Texas Senate approves bill to protect Texans from real estate fraudsters

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Six years ago, the First Christian Church in Lancaster was a victim of deed fraud.

“It was an absolute nightmare. An absolute shock to get letters from the Dallas County appraisal district asking us what we sold our property for. Because we did not sell it,” church board chair Robert Brown told Texas lawmakers during a hearing earlier this month.

It took the church two years to get the property back into their name, and another three to see the fraudster convicted of the crime. It was a long process that involved two lawyers, Lancaster police and the Dallas County Clerk's office, Brown said.

The Texas Senate voted unanimously on Aug. 6 to approve Senate Bill 15, which would strengthen protections against deed fraud and create new criminal penalties.

The proposal now heads to the House, where the fate of the legislation, as well as every bill being considered during this year’s special lawmaking session, remains uncertain after Texas House Democrats fled the state to block a Republican-led effort to redraw Texas’ congressional maps.

Deed fraud, one of the lesser-known items on this year’s jam-packed special legislative session, is a form of real estate fraud in which scammers file fraudulent deeds and use them to sell someone else’s property. In other cases, fraudsters take out loans against the stolen deed.

Brown said the legislation is needed to protect people.

“People can just walk into the county clerk’s office and give them this paperwork, that everything on it is fraudulent. Everything,” Brown said. “They just waltz in and nobody asks them any questions. Nobody asks for identification.”

SB 15, filed by state Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas, would make it mandatory for county clerks to request identification when a property transaction is filed.

The bill “tells us exactly word for word what you do, what you can do, because right now we can't demand to see their license. We may in some counties,” Victoria County Clerk Heidi Easley testified on Aug. 1.

SB 15 passed the upper chamber on Aug. 6 with an amendment from Sen. Juan Hinojosa, D-McAllen, stating that the changes would only affect in-person filings, among other language clarifications.

In Dallas County, which West represents, more than 100 properties have been involved in deed fraud this year, Assistant District Attorney Phillip Clark said. In April, Harris County attorney Christian Menefee filed a lawsuit against a Houston couple who created fake deeds and ownership records for at least 35 properties.

“It's a surprisingly big issue,” Clark said during the hearing. “In the scope of all the land and houses and properties in the state of Texas, it's a small number. But it is a growing number and it's particularly devastating to the victims.”

It’s unclear exactly how widespread the problem is in the state since there is no criminal code for deed fraud. During the Aug. 1 hearing, lawmakers agreed to merge SB 15 with Senate Bill 36, which would create new criminal offenses and penalties for real property theft and expand the statute of limitations for prosecution to 10 years.

Gov. Greg Abbott vetoed Senate Bill 648 in May, a previous version of deed fraud legislation that passed during the regular lawmaking session earlier this year.

In his veto, Abbott said SB 648 would have been particularly burdensome for low-income landowners. That bill would have required the presence of an attorney, a title agent or a similar service provider to file documents related to any real property transaction. It would have also required property owners without any legal representation to jump through additional hoops and name every heir to the property in an affidavit.

Abbott added deed fraud to his agenda for the special session so lawmakers could fix the legislation.

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