This episode details a sophisticated fraud attempt on a $350K Florida waterfront deal where the scammer passed notarization at a US embassy in Dubai before AI analysis caught duplicate passport photos.
Key Takeaways:
- Fraudsters Can Beat Embassy Checks The scammer used fake Canadian documents to pass remote online notary verification and physically notarized documents at the US embassy in Dubai with witnesses—traditional checkpoints failed completely.
- AI Detected What Humans Missed A detailed ChatGPT prompt identified 10+ subtle inconsistencies including identical passport and driver’s license photos (never happens), discontinued passport prefixes, and 5-7mm signature overlay misalignments.
- Florida Leads Fraud Nationally Operating in the highest-fraud state with a year-long transaction timeline and international seller created perfect storm conditions—now requiring AI-based ID screening before investing resources in any deal.
Listen to the full episode for the complete fraud playbook and early detection strategies.
(Podcast transcript below)
Welcome to get serious. Another pretty crazy story here. So, paying attention to the podcast the past few weeks, we have been, working on this, anticipated 350 K purchase, waterfront infill lot in Florida. That seemed like it was an easy to X conservative margin.
You know, we completed all the DD we had broker lined up everything checked out for this property and from this Canadian seller and You know, there were some question marks associated with them, but you know motivated sellers like so many of them are loose cannons and have a lot going on with their life that
not enough kind of tipped us off that there was something like really off with them, but, you know, the punchline is that, this was a really sophisticated, fraudster and, know, we got to the day of funding, like literally right before title company was approving, the final parts of the closing, you know, all the docs were notarized deed, cetera.
before they ultimately determined that the seller was not who they said they were, which is, you know, frankly, pretty impressive to get that far into the process and was able to fool all of us along the way. Or even when we had certain red flags come along the way, like there was, they were always able to keep moving things forward.
and have enough of a rationale that you know, we believed in spite of some of the evidence that Things were still trending in the right direction to actually complete the sale here, so I will just run down some of the Key flags about this and how ultimately we sorted out the fraud here
and the scam and I’m going to do a full breakdown within the serious news newsletter is well here too and as well as how we could catch fraud attempts like this much earlier before we invest so many resources. Ultimately, yeah, it sucks we didn’t get the deal to close, but ultimately much better compared to if our money was actually wired out.
in the first place here, so could be a lot worse. But we also invested tens of hours into getting the deal this far along, had everything ready to go and for it to fall apart literally the day of funding. So I would obviously love to prevent that much work going in earlier in the process. And now I think we have some techniques to do so.
To give more of a breakdown here, know first this is an international seller you always generally have to suspect You know folks that aren’t US citizens a bit more for possible fraud like there’s just more ways for them to hide Potentially, especially for various offshore accounts But you know in this case this guy picked like a really, you know, he he matched with
you know, this single seller in, in Florida here, like beautiful waterfront property. It’s like, you know, too good to be true. This type of deal to find waterfront on the golf, for this type of price. And, you know, you can suspect that, but there, I mean, we’re in the land industry. Like there’s plenty of times we’ve found people that are just in various levels of distress and you’re just picking up an asset that is, you know, clearly worth a lot more than what they’re selling it for. So.
that wasn’t like enough for us to just immediately trigger. like having, again, he just chose things very carefully. Like this person that owned this property was also based in Canada. And the property’s history was that somebody had picked it up, bought it at the height of the previous real estate bubble. Or rather, should say COVID was really the previous bubble now, which we’re crashing out of.
Um, but you know, pre GFC, somebody bought this infill lot for $1.6 million and then defaulted almost immediately by like, Oh seven or Oh eight. Uh, so the bank acquired it. And then this seller, you know, the person who was dealing with us, they purchased the property in like the midst of the GFC and mid 2009 for like 220 grand. So, you know, we were picking up the property for three 50, which was like,
you know, for a property that was conservatively worth 700, probably a bit more than that. You know, not outside the realm of possibility and the fact that, oh yeah, I picked it up at such, you know, a great price over 15 years ago, could be feeling more distressed now, still like earning a profit on the property. Plus there was some like weird listing history even over the last year.
