Home Fraud Defense

Home Fraud Defense Home Fraud Defense™ advances the standard in real estate fraud prevention.

The HFDCP™ designation equips professionals to identify wire fraud, deed theft, AI scams, and seller impersonation—protecting clients, transactions, and reputations.

Home Fraud Defense will soon be inside Tether RE, included with membership at no added cost.Tether RE won the 2024 NAR i...
09/13/2026

Home Fraud Defense will soon be inside Tether RE, included with membership at no added cost.

Tether RE won the 2024 NAR iOi Pitch Battle and is available to 80,000 agents and growing nationwide. Tether covers the agent in the field. Home Fraud Defense covers the transaction and the money: a fraud message scanner, a property scanner, deed and title confirmation, wire and closing checks, seller identity confirmation, and free guides for buyers and sellers.

Education and tools that help agents and their clients recognize fraud before money moves or a deed changes hands.

Watch for it in your app. Available today at HomeFraudDefense.org.

Thank you, Scott and Vanessa Martin and the Tether RE team. Agents, tell your association. Brokers, tell your office.

Next week Home Fraud Defense is in Maui as a sponsor of the ARELLO 2026 Annual Conference, September 15 through 17.ARELL...
09/09/2026

Next week Home Fraud Defense is in Maui as a sponsor of the ARELLO 2026 Annual Conference, September 15 through 17.

ARELLO is the Association of Real Estate License Law Officials. Its members are the state and provincial agencies that license every real estate agent and broker in North America, investigate complaints against them, and enforce the laws that govern how homes are bought and sold. When a state decides what an agent has to learn before getting a license, or what happens when an agent breaks the rules, an ARELLO member agency is the one deciding. This is the group that sets the standards the rest of the industry follows.

Being in that room is an honor. Home Fraud Defense is an ARELLO Affiliate Member, and I am attending as a sponsor of registration and a roundtable, alongside the regulators who oversee real estate in all fifty states.

I am there for three reasons: to offer free consumer fraud resources that any state can use for the people who live there, to talk about fraud education for real estate professionals, and to meet the people working on the same problem I work on every day.

Everything we bring is free to use. The tools and guides are at homefrauddefense.org.

Association of Real Estate License Law Officials

You will probably spot this one in two seconds. That is not the point.This week's Double Check is a text that started go...
09/08/2026

You will probably spot this one in two seconds. That is not the point.
This week's Double Check is a text that started going around a few days ago.

It looks like a fraud alert from Apple about a $509 charge and tells you to call a number to cancel. No link, just a phone number. It is built for someone who has learned not to click links but has not learned not to call.

Somebody you know will get this text. A parent, an aunt, a neighbor who lives alone. Send it to them today and ask one question: what would you do if this came in? Let them answer. Then walk through it together.

You are not testing them.

You are giving them a chance to see it before it is real.

The answer and what to do next are in the first comment.

If you can't attend a live class for Home Fraud Defense and our innovative fraud education system, join us for a ZOOM ev...
09/07/2026

If you can't attend a live class for Home Fraud Defense and our innovative fraud education system, join us for a ZOOM event on Wednesdays or Thursdays. Pick a date that works for you. https://homefrauddefense.org./brief/

HomeSmart, Arizona's largest brokerage, is hosting Home Fraud Defense tomorrow, Tuesday, September 8, for an introductio...
09/07/2026

HomeSmart, Arizona's largest brokerage, is hosting Home Fraud Defense tomorrow, Tuesday, September 8, for an introduction to the free Home Fraud Defense agent tools, built to help real estate professionals and their clients recognize, respond to, and report real estate fraud.

Home Fraud Defense is an ADRE-approved real estate fraud education school (License S25-0019) and the only Arizona program focused exclusively on fraud in real estate.

You will see a live demonstration of the platform and learn how to:

Recognize the fraud aimed at your clients before, during, and after the transaction.
Respond when something is not right.
Report it to the people who can act on it.

