> Is the title system in the USA decentralized or that much different than elsewhere?

As with most things both law-related and US-related, it depends. This type of scam would not work in the majority of states due to various laws, regulations, and bookkeeping (it would be nearly* impossible to sell land you don’t own in California for example).

There are other states (and countries - I’m looking at you Canada) where fraudulent documentation and virtually non-existent title checks allow this kind of fraud to persist.

[*] yes - virtually, not completely. It can happen, but the laws are set up such that the land owner will retain their land, the title fraud victim will be made whole financially by a title insurance company. What this means in practice is that title insurance companies make sure every transaction is legitimate and people don’t have to worry about it.

In the dark old days before Apple Pay, where it was common in America to hand your credit/debit card to some rando at a restaurant and have them disappear with it for a few minutes, about once a year my bank would call me to ask if I'd been using my card in some far-off locale:

"Hi! Are you in Tijuana?"

"Not since 1993. Why? What's up?"

"So you didn't just try to buy gasoline at a PEMEX there?"

"Nope, I'm in San Francisco as speak."

"OK, thanks! We'll get a new card out in the mail to you."

That's a pretty low bar for identity theft, but I think it's defensible.

I'm equally careful and aware. Years ago, now, I discovered that someone in New Mexico (if I recall correctly) was working under my Social Security number. That was likely someone not authorized to work in the US writing random digits on an I9 form. No amount of care will protect against that.

It wasn't easy to clear up, either. I'm fortunate that a close friend worked (at the time) for the SS administration, and was able to do basically all of the leg-work for me: I just had to sign a few forms he sent me. Someone not equally connected would have had a much harder time.

I'm also painfully aware that effectively every scrap of everyone's personal data has been repeatedly leaked online. I doubt that any amount of care has much to do with whether or not I'll be targeted at some point in the future.

Unlike most common law jurisdictions, the United States doesn't have a central land registry due to lobbying from the title insurance industry.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torrens_title#United_States

For identity theft, I think at this point it depends on where you set the bar. I've never had someone clean out my checking account or anything truly large, but my wife and I have had fraudulent charges on our credit cards several times as they've been leaked out one way or another. I would not "identify" as a "identity theft victim" per se if you asked me out of the blue, because compared to some of what I've heard about, I've had nothing more than minor annoyances come out of this. But yeah, I'd guess that it's fair to say that at this point most people have had at least some sort of identity-related issue at some point.

Different people understand "theft of identity" in different ways. If someone is impersonating you on the internet, or steals your credit card info and makes purchases on your behalf, that probably qualifies.

As for the nature of the scam, there are different levels of this. Most likely, the mark is the buyer / the escrow agency.

I once had a visit from cops about dodgy cheques I had been writing. Weirdly they were more ready to believe I hadn't written the cheques, than the were about me not leaving my chequebook at a brothel I hadn't visited.

The last time I wrote a cheque I had to cross out the 19 to write in the year. I think they only gave up on that line of questioning when I provided enough evidence to say that the bank had not given me any chequebooks to lose.

I still don't really know what happened there, the best that I can think of is someone with access to the mechanism to print chequebooks was running off 'replacements' for random accounts and then passing them on to people. I'm guessing it counts as identity theft.

Identity theft is not helped by processes that demand certainty and expediency causing pressure on employees to provide both even when they are not available. In a similar credit card issue with my partner, after all of the mess of departments trying to make it other departments' problems, my partner received an email saying that; in accordance with the phone conversation, the issue had been resolved. Having had no such phone conversation this caused a bit of panic, but upon contacting the bank they said that they had tried calling but there was no answer, but they were not allowed to resolve the issue unless they had directly spoken to the customer, so she just wrote that in, otherwise it would keep on causing problems down the line.

On the other hand I have leveraged such processes to my advantage to essentially steal my own identity. For a long time I possessed no photo-id, It was actually buying a house that proved to be the intractable problem that forced me to get a passport (I also wanted to travel) . There were numerous things that required photo ID to exist even if they had not laid eyes on it themselves. It seems rather odd to me, but somehow just the idea that I have it seems enough. Luckily I was once in a situation where I needed photo ID at a time when there was sufficient context to prove my identity by other means. A staff member fudged the system to make it work. That resulted in me acquiring a form of non-photo ID that had been recorded as being verified by photo ID. I leveraged that as a form of pseudo proof-of-photo-id for a number of years.

I have heard of title theft but I imagine it is more prominent is areas where an attorney is not required to process the sale of a house. Some states allow "title companies" to handle this process.

I'm not well versed, just passing along what I've heard from people over the years.

I have always heard the best way to make sure your title can't be stolen is to have a loan against the house so that a bank is involved. As long as a bank is involved, there are numerous additional hoops for something like that.

I have had my identity stolen [at least] three times in the last 15 years:

* OPM Hack

* Target Hack

* Equifax Hack

I say "at least" because there have been more, but I just started ignoring them after a while. I also had it stolen back in the late 1990s; and, thinking back, that was crazy for that time period.

If you broaden the definition of "stolen identity" to "someone trying to scam either you or someone else by using details on your identity" (which this story more or less is) I think a fair many of us can claim this experience.

They're not trying to transfer ownership. They're trying to scam people out of the earnest money before a title search (ie ownership verification) happens.

Titles are very decentralized; they are likely modestly-competently managed at the county level, of which there up to 254 per state (Texas).

And identity theft is also very easy in the US. It happened to an old in my family. The state dmv happily mailed a replacement license to a completely different state without so much as checking with the person whose license it is. Just for the asking. It's absurd.

So you’re from a different country from the author and don’t know how systems work here but you’re going to judge them for having their identity stolen? Maybe if you actually had any first hand experience you’d be able to muster some empathy. Yea things are decentralized here because we have 50 different states, many more counties, and health insurance is through a mish mash of many insurers and health providers. We are all regularly asked for the exact information needed to steal identity for basic stuff. I got a new dentist last month who has my date of birth, ssn, and home address. I’m going to tell him to stuff it and find a better dentist by, what? Calling around and asking if they require an ssn?

I have also never been the victim of identity theft but if you live here you would know luck plays a major role, always.

If you want to marinate in the superiority of you home country you are welcome to. Maybe don’t post on foreign message boards then.

I also wondered why someone would own an empty lot in another town for years on end and neither build on it nor sell it.