Sold Without Their Knowledge: How a New Jersey Property Was Stolen in 2023

By Mo Ayadi, Founder of Title Barrier | Updated February 11, 2026

In the summer of 2023, a man called New Jersey real estate agent Lisa Shaw about a piece of vacant land in Randolph, a suburb in Morris County. He said he had owned the property for more than 25 years. He had never actually visited Randolph, he told Shaw, but with real estate prices high, he thought it was a good time to sell. He mentioned that his wife was ill and he needed the proceeds for her medical care.

Shaw had been selling properties in the Randolph area for more than two decades. Nothing about the call seemed unusual. She asked for documentation. The man said he and his wife were Canadian citizens living in England. He provided a British address and copies of what appeared to be Ontario driver's licenses.

What Shaw did not know was that the man on the phone was not the owner of the property. The real owners were a husband and wife living in Texas. They had no idea someone was about to sell their land out from under them.

This is the story of how it happened, why every professional involved missed it, and what it reveals about a type of property fraud that the FBI says has increased by 500% in four years.

The Sale

The Ontario driver's licenses the caller provided carried the real owners' names. But the addresses on the licenses were not theirs. One address belonged to a homeowner in the Toronto area who later told ABC News she had no idea how her address ended up on a fake ID tied to a property sale in New Jersey. The other address belonged to an attorney in England who suspected scammers may have found his information because he previously owned property in Florida.

Shaw had no reason to suspect any of this at the time. The names matched the property records. The documents appeared legitimate. She listed the land and immediately received approximately 10 offers.

When Shaw told the supposed owner that the highest offer was $140,000, he told her to accept it immediately.

Sale documents were prepared. The caller provided paperwork claiming the deed had been notarized at the U.S. embassy in Vietnam. The deal closed in December 2023. The real property owners had no clue any of this had taken place.

The supposed seller asked for the $140,000 payment to be split in half and sent to two different bank accounts.

Where It Unraveled

The first $70,000 payment went through without issue. But the title company ran into problems submitting the second $70,000 to the other bank account.

That triggered a red flag. The title company was able to reach the son of the real property owners. The fraud was confirmed.

But by then, it was too late. The first $70,000 had already been sent. The supposed seller vanished.

Canada's Peel Regional Police later confirmed to ABC News that both Ontario driver's licenses were fakes. The fraudulent deed, however, remained on file at the Morris County Clerk's office. And the buyer who paid $70,000 to the scammer was still listed in county tax records as the new owner of the property, even though the real owners never authorized the sale.

As Shaw later described it to ABC News: nobody involved had any idea it was a scam. Not her, not the attorneys, not the title company.

Not an Isolated Case

The Randolph case is not a one-off. Another New Jersey real estate agent, Derek Doernbach, who works on the Jersey Shore, told ABC News he was contacted by three separate supposed sellers around the same period. All three provided Canadian driver's licenses with the exact same photograph and address as the fake ID used in the Randolph transaction.

Doernbach was suspicious and declined to list any of the three properties. But his experience suggests a coordinated operation, not a single opportunistic scammer.

The pattern extends well beyond New Jersey. In May 2024, FBI special agents Joe Cardosi and Joe Sullivan from the Newark field office described how these schemes typically work. Criminals send solicitations to dozens of real estate agents found through online searches. Even if only a small fraction of agents respond and an even smaller fraction of those result in actual sales, the payoffs add up quickly. The agents described one case where solicitations went out more than 60 times in a single hour.

Victims have discovered the fraud in different ways. Some saw a "for sale" sign appear on land they had not listed. One owner tried to pay property taxes and was told the bill had already been paid. Another had police show up for a welfare check initiated by a suspicious realtor.

Jim Dennehy, then the Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI's New York office (and previously the head of FBI Newark), told ABC News that reported vacant land fraud had increased by 500% over four years.

Why It Keeps Working

Several features of this type of fraud make it difficult to catch before money changes hands.

County recorders cannot reject documents based on suspicion. As long as a deed meets basic statutory recording requirements, such as proper formatting and a notarization, New Jersey law requires the county clerk to accept and record it. A law firm specializing in New Jersey criminal law, Wilentz, Goldman & Spitzer, has noted that property owners should not assume someone at the county clerk's office will recognize a fraudulent filing.

Vacant land has no occupant to notice. Emily Bowden, executive officer of the Sussex County Association of REALTORS, explained to ABC News why vacant land is particularly vulnerable. People who own undeveloped lots often go months or years without checking on them. If the owner lives in another state, as the Texas couple in the Randolph case did, there is no one physically present to see a "for sale" sign or encounter a surveyor.

Remote transactions are normal. Real estate deals are routinely conducted without the buyer and seller ever meeting in person. Electronic communication, DocuSign, and remote notarization have made the process more convenient for everyone, including criminals. When a seller says they live overseas, that alone is not a red flag in today's market.

Fake documents are increasingly convincing. The scammers in the Randolph case provided identification with the correct names of the real property owners, addresses that corresponded to real homes, and notarization paperwork claiming to come from a U.S. embassy. As FBI agents Cardosi and Sullivan noted, these criminals can answer most questions about a property based on what they find through simple online searches of public records.

