A new industry survey shows seller impersonation fraud has more than doubled since 2024, with criminals increasingly deploying artificial intelligence (AI) to impersonate property owners and steal closing funds.
The American Land Title Association’s (ALTA) 2026 Critical Issues Study, released Sept. 14, found that 59% of title firms reported at least one seller impersonation fraud attempt in the prior calendar year — up from 28% in 2024.
The share of firms reporting an attempt in the prior month rose from 19% to 45%.
Steve Gottheim, general counsel for ALTA, said the data reflects what the association’s members experience daily.
“You need to have an almost all-of-the-above approach,” he told HousingWire. “There’s some data in our study about the companies that are using multiple tools to help detect and identify fraud, and hopefully identify it before you get to closing, which is one of the the biggest hurdles in all of this.”
Tom Cronkright — CEO of Sun Title, co-founder and executive chairman of CertifID — detailed how fraud threats continue to expand and gain sophistication.
“While deep fake video is out there, what we’re seeing is bad actors using the AI voice cloning,” he said. “So, you couple AI voice cloning with the ability to spoof a phone number and now you have an inbound call coming to a consumer, typically a buyer from the mortgage lender, from the title-escrow officer from their buyer’s agent. They’re having what they believe is a trusted real time two-way conversation with one of their advisors.
“That advisor is updating them on the transaction and then introducing this concept of, ‘Hey, by the way, we’ve got to get your closing funds into the transaction early, and I’m going to send you wiring information.’”
Fraud tactics evolve
ALTA’s report found that 58% of firms rated deepfake technology — image or voice — as at least somewhat common. Spoofed contact information ranked even higher at 87%.
Cronkright described a March incident in West Michigan where a couple buying a condo received a real-time AI phone call from what the husband firmly believed was the voice of his mortgage lender.
The caller convinced him to wire closing funds before a preliminary closing disclosure was even circulated.
“Then comes the morning of closing, where the title company raises their hand, saying, ‘Hey, the sellers are on their way from the other side of the state, and just confirming that you’re bringing in a certified check.’ Then of course it’s, ‘What are you talking about? I had it wired multiple days ago.’”
Gottheim said stopping increasingly convincing deepfakes will require corresponding technology — not just human judgment.
“At some point, you’re going to need AI tools that are able to analyze it very quickly and tell if this a real or fake video,” he said. “Those technologies exist today and we see that they’re not necessarily cheap, but they’re not super expensive either.”
Vacant land remains top target
The report found vacant land remained the No. 1 fraud target, with 82% of firms rating it as at least somewhat common.
Properties with absentee owners (72%), properties owned free and clear (68%) and properties of recently deceased individuals (55%) were also frequently targeted.
“We have had multiple scams along the shores of Lake Michigan, very high-value properties here in our state,” said Cronkright. “What [scammers] do is they troll obituaries or they troll death certificates that are recorded. They’re not hard to identify — the children or the heirs are next of kin, and they run a very sophisticated impersonation play.
“Where it also carries over is borrower impersonation fraud for cash-out refinances. We’re sitting on somewhere between hundreds and hundreds of billions, if not more, in equity that’s going to get unlocked at some price point when rates come down.”
Gottheim said real estate agents play a critical role in early detection.
“One of the biggest red flags is somebody who never wants to get on the phone, but even that’s becoming easier to spoof with AI,” he said. “Or maybe it’s doing things like sending an out-of-bounds or out-of-cycle message to the homeowner. One of the things we see a lot of agents do that’s fairly helpful is they’ll send a hard piece of mail to the address, to that actual property address. It’ll say, ‘Did you need to list your sale your property for sale with us?’”
Layered defenses recommended
The report found 94% of firms used multiple tools as layered defenses — averaging 5.3 per firm. ID verification, direct seller contact and multifactor authentication were highest rated.
Cronkright said identity verification must be embedded early in the transaction.
“It’s a layered stack, so we’re moving away from just relying on a picture of a photo ID,” he said. “Now we’re saying, ‘We’re going to run device analysis. We’re going to run biometrics. It’s going to be presented in our secure environment with a government issued ID and we’re going to run that against known trusted databases.
“Then we’ve got the individual with live biometric facial, coupled with a credential analysis, and then we move on to say, ‘Okay, we’re dealing with Joseph, or we’re dealing with the Liz, who we believe is connected to the ownership of the property.”
Curative process importance
The report found 87% of fraud is detected during the clearance or curative process — far more than at signing or order entry.
“I think the big thing to take out of this is our title companies are catching the majority of these, if not almost an overwhelming majority of them, before closing, which is good,” Gottheim said. “But we can always do a little bit better, hopefully, with the use of technology and some simple tactics.”
With one in four firms reporting a fraud attempt also reporting a paid claim, Cronkright emphasized prevention.
“An ounce of prevention is a ton of cure,” he said. “So, what I would say to the title community is, as much as we have to meet our title standards, think about a world where I have to do a 40-year search on a residential parcel and 100-year search on a commercial parcel.
“But in the closing room, you spend less than 10 seconds looking at a stranger before signing a deed over and wiring them funds? That just doesn’t make sense.”
As seller impersonation fraud grows in scale and sophistication, title professionals face a widening gap between traditional safeguards and AI-enabled deception.