You know a little over six months ago the property was listed for like a day, which I kind of wonder now We never reached out to that broker But whether that was the fraudster kind of impersonating The seller and then got taken down over a day Plus they had tried to list it as well like three years ago, but it only was like for five days So like it lended itself to a story of like yeah, this person is just they’re a bit of a loose cannon
You know, maybe they sign a listing agreement and immediately bail and they’re like, yeah, I just want to get this thing off the market. Like that’s, know, I reviewed the transcripts from the phone and everything. All of it, you know, was checking out. you know, we were able to trace back the. The lead to a legitimate cell phone. Like it wasn’t Google voice or via VOIP, phone line. like this guy was, you know, it was a Canadian phone line as well too.
Like all of that was checking out plus we had the passport photo of this seller And the land investor who brought us this deal, I guess a very sophisticated operator. They’ve been around a long time Bigger team and they had been like they’ve dealt with fraud in the past before so they had initial fraud checks And it was passing all these like legit phone line They ran it through and you know AI image and I’ll switch the passport and was like, okay seems to be coming back fine
you know, I’m not an expert in Canadian passports when I saw it, seemed okay. just looking at it, you know, it passes a cursory, initial review. and you know, there were some warning signs throughout this, you know, this guy seemed to be working on oil rig off the coast of Denmark, which again, like it’s, I don’t, that, that wasn’t like an immediate trigger for possible,
You fraud like again, who knows what happened with this guy with his life. It’s just busy with other Jobs and yeah trying to let go of this property Like he understood the FERCTA requirements, which is like, you know for foreign sellers You have to have a withholding tax on behalf of the buyer So like he was mentioning. Yeah, I’ve looked into this I’m willing to sign off on it. Like all of this was still seeming legit and
You know, one of the key warning signs was, you know, we got to the first anticipated close date where this guy, you know, he’s just traveling often, like from Europe to Middle East to Canada. And he was like in Canada for a couple of days and you can only do remote online notaries in the U S or Canada. And so he was asking, Hey, can I do an RLN while I’m here in Canada? And so he showed up and passed the initial, you know, ID check.
you know, we, we know how, you know, you have to answer like certain questions about, you know, your own personal background and so forth. I didn’t test out this R01, but I’ve never signed up for or done a remote online notary where, you know, you have to answer like, did you live at this street address or what color is your car and something like that? so presumably those, barriers were in place and he was able to pass them.
You know, it passed the passport screen, which is like, seems like a pretty sophisticated app, right? You know, the whole photo check and everything like that. but he did not have a social, identification number, which is basically a social security number for Canada. and, so the closing docs weren’t able to be signed because he didn’t have that, which
You know, it a concern, but it like it’s not, it wasn’t something that was going to fully break down the deal for us either because, know, for the sake of IDs, you know, when we go to notarize stocks and anything, yeah, for ROI and you need your social to kind of confirm identity. But anytime you go to the bank or have more notary, you just need your form of a photo ID. And so like, you know, the fact that this guy doesn’t have it and he also
you know, it’s claiming multiple, multiple citizenship. also did like a deeper dive into, you know, chat GPT around, like does everybody have an SI on in Canada? And it was like, usually most people do, but if they’re working outside of the country, like it’s not a firm requirement. so like there was some gray area. So to us, it was like, okay, you know, it’s not really our business who
or how he handles kind of the taxes on the back end. That’s not our problem. We just want his ID confirmed so that we can get titles to the property and move on about our business. And the title company did accept this and they still move forward though. Again, everybody was kind of flagging, hey, there could be something here. And then this guy had to fly back to the Middle East and he was going to work on another oil rig like off the coast of Dubai or something.
or not something that is what the case was. And so he was going to be there for a few months. And so we’re like, okay, the only way, you know, since we can’t do RON anymore and you don’t have this social number, you know, you can go to the U.S. embassy in Dubai and get the docs physically notarized there. And again, this is a Florida property, so you need two witnesses to be brought forth into the actual embassy itself.
Plus it’s pretty expensive. It’s 50 bucks per notarization to do that. And this guy, he scheduled it. He understood the requirements and also realized, yeah, for that embassy notarization, you did not need a social identification number for Canada, which again, like we were willing to accept for that. And so as we were anticipating this other closing date, you we were also
aligning on the FERPTA forms, again, foreign withholding tax, when a seller of land is foreign, you have to fill out a certain tax form for the IRS. And this guy didn’t have a US tax ID number either, which I was even less concerned about because again, it’s only related to the taxes for the seller of the property. So if he ever wants to recoup,
some type of, refund from the IRS, like he’s on the hook for producing a U S T I N. But for us, like, again, it really doesn’t matter. You know, the, and, and in our experience, and we’ve done this before for like way smaller properties in, the past, where we had sellers that did not have a T I N, but we still, you know, sent in the money to the IRS and the IRS never threw a fit about.
