The FBI Just Warned That Scammers Are Selling Vacant Land They Don't Own — 62% of Title Fraud Now Targets Deals Just Like Yours

Somewhere right now, a scammer is trying to sell land they've never set foot on — and the FBI says it's working

Picture this: you find a vacant lot listed 20% under market. The seller only texts, never calls. They're "traveling abroad" and can't meet in person, but they'll get the deed notarized overseas and send the paperwork over. It looks like a deal. Two weeks after you wire the deposit, you find out the real owner has never heard of the sale — and whoever took your money is gone.

This isn't a hypothetical. On June 16, 2026, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center issued a fresh public service announcement (I-061626-PSA) warning that criminals are impersonating property owners — mostly owners of vacant land — to sell parcels out from under them. The scheme has been building for years, but the volume has hit a point where the FBI put out a fresh national alert, and field offices from Newark to Boston have been documenting it in real deals with real victims.

For real estate investors, this is not background noise. Vacant land, absentee-owned lots, and parcels banked for future development are exactly the assets scammers target — and exactly the assets investors buy, sell, and hold for years without checking on. If you flip land, bank rural parcels, or work with wholesalers who source off-market vacant lots, you're the buyer this scam is built to fool.

How the scam actually works

The FBI describes a three-step playbook that's remarkably consistent across cases.

Step one — build the fake identity. Scammers pull an owner's name and property details from county assessor sites, state land records, data brokers, or the dark web — all public or cheaply purchased information. They create a fake driver's license or passport, an Outlook email address, and a VoIP phone number that can't be traced to a real location.

Step two — impersonate and list. Posing as the legitimate owner, the scammer contacts a real estate agent or title company, lists the property (often slightly under market to move fast), and produces a forged or altered deed if anyone asks for documentation. Because the property is vacant, there's no tenant, no neighbor, and often no recent visit from the real owner to notice anything is wrong.

Step three — collect and vanish. Once a buyer is under contract, the scammer pushes for a fast close and routes the proceeds to an account — sometimes through an accomplice posing as an out-of-state attorney — before disappearing. By the time the title company or the real owner discovers the fraud, the money has moved.

FBI Newark's Assistant Special Agent in Charge Jim Dennehy summed up why it works: "Who would ever think that somebody would sell your own property from right under your nose?" A real estate agent involved in one Jersey Shore-area case put it just as bluntly: "No one suspected it, not the attorneys, not myself, not the title company."

The Numbers (or: What the Data Shows)

This isn't a handful of isolated incidents. It's a measurable, growing category of real estate fraud.

• 62% of title fraud attempts target vacant properties, versus just 12% for occupied homes. Vacant land is the soft target because nobody's checking on it day to day.
• 28% of title companies reported at least one seller-impersonation fraud attempt in a recent 12-month period. Of those, 46% were caught before closing — meaning more than half were not caught until after money had already moved.
• Nationally, from 2019-2023, the FBI logged 58,141 real estate fraud victims with $1.3 billion in combined losses, per an FBI Boston Division release — and that was before this year's spike in vacant-land-specific schemes.
• In 2024 alone, the FBI received 9,359 real estate fraud complaints totaling $173.6 million in losses. Seniors filed only 19% of those complaints but absorbed 44% of the dollar losses — $76.3 million across 1,765 victims age 60 and older, many of whom own long-held vacant or inherited land they aren't actively monitoring.
• In one documented Newark-area case, a scammer sold a New Jersey vacant lot for $140,000 using forged Canadian driver's licenses and a fraudulent notarization purportedly issued by a U.S. embassy in Vietnam. $70,000 was wired out before the fraud was caught.

The pattern in the data matches the pattern in the FBI's warning: vacant, absentee-owned, low-attention property is where this fraud lives — which is precisely the corner of the market where investors do the most business.

Common Mistakes Investors Make Here

• Treating "the seller won't meet in person" as normal for out-of-state or inherited land deals. It's common for legitimate remote sellers too — which is exactly why scammers hide behind it. Refusal to verify identity by any means (video call, notarized ID check) is the red flag, not the remote sale itself.
• Skipping a tax-record cross-check because the deal is moving fast. A below-market vacant lot with a motivated, remote seller is a classic setup. A single certified letter to the address on file with the county tax assessor — the FBI's own recommended check — takes days, not weeks, and would have caught nearly every case reported this year.
• Assuming title insurance covers everything. Standard owner's title policies typically do cover forgery and fraud in the chain of title, but coverage gaps exist around post-policy fraud and depend heavily on policy type and endorsements. Confirm what your specific policy actually covers before you rely on it.
• Not monitoring your own vacant or inherited holdings. If you hold land for appreciation, a future build, or as a 1031 exchange parking spot, you're a target for the other side of this scam — someone impersonating you. County recorder notification services are free in most counties and send an alert the moment a document is recorded against your name. If you own vacant land and haven't enrolled, do it this week.

How to Use PropGPT for This

The PropGPT play here isn't about finding a deal — it's about not losing one. Run these before you wire a dollar on a vacant land purchase, or to audit your own holdings.

"Pull the current owner-of-record and full tax assessment history for [parcel address / APN]. Flag if the mailing address on file differs from the address the seller has given me." This is the single highest-leverage check in the entire scam. If the seller's contact info doesn't match the address of record, stop the deal until it's resolved.

"Show me the last 5 years of recorded document activity on [parcel address / APN] — deeds, liens, and transfers — and flag any transfer within the past 12 months." A legitimate long-held vacant parcel usually has a quiet recent history. A deed that was just recorded, especially a quitclaim, is exactly the pattern the FBI is describing.

"Compare this listing's asking price to the last 6 months of comparable vacant land sales within 2 miles. Flag if it's priced more than 15% below comps." Below-market pricing is a deliberate lure to get buyers to skip due diligence. PropGPT can quantify "too good to be true" in seconds instead of relying on gut feel.

"I own vacant parcels at [list of addresses]. Check whether a county recorder notification or fraud-alert service is available in each jurisdiction, and tell me how to enroll." Turns the article's core defensive advice into an action list instead of something you mean to get around to.

"Draft a due-diligence checklist and a certified-letter template to verify seller identity for a vacant land purchase at [address], based on the FBI's June 2026 fraud advisory red flags." Gets you a ready-to-send document instead of building one from scratch under time pressure from a "motivated" seller.

The Bottom Line

Vacant land looks like the safest, simplest asset class in real estate — no tenants, no roof, no 2 a.m. phone calls. That's exactly why it just became the softest target for a fraud scheme the FBI flagged nationally this month. The fix isn't complicated: verify the seller against the tax record, check recent recording activity before you wire anything, and if you're sitting on vacant or inherited parcels yourself, enroll in your county's free recorder alert service today. None of that costs you a deal. Skipping it can cost you the entire purchase price.