I have been an AARP member for twenty five years or more and their magazine often has interesting material over those years concerning scams that are directed to older folks.

Some are obvious to any alert person who isn’t likely to give Social Security number or credit card numbers to every sweet voiced Southern girl who rings just to check something out for you. Some are harder to believe, like the number of priests who have managed to persuade widows and sometimes widowers to will their property to the ever present and persistent cleric.

And then there’s this one that could be done to just about anyone, however smart or alert. Look it it with care. You may be next; particularly if you have paid your mortgage in full and are looking forward to what the glossies call the Golden Years. What a joke in the country where money is God.

Anyway here’s a synopsis from a recent AARP article that really brought the scam home as a possibility.

There was a lady who lived outside the city in Philadelphia but owned a row house in the city. Her name is Bidwell. She wanted some minor work done on the city home and hired a contractor to do it. She was phoned by the contractor who was pained that someone else was already at work gutting and redoing the place when he turned up to fulfill her order.

She went to her place and found that someone had bought it and was renovating it. The new ‘owner’ showed her a transfer deed with Bidwell’s signature forged on it. The house had been sold for $5000, a tiny fraction of its worth.

Bidwell went to City Hall to complain that her house had been stolen. When she announced this to the clerk rather audibly, a great number of people working on computers to research the addresses of city homes owned by people who lived outside the city just scattered, “like cockroaches” said Bidwell.

It took her over a year and $16,000 in fees to the ever present legal vultures to get her house back.

It works like this. Crooked operators comb public property records. When they find a possible coup they buy property transfer forms from a local office supply store. Costs about $10. The signature of the “seller” is forged and then the crooks file the transfer paperwork with the local county recorder’s office.

In many states it isn’t obligatory for the seller’s signature to be validated, and anyway the crooks can also create fake ID’s to verify the signature.

Using the new deed the home is sometimes sold at a fraction of its value for quick cash, as in the case of Bidwell, or more likely the hijacked home is used as collateral for a large loan. Lenders are more likely to lend money to someone whose home is paid for and who can use the home as collateral. Then the crooks scamper off with the money. Everyone is scammed, included the people who bought the bargain house, the lenders who loaned the money on collateral, and the victims who have to pay exorbitant lawyers’ fees to get the matter straightened out.

Obviously the elderly are more likely to have a paid up mortgage than the younger folks. And judging from the workmanship I see going in the new homes in my area, the mortgage will last longer than the property. And the elderly are the main targets. Hence the AARP article.

As a proof of how easy it is to do this and how the bureaucratic eyes only see what is on the dotted line where they expect to see it, a Daily News reporter from the Big Apple decided to transfer ownership of a piece of paid up property to a real estate company that he invented.

This was William Sherman who has won a Pulitzer Prize for journalism. He went to the appropriate public New York offices, downloaded the existing title deed of the Empire State Building, and transferred ownership of it to a company he invented called Nelots Properties LLC. Scrabble players will see that it’s the word Stolen written backwards. It took him 90 minutes to steal the Empire State Building without any official eyebrows being raised.

As soon as the deed was done and the property legally his he transferred it back. But if someone can do that to the Sears Tower of New York City how easy would it be to pick up that nice little vacation place that you only visit twice a year?

Yes, I know that as a Brit I might be expected to call it the Willis Tower just because a British company CNN did some filling up of blank suites. But many of my ancestors were superstitious sailors and none of them would ever sail on a ship that had a name change. “Very bad luck, You mark my words” as Mr. Gibbs would say. I watched it being built from my office on Jackson. It’s always going to be the Sears Tower to me.

So maybe you should check with your local recorder of deeds and see if they have the software, which is available, that will notify you immediately of any transfer of ownership of your property. Pester them till they get it if they don’t currently have it.

Or maybe, if you are the kind of person who just has to be in the majority, why don’t you learn to be a crook. They certainly seem to be becoming a majority nowadays from political appointees down to gravediggers, with lawyers at every step or half step in between. Happy Trails whichever you choose. As my mother used to say, “I don’t care what you do with your education. Just make sure you are good at what you do.”