Lunch at 11:00 a.m. Meeting and CE from 11:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
NPHX Church, 5757 N Central Ave, Bldg B, Phoenix.
Open to all HomeSmart agents at no cost.

homefrauddefense.org

Our national expansion is well underway — crossing 100k page views last month!If you are a broker or agent, and want to ...
09/07/2026

Our national expansion is well underway — crossing 100k page views last month!
If you are a broker or agent, and want to learn how to protect you clients, visit Home Fraud Defense.

If you are a public service or government agency, and want free fraud tools to protect your consumers, reach out today!

Association of Real Estate License Law Officials
Arizona Department of Real Estate

Somebody asked ChatGPT to name the BEST REAL ESTATE FRAUD EDUCATION programs in the country.It put Home Fraud Defense fi...
09/06/2026

Somebody asked ChatGPT to name the BEST REAL ESTATE FRAUD EDUCATION programs in the country.

It put Home Fraud Defense first.

- Best dedicated fraud program.
- Top choice for anyone who wants to become highly knowledgeable about real estate fraud prevention.

Those are its words, not mine.

Google agrees. Search "real estate fraud education" and we are the first result.

Ten months ago this company did not exist. It started because fraud came after me personally, more than once, and people went to prison for it. Today the Arizona Department of Real Estate lists Home Fraud Defense on its own website, every homeowner can use our fraud tools for free, and any licensed agent in the country can send their clients a fraud warning in their own name at no cost.

Agents who want more can take the three-hour course and earn the HFDCP designation. Private credential, not a state license.

Free for consumers.
Free for agents.
Paid plans for the ones who want more.

To everyone who sent a client, took the class, forwarded a scam text to be scanned, or just shared a post: this ranking is yours as much as mine. Thank you.

Next stop, NAR NXT in New Orleans in November. Come find Home Fraud Defense.

Arizona Department of Real Estate John Thomas Rowan

09/04/2026

Two people called me to sell property they did not own. I recorded both calls.

The first man said he owned a piece of vacant land in Phoenix and wanted to close fast. He could not tell me if the land had ever been surveyed, and the county records put the owner in a different city than the one he said he was calling from. The real owner had no idea his land was for sale.

The second call was about a vacant house that had supposedly been inherited. The owner could not come to the phone, so someone else spoke for her. The people on that call are now in prison.

I am sharing the audio because these calls are what fraud actually sounds like. Not dramatic. Polite, a little vague, and in a hurry.

If you own a vacant lot, a rental, or a house you inherited, two free things take five minutes. Sign up for the Arizona Department of Real Estate's Early Alert System at earlyalert.azre.gov, and sign up for your county recorder's title alert. Both notify you if a document is recorded against your property.

I wrote something that got published this month, and it is a strange one to be proud of. ARELLO is the association that ...
09/01/2026

I wrote something that got published this month, and it is a strange one to be proud of.

ARELLO is the association that state real estate regulators belong to. Their September publication carries a case note I wrote about a seller impersonation attempt that came at me in August. Someone called about a vacant parcel that was not for sale, claiming to own it, wanting a fast cash close and a signing three states away. He was not the owner.

That was the second impersonation attempt aimed at me in under ten months. The first one ended in an arrest and multiple convictions. In the same stretch I also documented a senior romance scam I was able to intercept.

None of the three reached a closing.

I wrote it up because the part nobody teaches is what you actually do on the day the call comes in. Do not confront them. Call law enforcement first. Save everything exactly as it came in. Find the real owner yourself and tell them.

Agents are usually the first person to see one of these, during a transaction and long after it closes. Knowing the steps is what made the difference all three times, and that is exactly what I built Home Fraud Defense to teach.

Any state agency can reprint the piece and hand it to their licensees for free. No permission needed.

Next stop is Maui, September 15 to 17, sponsoring the ARELLO conference.

HomeFraudDefense.org
Association of Real Estate License Law Officials Arizona Department of Real Estate John Thomas Rowan

Address

7865 W. Bell Road #1070
Peoria, AZ
85382

Telephone

+18555522863

Website

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