was also suspect, take another look at those IDs.”
I’m staring at the documents. They look legitimate. Passed my threshold. Passed everyone’s threshold.
He couldn’t share more details, but: “Really pay attention to the IDs.“
(Here’s the passport and driver’s license – names and addresses redacted. Take 30 seconds. Notice anything off?)
So I threw them into a sophisticated ChatGPT anti-fraud prompt (credit to Callan’s techniques for detailed context engineering).
The AI flagged ~10 different issues we’d all missed.
The most glaringly obvious one…
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…The driver’s license photo and passport photo are identical.
(If you caught that right away, kudos to you!)
That never happens. Ever. Different photos, different angles, different times. But if you’re not specifically looking for it? Your brain just…doesn’t register it.
And once you do see it, it’s like a slap in the face.
Other red flags the AI caught:
- Passport prefix discontinued before his claimed issuance date
- Signature overlays off by ~5-7 millimeters
- Multiple formatting inconsistencies only visible with forensic-level analysis
Once the reality of this near-miss started to settle in, I had to sit back, frankly in awe of the level of sophistication of this scam.
Think about it:
He did have a base of operations in Canada, and targeted a true owner of a FL property with whom he shared a similar background, and was a near perfect ‘motivated seller’ scenario.
(Open question: The previous listing history of the property, was it the scammer, or the real owner?)
He passed the initial ID req’s of an RON (including passport scan), outside of the SIN…which implies he was able to answer the ID verification q’s like “What color is your [model/year] car?” or “What address did you live at?”
And most astonishingly, he walked into a U.S. embassy…in the Middle East (!)…with fake identification…and 2 witnesses (Were they in on it? Or did they think he was legit?). And successfully got his docs notarized.
Think about the balls required to pull that off.
If you get caught impersonating someone with fraudulent documents in the Middle East…I don’t even want to think about what happens next.
Sweating bullets, holy cow…
(Makes me wonder if he passed through airport security with the same fake docs.)
And he almost walked away with $350K.
Almost.
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We’re now requiring seller IDs upfront and running them through sophisticated AI anti-fraud prompts before investing any DD resources.
Will that catch everything? No. But it would have caught this guy immediately.
To note, FL is the biggest fraud state in the country, and international sellers require extra scrutiny. But even domestic deals…run the IDs through AI before you go deep.
The title company ultimately saved us because they face the most liability. If they’d insured this and the real owner filed a title claim? We’d have to return any profits from selling the property. They’d have to unwind the entire title chain, and refund our initial payment to purchase the property.
Absolute nightmare scenario that could haunt us even years down the road.
Credit to them for catching it when we were all ready to close.
Reality check: We dodged a bullet, and learned a valuable lesson.
Next time? We’ll catch it at the ID verification stage…not on the day of funding.
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Looking for funding from operators who learn from near-disasters? Serious Land Capital now runs AI fraud detection on every seller ID before investing significant DD resources. $50K minimum purchase price. Very liquid, and ready to move at a moment’s notice.