The Fallout

For the real property owners, discovering that their land was sold without their knowledge is just the beginning of a long process.

A forged deed is legally void, which means the real owners retain their legal ownership. But unwinding the transaction is not simple. The fraudulent deed remained on file at the Morris County Clerk's office. The innocent buyer who purchased the property in good faith was listed in county records as the new owner. Sorting out competing claims to the same property typically requires a quiet title action, a legal proceeding that can cost anywhere from $1,500 to well over $100,000 depending on complexity, and can take months or years to resolve.

As the FBI's Dennehy warned, if the money is already gone, what follows is likely a long period of litigation.

Meanwhile, the scammers are rarely caught. In the Randolph case, ABC News reported in September 2024 that the FBI was investigating, but the homeowners in Canada and England whose addresses were used on the fake IDs said they had not been contacted by American law enforcement. The FBI would not confirm or deny details of its investigation.

New Jersey Is Fighting Back

The Randolph case is part of a broader pattern of deed fraud that has prompted action at multiple levels in New Jersey.

In February 2023, the New Jersey Attorney General announced guilty pleas from two men who had created at least 20 fake deeds for Atlantic City properties and filed them with the Atlantic County Clerk's Office. One of the properties they claimed to own was a parcel along the boardwalk that actually belonged to Atlantic City itself, valued at over $1 million. Out-of-state investors paid the scammers approximately $580,000 for properties they would never actually own. The primary orchestrator, Richard Toelk Jr., was sentenced to three years in prison. His business partner, attorney Keith Smith, received five years of probation and was ordered to pay restitution.

County clerk offices across New Jersey have responded by implementing free property fraud alert systems. Morris County, where the Randolph fraud took place, now urges property owners to sign up for notifications when documents are recorded against their name or property. Burlington County, Passaic County, and others offer similar programs.

The FBI's Newark office has been conducting outreach with real estate professionals across the state, educating agents and title companies on how to spot the warning signs.

What This Case Teaches Property Owners

The Randolph case is a clear example of how deed fraud plays out in practice. It was not a sophisticated cyberattack or a complex financial scheme. It was a phone call, some fake IDs, forged notarization paperwork, and the exploitation of a system built on trust.

If there is one lesson from this case, it is that property protection cannot be purely reactive. By the time the title company flagged the failed second payment, $70,000 was already gone and the deed had already been recorded.

Here is what property owners can do, especially those who own vacant land or property in a state where they do not live.

Sign up for county property alerts. This is free in many New Jersey counties and across the country. You will receive a notification when any document is recorded against your property. It will not prevent the filing, but it will tell you about it before the consequences compound.

Check your property records periodically. Visit your county recorder's website and confirm that no new deeds, liens, or mortgages have been filed that you did not authorize. For vacant land you do not visit regularly, this is especially important.

Freeze your credit with all three bureaus. A credit freeze will not stop a deed transfer, but it makes it harder for someone to take out a mortgage or home equity loan against a stolen title.

Consider proactive title protection. Monitoring services alert you when filings occur at your county recorder's office. Some services, like Title Barrier's Defense Plan, go further by recording a legal declaration directly on your property's chain of title, which puts title companies, lenders, and buyers on formal notice that unauthorized transfers should not be processed.

If you own property in another state, be especially vigilant. The real owners in the Randolph case lived in Texas. Their vacant land was in New Jersey. That physical distance is exactly what made them a target. If you own out-of-state property, the combination of county alerts, periodic record checks, and either a monitoring or protection service is the minimum level of attention your property deserves.

---

Sources

1. ABC News: FBI warns scammers are impersonating landowners to sell properties to unsuspecting buyers (September 2024) — abcnews.go.com/US/fbi-warns-scammers-impersonating-landowners-sell-properties-unsuspecting/story?id=113218044
2. FBI Newark Field Office: Fraudsters Are Stealing Land Out from Under Owners (May 2024) — fbi.gov/contact-us/field-offices/newark/news/fraudsters-are-stealing-land-out-from-under-owners
3. New Jersey Attorney General: Guilty Pleas of Scammers Who Made Fake Deeds for Atlantic City Properties (February 2023) — njoag.gov/ag-platkin-announces-guilty-pleas-of-scammers-who-made-fake-deeds-for-atlantic-city-properties-conned-investors-out-of-nearly-600k
4. New Jersey Attorney General: Sentencing of Two Men Who Used Phony Deeds (May 2023) — njoag.gov/update-ag-platkin-announces-sentencing-of-two-men-who-used-phony-deeds-for-atlantic-city-properties-to-defraud-investors
5. Wilentz, Goldman & Spitzer P.A.: Deed Fraud - What Is It and How Can You Protect Yourself — wilentz.com/blog/criminal-law/2025-04-17-deed-fraud-what-is-it-and-how-can-you-protect-yourself
6. ALTA 2025 Survey of Real Estate Professionals — Referenced via mostpolicyinitiative.org/science-note/real-estate-title-fraud
7. Morris County Clerk's Office: Property Records Search — morriscountyclerk.org/Services/Online-Property-Records-Search

---

Disclosure: Title Barrier is a property protection service. This article covers a real case reported by ABC News and the FBI. All facts are sourced from the reporting and public records linked above.