With the Madoff Ponzi scheme, mortgage fraud, and it seems pretty much any fraud you can think of running amok in our nation, I guess it comes as no surprise that someone is trying to deal with it.
In Cook County Illinois home sellers are going to be required to fingerprint their right thumb as part of the real estate transaction starting June 1, 2009. Essentially, they want to be able to ensure the seller really is the seller of the home…I guess.
Now I used to work as a child and family therapist before I was a Salem Oregon real estate agent and I have been fingerprinted for every job I had. I was also fingerprinted in order to get my real estate license. My fingerprints are on record with the police. I understood the purpose of these fingerprints was to protect the children I was working with as well as the public, whose homes I enter daily. Clearly, there is a need to make sure I am not a hardened criminal. I get that.
I really don’t see how fingerprinting every seller on a real estate transaction is going to prevent fraud…which is the point of this Illinois law. Are title companies going to have a responsibility to run that fingerprint through the police database? Do they run an FBI check on the seller? What happens if the seller has no fingerprints on record anywhere?
I must be missing something because I just don’t see how this is going to prevent fraud. This is one to watch and see how it plays out.