Especially now the government shut down and so many workers furloughed like that’s going to be on the bottom of their concern pile. So we took a calculated risk and it was like, okay, even if the IRS slaps us with a bit of a fine, because the seller did not have a tax ID, like, are they really going to complain that they’re about to get 50 grand of taxes into their coffers right now? Probably not. that was a risk we were willing to take.
And again, like the seller could apply for a TIN at any point. you know, again, that’s that’s his own tech situation, like not really our concern. So Tile Company was willing to sign off on that as well. Again, just like being mindful. Yeah, riskier too. But for us is like, hey, yeah, if this guy is like his ID is being validated, notarization, et cetera.
this still seems legit and he still was like, you know, to me it was reading more of like kind of a frazzled operate. Like it didn’t seem overly scammy, I guess I would say. Like he wasn’t like really pushing, get the money. It was almost like we were chasing him a little bit more and we knew we had a good deal on the hands too. Again, really smooth and sophisticated operators. 2020 hindsight, there’s like a lot that added up.
But you can see, like, he passed so many of these checkpoints that a lot of other scammers wouldn’t be able to do. Like, just pick the perfect property, perfect name. You know, clearly was able to bypass notarization with, you know, fake passport. And, you know, the day came where it was time to go to the embassy and he succeeded. He gave us the scans back, you know, brought witnesses.
to the US embassy passed all those notarization checkpoints, got approved, like I’m even looking at them right now. And yeah, they were considering his passport, fake passport. mean, imagine like, it’s, almost, again, of like admire the cojones on this guy, like going into the Middle East into an embassy and.
Walking in with with fake ID and who note like were these witnesses also in on the scam or were they like, you know, legitimate people and thought he was like the real guy You I would just be sweating bullets. I mean again, can you imagine if you’re getting? caught for impersonating an individual or just somebody like You know the notary like pointing out a fraudulent passport when here when you’re in the Middle East Like it’s just crazy
Like this it’s that’s so bold really really ballsy to do that and yet it worked like he was able to to sign and You know sent back this scan package got it on a DHL the title company got the docs We were all set to close yesterday actually for this and also had a scanned copy of the ID And he had his wire info in there and again, it was a bit unusual because it was like
three different bank accounts in Dubai and he was asking for different installments there, which again would like throw off a trigger a bit. But again, my threshold for being flagged was just, or the bar to overcome was just lower or rather, is it a high bar or a lower? Probably a higher bar for,
threshold for fraud because it’s like I don’t know how other banks and financial institutions work in other countries Maybe that you know What was necessary or they had certain limits coming in like we’ve seen that for? Sending wires routinely like we see that in the US plenty of times or it’s like you capped at 30 50k whatever sending out Wires so maybe on the recipient side to like there could be limitless. So was like unusual, but it wasn’t
You know something that was just glaringly obvious And and even same for the title company like yeah, you know, it’s not typical but You know could be and again, it was like a notarized doc like they you know approve these bank accounts with his name on it and then So the day of closing like really the only last things we had to do was just the title company wanted to confirm
wire info with seller and got him on the line and everything. And I guess this guy, this is where it all fell apart. And he tried to provide a U S domestic account that he claimed was a joint account, but it had somebody else’s name on it. So that like really triggered the title company and like, Hey, this does not seem legit. We, and they flagged it more for us. Like, Hey, this
this might not be something we can ensure now. Like there’s been multiple flags. This is kind of like the last straw. and you know, the seller came back and he’s like, Hey, no, it’s a joint account. My name is on there. Otherwise again, you can use the Dubai accounts, but you know, it’s just the installment. It’s going to be less convenient. So like, again, unusual, but still plausible. with that, and we had come so far and again, he passed all this notarization. Like I was still, Hey, can you, can you just check these Dubai accounts? Even if it’s inconvenient, just charge them more wire fees, whatever.
do it. But then the title company, as they were trying to validate that, they came back and just gave a notice like, hey, we cannot ensure this transaction. And normally they can’t share anything when they, you know, make a decision like that, because then, you know, they have some liability for what was their decision making. But because we got so far, I got their, you know, escrow or VP on the line. like, dude, you can just give me something here on why this fell apart.
