LAND FRAUD

Mr. REYES, a businessman went to the City Hall to pay for the annual real estate tax of their property only to get the biggest surprise of his life. The registration of his land had been canceled and transferred to another by virtue of a sale. When he saw the documents which became the basis in canceling the title and consequently the issuance of a new one in another person’s name, he saw that his signatures on the Deed of Sale as well as the other documents have been forged.

This is a common Modus Operandi which has been in operation for decades now. I have handled enough fraud cases such as this for me to understand how the syndicate operates. By syndicate, I meant that this type of MO would not have been perpetrated by a single individual but by a group which more often than not includes people from the Register of Deeds.

This is how it goes.

First, the syndicate identifies a target property, one which in most cases is vacant or unoccupied and afterwards verifies from the Assessor’s Office if the same is “titled” and if so determines the title number covering it. Afterwhich, they go on to secure a copy of the Real Property Tax Declaration as well as a Certified True Copy of the title from the Register of Deeds. This is very easy because such are considered public documents accessible anytime for a fee. Once the syndicate has secured a copy of the title, they proceed to the “fakers’ haven” in C.M. Recto, Manila to have the title copied. From an ordinary person’s point of view, the one manufactured in Recto when compared with the genuine owner’s duplicate and registry copy yield a perfect match, be it on the paper or the typewriter set (pica or elite). To make a fake duplicate of a title in Recto commands a price of P 5,000.00 to P 15,000.00 depending on the difficulty of preparation, that is based on the number of annotations to be copied.

Once the documents are in set, a syndicate member assumes the name of the real owner, and proceeds with identifying a potential victim willing to buy the property or accept it as mortgage for a loan.

Their marketing strategy goes this way. Purported seller needs to immediately dispose of his property for only this so amount, relatively cheaper than its fair market value. Oftentimes, the selling price is not even half of the supposed FMV, thereby making the sale a bargain, thus, the offer very attractive. Then when the prospective buyer requests for copies of the “owner’s duplicate” and other related documents in order to verify it with the Register of Deeds, the seller declines to hand over the “owner’s duplicate” (which in reality is the fake one) saying that for security reasons, he couldn’t do so as the buyer may run away with it. Instead the seller hands over the certified true copy and directs the buyer to verify from the RD.

As soon as the prospective buyer presents the certified true copy of the title with the RD, the latter affirms that the property and title do exist, and that they were the ones who issued the document (the certified true copy). The buyer then proceeds to the location of the property to do interviews and he gets to confirm ownership by that of the seller.

In belief of such representations, the prospective buyer becomes a real willing buyer, hands over payment representing selling price and receives the owner’s duplicate and all other documents. The parties get to sign on the Deed of Sale and then syndicate escapes with their loot.

By the time the buyer goes to the RD to have the sale annotated on both owner’s duplicate and registry copy, and consequently request for cancellation of the title so that a new one be issued, the RD employees declare the shocker. That they cannot proceed with the buyer’s requests because the owner’s duplicate is a fake. When the buyer reasons out that prior to buying the property he even went on to verify using the certified true copy, the RD confirms genuineness of the said document as they were the ones that issued it but not the owner’s duplicate. The RD then proceeds with the confiscation of the fake owner’s duplicate and the victim suffers the consequences of the fraud.

But wait- this MO becomes only applicable when the RD employees are not in collusion with the syndicate. In case of collusion, when the prospective buyer and the seller present the fake owner’s duplicate to the RD, the examiner gets to attest to the genuineness of the title and the willing customer has no choice but believe. When the fraud gets to be discovered, the RD examiners claim that it was the genuine owner’s duplicate that was earlier presented and that the switching must have taken place upon payment. Being so, collusion is something very difficult to prove.

Recently, I heard of a revision of the MO as an answer to the new measures instituted by the Land Registration Authority. But under this new MO, there is inevitable collusion by the RD employees.

In order to allow customers to easily inquire on the existence of titles on file with some RDs, registry copies, as well as documents relating thereto are scanned and uploaded in the LRA website. Consequently, any person intending to verify on the existence of a title, may do so online on the basis of the OCT or TCT numbers.

In a very recent case involving a genuine title which has been canceled by virtue of a spurious sale, the fake owner’s duplicate which has been surrendered to pave the way for its cancellation together with the registry copy and the issuance of a new one, was the one actually scanned and uploaded in the LRA website. The fact that it was scanned only means that the RD had accepted a fake one instead of confiscating it and such should be on file with the RD together with the canceled title and the documents evidencing all annotations and sale. But in this case, all of these documents are nowhere to be found in the concerned RD office. It is as if they already anticipated that an investigation will be conducted later on.

There are plenty of means available to check the guilt of the RD people but I would rather not discuss it here. Instead, you may refer to my previous discussions on how an internet activity is traced and that would more or less suggest the courses of action to do.

For now, let us beware of this modus operandi by land fraudsters. Vigilance is always the key.