This doesn't make sense, earnest money would be in escrow until the title clears. The scammer would never have access to the earnest money, nor would it ever get transferred to them unless the buyer took too long to close, or didn't come up with funds?? Like the title company would almost have to be involved for this to work.

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rationalist 20 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The title is often actually transfered, and it is a mess to clean up.

You could walk into a court house and submit paperwork for filing, that transfers the title - all without any kind of sale or verification. It happens.

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IhateAI 20 hours ago | parent [-]

Hmm, I guess you technically just need to convince a notary that you're the seller and with virtual closings/ mobile notaries I guess that's probably pretty easy.

But still the scammer would never see the earnest money, unless the buyer backed out outside of an option period for whatever reason. Presumably they wouldn't if the land is cheap, and they've agreed to pay cash and put earnest money down.

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WillPostForFood 17 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The scammer isn't trying to get the earnest money, they are trying to get the full sale price.

	▲	IhateAI 16 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Well yes, I assume that too. But the article says they'll pocket the earnest money which makes zero sense. Probably another example of someone incapable of writing an article by themselves and used an LLM. >"7. If they get farther they’ll pocket the earnest money deposit which would have been significant in my case."
	▲	phendrenad2 8 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Is there a single case of the scammer getting a single dollar from one of these scams? My suspicion is that there isn't. (Everyone who doesn't know the answer and isn't curious should downvote me.)

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InitialLastName 17 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The global freight carrier storefronts around me all have notary services. I used them to notarize the documents from my last home sale; they glanced at my ID to the extent that they checked it matched the name on the paperwork, and signed off on it.

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phendrenad2 18 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Yeah I wonder if this entire "scam" is a scammer's urban legend, where one scammer brags that they successfully executed it and all the rest try it a few times and eventually give up. Sort of like the search for pirate gold.