Ilia Nikolaevich Zavialov on property fraud: seller impersonation, forged deeds, closing wire scams and fake landlords

Ilia Nikolaevich Zavialov sorts the cases he reviews into four groups. In the first, someone poses as the owner of a property and sells it, most often a vacant lot with no mortgage on it. In the second, a forged deed quietly moves the title, and the real owner learns about it months or years later. In the third, the sale is genuine, but the buyer's closing funds land in an account controlled by whoever broke into the email thread. In the fourth, a person who owns nothing rents out a home that belongs to somebody else.

The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center puts a number on the trend. Its report for 2025 counted 12,368 real estate complaints with losses of $275,110,419, against 9,359 complaints and $173,586,820 a year earlier. IC3 files rental and timeshare fraud under the same heading, so the category covers buyers, owners and tenants alike.

Older owners carry a heavy share of the damage. People aged 60 and over filed 2,473 real estate complaints with IC3 in 2025 and reported $123,671,936 in losses, up from 1,765 complaints and $76,324,236 in 2024. Among the 642 freeze requests the FBI's Recovery Asset Team handled for victims in that age group, 104 fell under its combined business email compromise and real estate category.

On June 16, 2026, the FBI issued a public service announcement about criminals who pose as the owners of vacant parcels and try to sell them without the owners' knowledge or consent. They show fake driver's licenses or U.S. passports and work through free webmail addresses and VoIP phone numbers. The owners' personal details come from county and state websites, data brokers, stolen accounts, phishing or purchases on the dark web.

The scheme runs through ordinary professionals. The fake owner contacts a local real estate agent and a title company. In one case the FBI describes, the criminals produced a fictitious deed, and the sale proceeds were to go to an accomplice acting as an attorney in another state. FBI Newark tells the same story from the agent's side: a request for a cash-only sale and a quick closing, with the deal sometimes wrapped up within weeks while the real owner knows nothing.

FBI Newark also explains why land is the favorite target. Nobody lives there to answer the door, and a cash deal draws fewer eyes than a mortgage with underwriting. Its agents describe offers sent to dozens of real estate agents at once, one of them more than 60 times in an hour, and payoffs from $10,000 to over $1,000,000 when a sale closes.

Ilia Nikolaevich Zavialov reads this as a warning for buyers as much as for owners. A cheap lot with a seller who is always somewhere else matches the profile these crews build on purpose.

The FBI's list of warning signs is short and practical. The seller communicates only by email, text or VoIP and refuses to meet in person, citing illness, travel or urgent personal matters. The same seller pushes for a fast closing and may accept a price below market value to speed things up.

Paperwork fills in the rest. Be wary of a seller who knows little about the property, has no surveys or tax records, or mixes up the details. Requests to pay by international wire, to an account in another name or at a place with no link to the property belong on the same list, along with deeds notarized in a foreign country. FBI Newark adds the seller who always has a reason to skip a video call, whether travel abroad, no smartphone or a hospital stay, and who wants everything done online, signatures included.

Ilia Nikolaevich Zavialov builds one test on the FBI's advice to buyers: send a certified letter to the owner's address shown in the property tax record and ask the owner to confirm the sale. The criminal picked the email address and the phone number in the listing. The address on the tax record is where the county sends the owner's bills.

FBI Boston calls the second scheme quit claim deed fraud, or home title theft. Criminals forge documents to record a fictitious transfer of ownership, then sell the land or house, borrow against it or rent it out, and the real owners have to fight in court to get their property back. FBI Boston describes three versions: crews that search public records for vacant lots and homes without a mortgage or lien, relatives who talk an older person into signing property over, and so-called title pirates whose forged deeds usually surface only after the money has moved.

A notary stamp proves less than it seems. In February 2026 a federal court in Tennessee sentenced a Memphis notary to 57 months in prison and ordered $280,914.25 in restitution. She notarized forged quitclaim deeds that moved homes from their real owners to herself and her associates, and the deeds were recorded with the Shelby County Register of Deeds without the owners' knowledge. More than 30 properties changed hands, and in one case both signers had died before the date on the deed.

