Real Estate Fraud Becomes Riskier in Sacramento County

Sacramento County District Attorney Jan Scully announced in early August that all real estate fraud investigations in Sacramento County will now be conducted by investigators assigned to her office. For those that support strong action against the perpetrators of real estate fraud this should be very welcome news.

Up until now, the county sheriff and several of the cities conducted their own real estate fraud investigation activities. By merging these into one office, we should get investigators who rapidly become experts at recognizing fraudulent activities and moving to stop them.

This move is also important during this time of fiscal constraint. Each time a document related to real estate such as a Grant Deed or Deed of Trust is recorded, part of the recording fee goes into a special account to support real estate fraud investigation and prosecution. By consolidating these activities in one office, you only have one unit accessing these funds. That should allow more aggressive and effective real estate fraud investigation with a steady source of funding for their activities.

On the other hand, for those engaged in fraudulent activity this is terrible news. Hopefully this action, coupled with the new law in California that makes loan fraud a felony as of January 1, 2010, will go a long way to reducing the instances of real estate and loan fraud in Sacramento County.

Additional good news is that if you see real estate activity in Sacramento County that may be fraudulent you only have one place you need to go to report it. The website has yet to be updated to reflect the merger, but the info there is still good. The URL for the site is http://sacda.org/si/realestate.htm and the telephone number for the real estate fraud unit is 916-874-9045.

Let us hope the industry can move forward aggressively in conjunction with law enforcement and work toward eliminating of real estate fraud.

If you have any questions on this article or any other aspect of real estate law please contact the Hanson Law Firm at 916-447-9181 or log on to our website at www.HansonLawFirm.com.