Identity Verification in Conveyancing: The Failure of Current Legislative and Regulatory Measures, and Recommendations for Change

“Defrauding land titles systems impacts upon us all. Those who deal in land include ordinary citizens, big business, small business, governments, not-for-profit organisation, deceased estates… Fraud here touches almost everybody.”1 The thesis presented in this paper is that the current and disparate steps taken by jurisdictions to alleviate land fraud associated with identity-based crimes are inadequate. The centrepiece of the analysis is the consideration of two scenarios that have recently occurred. One is the typical scenario where a spouse forges the partner’s signature to obtain a mortgage from a financial institution. The second is atypical. It involves a sophisticated overseas fraud duping many stakeholders involved in the conveyancing process. After outlining these scenarios, we will examine how identity verification requirements of the United Kingdom, Ontario, the Australian states, and New Zealand would have been applied to these two frauds. Our conclusion is that even though some jurisdictions may have prevented the frauds from occurring, the current requirements are inadequate. We use the lessons learnt to propose what we consider core principles for identity verification in land transactions.