Closer Loses Faith in Church Deal
Find out how a closing agent in Savannah, Georgia used multiple red flag warnings to derail a crime involving church members.
Korinne Zebrowski, a superior closing manager based in Savannah, Georgia, received a closing request from a man we will
refer to as “Mr. POA,” who was acting as a “representative” of the seller (not a real estate agent). Mr. POA said the seller
was an investor who did not attend closings and he would sign as attorney-in-fact for the seller. When Korinne attempted to
coordinate the execution of the seller’s Power of Attorney in her office, Mr. POA said the Power of Attorney had already been
executed and the original would be provided to Korinne at closing.
After Korinne received the sales contract from Mr. POA, she began the process of opening the file and ordering the title
report. However, when she called the phone number listed for the seller, she realized it was Mr. POA’s cellular phone number!
When Korinne asked Mr. POA for the seller’s fax number, he asked that she forward any faxes to him instead. Korinne really
became suspicious when she called the buyer and Mr. POA once again answered. He claimed that he was “helping out” both the
buyer and seller, and requested that Korinne send the buyer’s information sheet to him as well.
Korinne was very concerned that Mr. POA was defrauding the lender by representing himself to be the buyer. Using the reverse
address look-up feature on www.anywho.com, Korinne performed searches on
the buyer’s name and Mr. POA’s phone numbers. All searches led to a single address for a church located in Liberty County,
Georgia.
Korinne was determined to find out if the buyer knew about the transaction. At Korinne’s request, the lender provided images
of the buyer’s canceled rent checks. Korinne noticed that they were all drawn on an account for a local chapter of the same
church under which Mr. POA’s phone numbers were listed. It appeared that the buyer was claiming to live and work at the same
address as the church. In addition, one of Korinne’s co-workers, who is a criminal paralegal, pointed out that all of
the rent checks were made payable to an individual notorious for his involvement in organized crime in Georgia.
Korinne immediately called the lender and asked if she had ever actually spoken to the buyer, since the entire application was
completed via telephone and fax. The lender insisted she had. But when Korinne asked which contact number she used to reach the
buyer, the lender read Mr. POA’s cellular phone number.
Korinne told the lender that the number was Mr. POA’s and advised her to be extra diligent when researching this buyer because
someone might be trying to commit mortgage fraud. Korinne then asked the lender to fax the buyer’s loan application and
driver’s license to her.
But what Korinne discovered next was most unsettling: Mr. POA’s signatures on the mortgage application and the title contract
as attorney-in-fact for the seller matched the seller’s signature on the recorded Power of Attorney exactly! But to be
absolutely sure she was looking at a forgery, Korinne looked up a deed signed by the seller using
www.gsccca.org. It was definitely not the same signature that
appeared on the contract or the Power of Attorney. She also noticed the transfer tax stamp on the most recent deed of record
reflected the property had been purchased for only $76,000 just six weeks prior to the new contract of $125,000.
Korinne reviewed the signatures on the faxed copies of the buyer’s loan application and driver’s license and compared them to
the buyer’s social security card. While the signatures on the driver’s license and social security card matched each other,
they did not match the signatures on the loan application or contract. The lender never even noticed this discrepancy. It was
blatantly obvious that Mr. POA had forged signatures for both the buyer and the seller on more than one document and had
misrepresented himself as the buyer.
Despite the parties’ relationship with a church, Korinne was quickly losing faith in this transaction. She finally spoke to
someone who claimed to be the buyer. While he was aware that his identity was being used in the transaction, he didn’t know
the address of the property or the name of his lender!
Korinne highly recommended that the lender find a reason not to close this loan. The closing attorney contacted Mr. POA and
told him the Company would not close the transaction without meeting both the buyer and seller in person and examining their
photo identifications in our office. The closing attorney also required that the Power of Attorney be executed in our office.
To Korinne’s relief, the closing died. The final nail in the coffin, per the lender’s request, was telling Mr. POA that the
loan was not approved because the current owner had not held title long enough. To Korinne’s further relief, she never heard
from Mr. POA again.
Moral of the Story
Being denied direct contact with the parties involved in a transaction is always a red flag. Korinne knew she works in a state
where an obscene amount of real estate and mortgage fraud takes place; no lender or attorney’s office is immune. People intent
on committing real estate fraud are banking on the closing office being too busy to discover what they are up to.
While researching the matters discussed in this story might sound time-consuming and burdensome, Korinne’s efforts all took
place in a day’s work. For her diligence, Korinne received a $500 reward from FNTG!
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