Leelanau County may be seeing another string of scammers preying on vacant landowners, Register of Deeds Jennifer Grant says. Like last year, at least one person has tried to contact a local Realtor to fraudulently sell land that they don’t own in Northport.
Grant says that the scammer identified themselves by the name of the landowner when they called the Realtor, but the Realtor could tell that “Something didn’t smell right” because the call came from a number with a New York area code. When the Realtor tried to contact the owner again, it became clear that the first call was a property fraud attempt by someone posing as the true landowner.
When he became aware of the fraud attempt, the real owner of the vacant property in Northport contacted the register of deeds office, and they informed the newspaper last month. According to michiganpropertyrecords. org, it’s “easy and quick” to find out who owns a Michigan property by name and address, as all documents recorded with the county register are public records.