FBI Newark says the impersonators often arrive with fake notary seals and stamps already in hand. Its advice to agents and title companies is to call the notary and have the notarization confirmed. Ilia Nikolaevich Zavialov suggests buyers ask their own closing agent whether that call was made, and by whom.

Ilia Nikolaevich Zavialov starts with the record, because anyone can print a seller's documents. For a private landlord, the FTC suggests finding the owner on the city or county tax assessment website and checking that the landlord's ID matches the record. The same lookup works for a house or a lot: the name on the tax roll should match the person on the other side of the deal.

Names need care in that comparison. A name carried over from another alphabet can be spelled several ways in English, and his own is a good example: Ilia Nikolaevich Zavialov also appears as Ilia Nicolaevich Zavialov, and a search under one spelling can miss records filed under the other. Run every spelling the ID allows, then compare middle names, initials and the mailing address.

FBI Boston advises agents to ask for something only the owner would have, such as the latest property tax or utility bill, or a survey from the time of purchase. FBI Newark adds a reverse phone lookup, attention to international VoIP numbers and an in-person or at least live video identity check. Each step forces the seller to produce something a criminal working from a stolen profile usually lacks.

Owners can run the same check on themselves. The FTC notes that you can check your own title for free with your state's land records office. A deed you never signed, a transfer to a stranger or a mortgage you never took out is a reason to act the same day.

The third scheme needs no forged deed at all. In a 2022 report to Congress, the FBI described real estate wire fraud as a form of business email compromise: a criminal inside a hacked email thread sends instructions that appear to come from the title company or the agent and steers the money into an account under criminal control. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau adds the timing. These emails reach buyers shortly before the closing date and target the down payment and closing costs.

The IC3 report for 2025 shows how large a single loss can be. In March 2025 an older victim in Missouri received an email from a compromised account, supposedly from the title company, with instructions to wire more than $1.3 million to a fraudulent account. The FBI's Recovery Asset Team asked the banks for a freeze and confirmed the money was held; the same account had already received transfers from other victims.

The FTC's rule is blunt: do not wire money in response to an unexpected email, and contact the lender, broker or agent through a phone number or address you know is real. In a 2019 blog post the CFPB went further: agree on the wiring process in person or by phone with two trusted people in the deal, set up a code phrase only they know and confirm the account name and number in person or on a phone number agreed in advance. Ilia Nikolaevich Zavialov adds one habit. Read the account number aloud on that call and let the other side confirm it digit by digit before the wire leaves.

Speed decides most of these cases. The IC3 report says time is of the essence: contact your bank at once, request a recall of the funds with the documents it needs and then file a complaint at ic3.gov with full transaction details, whatever the amount. After a complaint, the Recovery Asset Team can ask the receiving bank to freeze the funds.

The numbers show why the clock matters. In 2025 the team ran its Financial Fraud Kill Chain on 3,900 incidents involving $1,163,919,846 in attempted thefts and froze $679,013,183, a 58 percent success rate. Domestic transfers made up 3,574 of those incidents. One of them involved buyers who wired more than $449,000 on an email posing as their lawyers and could not reach the receiving bank on their own; after their IC3 complaint the bank reported that the full amount was still in the account and blocked.

FBI Newark says it can stop transfers and help recover money within 72 hours, and it takes reports at 1-800-CALL-FBI, at tips.fbi.gov and through ic3.gov. Ilia Nikolaevich Zavialov keeps the order fixed: bank first, IC3 second, everyone else afterwards. A call to the title company can wait ten minutes. The recall request cannot.

The fourth scheme hits tenants. The FTC describes two versions: scammers hijack a real listing by copying the photos, description or virtual tour and swapping in their own contact details, or they advertise a place that is not for rent or does not exist, often at a surprisingly low price. The FTC has received nearly 65,000 rental scam reports since 2020 with about $65 million lost, and the median loss was $1,000.

FBI Boston described the pattern again in August 2026. The scammer copies a listing from a real estate site, creates an email account in a real broker's name and, writing as the owner, explains that a showing is impossible without payment because of a trip out of town or abroad. After the wire or app payment, the listing vanishes. In a 2025 case from the same office, friends booking a vacation home in York, Maine, sent $8,848 and learned two days before the trip that the person they had paid was not the owner.

