And they are also more likely to own homes without any mortgages on them,” Vivian Barrios, a special agent with the FBI, stated “Because those have the biggest benefit to the criminal actor.”
The FBI has issued a warning against so-called “title pirates,” despite the fact that land theft has been on the rise nationwide, according to Boston investigators.
Over 2,301 people in Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island lost more than $61.5 million in lost land as a result of land theft during the four-year period from 2019 to 2023.
Over the same time period, 58,141 victims reported real estate thefts totaling $1.3 billion in losses, according to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center.
Victims are being urged by Special Agent Barrios to report any such incidents right away.
“We find that within a 24-hour window we can sometimes get to the money before it’s left the account and the banks together with us can sometimes get the money back to the victims,” Barrios said.
