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The Elderly and Real Estate Fraud in Canada
Reporters ask great questions, and Harold Levy from the Toronto Star is no exception:
- How common in North America are fraudulent schemes where the fraudsters become tenants in order to perpetuate some form of title fraud?
- What is your advice to landlords to avoid these situations?
Levy posed those questions to me last week because of a story he was working on for this past Saturday’s edition of the Toronto Star. Thieves, Levy told me, stole an 89-year-old Toronto man’s identity, and by using a falsified power of attorney were able to have a nonexistent grandson sell the man’s property to an unsuspecting purchaser. What happens next could be even more shocking… the man may lose his house forever because Ontario law recognizes the transaction as valid!
From the Toronto Star:
Paul Reviczky, who fled Hungary in 1957 to escape Communist persecution, is one of the latest homeowners to discover that Ontario law favours banks, mortgage companies and purchasers over victims of fraud….
Reviczky purchased the property at 220 Sheppard Ave. W. in 1980 for $67,500 to generate a rental income that would help pay for the education of relatives back in Hungary….
Since his wife’s death in February 2005, he has lived alone in his home a few kilometres from the rental property.
Reviczky could not believe his ears on June 26 when his neighbour, a real estate agent, told him she had noticed on the computer that he had sold his rental property in May.
“So I went back to my office, got the record from the computer and showed it to him,” Vivian Ho told the Toronto Star. “His face turned red and I was worried that he was going to have a heart attack.”Police believe Reviczky’s most recent “tenants” forged his name on a power of attorney that purported to give a grandson named “Aaron Paul Reviczky” authority to sell the home on his behalf. “I don’t have a grandson named Aaron,” Reviczky says. “I don’t have any grandsons.”
Ralph Roberts, a Michigan-based expert on mortgage fraud, says inroads will not be made into burgeoning real property and mortgage fraud until more homeowners and legislators become aware it exists. “There is not enough of a public awareness,” he says. “People just keep getting dragged into it one after another.”
Click here for Levy’s entire story. What happened to Mr. Reviczky is sad but unfortunately not uncommon.
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