By Catherine Reagor | Arizona Republic (abridged)
Metro Phoenix real estate agent Debi Gotlieb may be the person most responsible for convincing authorities in Arizona that a deed fraud scam that threatened to cost people their homes was present in the state and that they needed to take action to stop it.
But at first, few people believed her. The effort to win back her deceased father’s home, which fell victim to the scam, help put the person responsible in jail and convince authorities to take broad action, including passing new state laws, took years.
Deed fraud schemes proliferated in the meantime, typically targeting seniors as well as owners of rental, vacant and recently inherited properties. Victims have had to spend thousands to get their properties back in a time consuming process, and some have given up and lost them.
Scammers have illegally forged signatures and used other deceptive moves, including fake IDs and phone numbers, to transfer the ownership of properties without the real owners knowing. If they don’t get caught, the bogus owners can resell the properties for fast profits or mortgage them to drain the equity.
More than 500 complaints about real estate fraud, mostly deed fraud, were filed with the Arizona Attorney General’s Office and Arizona Department of Real Estate since 2024, according to the state agencies.
Fighting for her dad’s Scottsdale home after deed fraud
In 2019, Gotlieb saw her father’s Scottsdale home listed for sale on Zillow more than a year after he died. She rushed to the property and tossed a “for sale” sign into the trash. Then she called police.
They didn’t show up for hours as she waited in the cold — whoever was selling the home had already changed the locks and cleared the house of all its contents.
“It was so tough. Someone had stolen my dad’s home and had thrown out all of his stuff. We lost so much,” she said.
A few days after that, Gotlieb said she called police to follow up and was told the house — which had no mortgage and was in probate — was foreclosed on. She knew it wasn’t true.
But the shockingly easy scam wasn’t well known by regulators, law enforcement, the real estate industry or homeowners.
A friend advised her to contact every Scottsdale City Council member about the theft. Gotlieb did and said one council member contacted the Scottsdale chief of police on her behalf. Her case was assigned to a detective.
Gotlieb’s father’s home wasn’t the first house stolen — or almost stolen — through deed fraud in Arizona, but she was one of the first to fight the crime early on so fiercely. She hired an attorney and contacted her state legislator and state agencies, including the Arizona Department of Real Estate, the Arizona Attorney General’s Office and the Arizona Corporation Commission as well as several others.
She was able to convince others her dad’s house was stolen.
Read more (subscriber content)
Some stories may only appear as partial reprints because of publisher restrictions.