Not legal advice, as usual
A RESIDENTIAL
CONDO unit in downtown Toronto is among more than thirty ownerships in Toronto ( and reportedly B.C. ) which
Canadian Press and the
CBC have locally and nationally reported targetted by criminal title transfer fraudsters.
Lamented by one victim of a barely avoided title slander / attempted title hijacking : "
the ultimate real estate nightmare"
A couple who from abroad were gob-smacked to discover their beloved Etobicoke home in possession of someone who may have a registered title document :
"
You think well, if the bank fails, the real estate board will catch it. Or if the real estate board fails, the lawyer who signs off on the house sale will catch it. And so many people, so many educated people, it just passes by." - quoted by CP/CBC
Does this sound sorta like brazen vehicle thefts from laneways ? ( not for joy-riding but export in shipping containers ). . . . Some simply inputting V.I.N. numbers and then driving the vehicle away ! !
Background :
1 -
Imagine + 170 years ago how vulnerable to fraud or error ( or burned or worn down by usage or eaten by mice ) might be SOME property documents before 1846.
That’s when colonial-era government first began to require that PRIVATE property title documents would have to be formally filed in a colonial office. That’s ALSO instead of whatever havoc in private lawyer’s files. ( SEE dark 1790’s shenanigans in film Sleepy Hollow ).
This historical reality accorded with lack of roads, dominant farming economy, slow pace outside few urban areas. At least colonial - later “Ontario” - governancers imposed hardcopy conveyancing requirements eg the Statute of Frauds etc & other stuff.
2 -
But flash forward to 2023 with Ontario’s sophisticated & digitized land titles environment. 
Today most online title registration cannot occur - as opposed to mere re-searching- without
TERAVIEW accounts. Unless they’re a lawyer criminals cannot just merrily walk in and file fake documents or get careless with their disk. BUT . . .
( But ) we have passed through almost 3 years of COVID-19 distancing, Zoom interactions & fears of face-to-face interactions. This is amidst electronic executions, assembly line diligencing etc. and - as before 2009 - years of BOOMING real estate values and higher volume of transactions. Especially tempting ? : seniors' homes with little or no lending on title
Has it possibly become more attractive for criminals to RESUME trying to defraud property owners and / or lenders ( or both )
using Ontario’s well-respected land titles system and mis-diligence “on the way there” ? 
Soaring residential values mean bigger dollar equity worth criminals spending time & effort to target. And fake IDs reportedly are getting better.
Or at least better than assembly-line diligencing.
3 -
ARE BURNER PHONES TRACEABLE ? For such imposter criminals one handy tool might be “Burner phones” with applications to fake caller number BUT . . .
An interviewed title insurance VP interestingly
claims that even burner phones CAN be traced ( ? through service providers ? ). Whether a warning system for diligencers that could alert potential criminal impersonation and ? At least a valuable warning later to withhold distribution of escrowed funds ?
4 -
Jan 2023 CP & CBC have published a series of reports about a resumed series of GTA title transfer frauds or mortgage frauds - now at least 30 in GTA out of MANY thousands of perfectly lawful transactions that arguably serve the jurisdiction & consumers VERY well .
There an investigator and a title insurer official point to organized crime strategically using fake IDs & “straw-persons” or “stand-ins” - sometimes the same low-level criminals - to try to hoodwink realtors, buyers, lawyers, lenders.
5 -
Sometimes the hoodwinking works. And then it’s a
world of pain for victims including chaos and possibly uninsured loss. And amongst other consequences title insurers have to recover claim payouts by higher premiums or worse impacts. ( A
nd under ‘deferred indefeasibility’ registration theory it may unfold that a genuine arms-length good faith buyer for value – who bought later in a chain without interface with an earlier fraudster - outrageously may end up being allowed by Ontario courts to have full legal ownership ! Or that a victim may have to seek recourse to repay a bogusly induced registered charge on title. That’s to keep the system looking holy as it did more than 15 years ago . )
6 - Some past Ontario frauds – historically DID NOT involve title-slandering criminals actually getting helpful physical access to successfully target a property.
But having physical possession must have been helpful to hoodwink access eg as a tenant of record given possession by some foolish tenant - selector.
BUT NOW with improved fake IDs - and possibly ? sloppier assembly-line diligencing ? - today’s hoodwinking with criminal stand-in(s) may have an easier time to hoodwink a LEASE of a non-condo or condo home paying the rent asked.
and then . . .
With physical possession followed by what may be merely a single credible looking fake document ( ! ) & stand-in impersonation, the list of hoodwinked diligencers may lengthen to include lawyers without whose TERAVIEW accounts most online Ontario ( title ) document registration cannot even occur. That's what the Etobicoke victims lament.
7 -
The CP/CBC series has evidenced apparent failure to even check drivers’ ID ! One hears the Etobicoke victim couple accuse the diligencers of even failing to catch one criminal's consistent MIS-SPELLING of the fake name shown on the fake ID ! A near-victim ( from the Beaches ) observed the same. Reassuring, eh ?
8 - B.C. reports - at least 2 B.C. attempts in 2021 - “one successful”
https://www.cp24.com/news/impersonators-posing-as-homeowners-linked-to-32-fraud-cases-in-ontario-
and-b-c-1.62469609 -
Anyway many more CONDOS than 15 years ago are now valuable enough to be targetted . ( condo title frauds were on record )
And given the title-slanderers' need for speed away with defrauded funds / bullion / crypto-currency / whatever, disrupted monthly condo contributions may not alert until long after the sale proceeds or lender disbursements are LONG gone . . . ( eg the Toronto AURA highrise victim : an overseas condo owner whose downtown condo ownership title the criminals were able to fraudulently slander /even purport to pass ownership & possession ! but the halting of common expenses was not noted until the criminals were long gone
)
more to come . . .