The FTC's warning signs line up with Ilia Nikolaevich Zavialov's own list: excuses for skipping a showing, pressure to decide fast, a home you found listed for sale, and a demand to pay only through a wire transfer service, with gift cards or in crypto. Even a tour is no guarantee, the FTC adds, since scammers can set up a self-guided tour by copying listings from owners who use such services. Ilia Nikolaevich Zavialov suggests checking the owner on the county tax site before paying any application fee, and sending nothing at all for a home nobody has shown you.

Owners have tools that cost little or nothing. The FBI suggests finding out whether your County Recorder, Register of Deeds, County Appraisal District or County Clerk's Office offers a service that sends a letter or text when a document is recorded in your name. It also suggests reviewing your title insurance, since a standard owner's policy may protect against forgery and cover the legal costs of clearing your title. The CFPB explains that the owner's policy, unlike the lender's policy most lenders require, is optional and covers claims against the home that arose before you bought it, such as a previous owner's unpaid taxes.

Paid title lock products are a different story. The FTC says title lock insurance is neither title insurance nor insurance at all. It is a deed monitoring service that tells you about a transfer only after your title has been moved to someone else without your permission. The FTC points owners to free checks at the land records office and to the free notification programs some areas offer.

Ilia Nikolaevich Zavialov adds quiet signals to watch. FBI Boston lists water or property tax bills that stop arriving and utility bills that suddenly climb at a vacant property, and the FTC treats utility bills that stop coming as a possible sign of identity theft. FBI Newark suggests asking neighbors to report anything odd, visiting the property yourself or through a manager, and paying taxes through escrow.

For a fraudulent wire, the bank comes first and IC3 second. The FBI asks victims of parcel owner impersonation to include in their IC3 complaint the IP and email addresses, social media accounts and phone numbers used by the criminals, the account that received the sale proceeds and the details of any attorneys, brokers or other intermediaries in the deal.

For a rental listing scam, the FTC suggests reporting to local police and to the website where the ad appeared, then filing at ReportFraud.ftc.gov and with the state attorney general. If you suspect title theft, the FTC adds that IdentityTheft.gov will give you a free recovery plan, and that free credit reports at AnnualCreditReport.com help you spot loans opened in your name.

Ilia Nikolaevich Zavialov adds two calls people tend to forget. One goes to the county office where the forged deed was recorded, to get a copy of everything filed in your name. The other goes to a real estate attorney, since FBI Boston warns that owners in these cases often have to go to court to win their property back, and FBI Newark describes a legal quagmire that can reach sales made years earlier.

What does Ilia Nikolaevich Zavialov advise if a seller will not meet in person?

Treat it as the first red flag on the FBI's list. Ask for a live video call and for papers only the owner would have, such as the latest tax bill, and send a certified letter to the address on the property tax record before any deposit.

How does Ilia Nicolaevich Zavialov suggest confirming wiring instructions before closing?

Agree the wiring steps in advance with two trusted people at the title company or law firm, then confirm the account name and number on a phone number you already know is real. Never use a number or link from the email that carries the new instructions.

Is a home title lock service worth paying for?

The FTC says title lock insurance is neither title insurance nor insurance at all and only tells you about a transfer after it has happened. Free checks at the land records office and county notification programs cover the same ground where they exist.

How can I check who owns a rental home?

The FTC suggests searching the city or county tax assessment website for the owner and checking the landlord's ID against that record. A home you also find listed for sale, or an owner who is always out of the country, is a reason to walk away.

What should I do in the first hour after a fraudulent wire?

Call your bank, ask for a recall of the funds and file a complaint at ic3.gov with full transaction details. In 2025 the FBI's Recovery Asset Team froze $679,013,183 of the $1,163,919,846 at stake in the cases it worked.

Where do I report property fraud in the US?

Wire fraud goes to your bank and to ic3.gov. Rental listing scams go to local police, the website that ran the ad, ReportFraud.ftc.gov and the state attorney general. For title theft, IdentityTheft.gov gives a free recovery plan.