And he wasn’t able to share everything about it. He’s like, we are very, confident that this is not the true seller of this property. There’s multiple flags along the way. now, yeah, we checked all these bank accounts. He is not on these domestic ones. The Dubai ones do not check out either. And I was asking for something a little, and he was like, even look at the scan package, what he sent back, the IDs.
Like take a look at those and again, like I had it in front of my face and sometimes it’s like, you know those picture books where you have to stare at the image in a certain way for the or you know, what are some of those other images where you can sometimes like see the Face of the woman or like a vase sometimes what’s it but until that moment is that you can switch your brain over like you might just miss it So I was looking at these IDs
And again, like they just look legit, like it’s passing my threshold. I’m like, can you just tell me something, some more details about what the problem is?
And, he was like, yeah, I really can’t share. This is already more than I should be sharing. But he’s like, hey, just really pay attention to the IDs here. And then like we wrapped up the call. And so I took the IDs and threw in like a really sophisticated AI prompt to, you know, do anti-fraud and kind of use like talents.
techniques for just a lot of context, like, Hey, I really need you to point out all the key things wrong with these IDs. And I, again, like credit to AI here, like it pointed out, you know, like 10 different factors, subtle, but, you know, why those IDs were fraudulent. and you know, a number of things, I won’t go over all of them, but like the most glaringly obvious one.
which again, like just on a cursory review looking at it, just, you know, misses the first time looking at this and like no one on our team caught it. No one at the title company, like initially, um, you know, caught it, uh, or, know, even any of us that were looking at these, um, uh, documents was that the picture or the profile picture of, um, the seller in his driver’s license was the same as in his passport, which is like, Oh yeah, that never happened. So,
But again, something that if you’re not looking for that, it’s just something that you’re kind of missing. But then it’s like, my gosh, that is so glaringly obvious. And then there were, you know, like certain or there was like a prefix on the Canadian passport that had been discontinued a few years ago.
you know, before like his issuance came. like, you know, subtle stuff that if you’re not like an expert in passport ID review and why he could pass like, again, he passed the U.S. embassy notarization review or remote online notary. You know, like it was not a terrible job of fraud here. Or, you know, a few of these like signature overlays were off by like five to seven millimeters like.
according to the AI. you know, like really subtle stuff that, you know, it helped to be able to point out once we took it through. And so now it’s like, all right, to prevent this from ever happening again, like really sophisticated fraudster, again, getting literally to the day of closing, able to pass all of these checkpoints, like really, really solid job by him to get that far.
But how to prevent that is like, now we’re just, we’re going to require seller ID here and at least put it through like an anti-fraud, sophisticated chat GPT prompt for like an initial AI analysis. you know, why that won’t be the end all be all it should, like it would have been able to catch this guy. if, we had reviewed and we only had his passport to start, we didn’t have the driver’s license to compare, but even with the passport, we should have been able to catch on some of this stuff earlier on.
That would have prevented all of this rigmarole and effort if we had done that in the first place So now that is our lesson here to prevent this from happening again And you ultimately yeah, we rely on the title company to assist with this because you know, ultimately They’re the ones who would be liable, know, if there is a title issue So like even if we acquired the property we would have title and even if we sold it we could like it’s reliant on the true seller
to then make a claim that, there’s title fraud going on. And then that whole title chain will have to be unwound, which is a whole nasty business. So like we would have to give back profits that we might’ve got from the deal. We’d have to get funds back from the title company itself. So like it would’ve still been a big mess, but like we wouldn’t have been, you know, directly liable for that issue. like you-
Again, if we were trying to do something like this outside of working with a title company, mean buyer beware to do something like that but You know, that’s why well we’re on the lookout for fraud like, you know title companies like that is their primary job to sort out because they’re ultimately the ones that are gonna be on the hook to sort that so Florida biggest state in the country for fraud as well to you, you know, just being mindful of that like
just be careful out there because these guys are good. 350k that we nearly wired out for a situation like that. so hopefully some of these warning signs will be helpful for you all, at least an entertaining story for you. And looking forward to actually working on a legit transaction. We still closed one earlier this weekend.
Now we have more cash to work with, so send more stuff over. With that, SeriousLand.Capital from New Funding Needs, Land Daily Diligence Facebook Group, and LandPricer.AI, most reliable land pricing tool in the market. Subscribe and share, everybody. Take care. Talk to you next time. Bye.
