From Mark Heaphy of the North Fork Patrol . . .
Recently a landowner reported that they had gotten three phone calls in the last week from three different realtors who were checking to see if they had just asked them to list their property for sale. They had not.
Evidently there is a scammer who picked up their information from Flathead County GIS (public site and easily obtained information) and then contacted local realtors on Zillow to see if they would list their property. They used fake email addresses that mimicked their name and cell phone number.
Fortunately the realtors got suspicious and contacted the landowners to verify. The landowner then contacted the county plat room and their title company’s title fraud specialist to make sure everything was in order, which it was. The fraud specialist did comment that: “She looked into things and she found a similar deal also in the North Fork area that failed at closing last year. The scammers typically target vacant land and out of state owners.”
Unfortunately the North Fork is not immune to this type of fraud. So please be aware, especially if you’re an out of state landowner.