SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (WAND)- Property deed scams can steal your home out from under you. The FBI says it one of the types of real estate cyber crimes committed across the country. The agency says almost 10,000 of these real estate crimes were committed last year, and now scammers are targeting homeowners in central Illinois.

"I got a phone call from a gentleman who was from Tennessee, and his story sounded real believable," Cindi Kruse, a partner at The Real Estate Group in Springfield, told WAND News.

Kruse said after 27 years as a real estate agent, her gut told her something was off about a call she received this summer.

"He had retired. He had moved there, had a little bit of property left that he wanted to get rid of. And you know would I sell it for him?" Kruse explained.

Kruse said the seller was looking to get rid of a vacant plot, near Rochester, wasn't who he said. She asked for a copy of the man's identification, and started digging into the property.

"So I realized, in researching the owners around the property, that I knew somebody," Kruse said.

It turns out, a potential buyer knew the real property owners' son.

"He said, hang on, let me call him. Well, he calls me back and he says, Cindy, I think he's passed away," Kruse explained.

Police told her the man on the phone could have been a scammer from anywhere.

"I even involved the police to try and see if we could trace the phone number. And it was tied to three different countries-- so they couldn't find out exactly who it was," Kruse said.

Sangamon County Recorder Josh Langfelder said its just one of the recent deed fraud cases reported to his office.

"We're the last line of defense. The recorder's office is the last line of defense. Because once it gets recorded here, it's a done deal," Langfelder said.

Langfelder said one of his own brothers almost lost his property, on the lake, to a scammer- but a neighbor tipped him off.

"He said, I'm not selling the property. And he said, well, there's a realtor sign in there. So he contacted me, and it was on the internet, on Zillow," Langfelder explained.

His brother learned, the realtor was contacted by a scammer online and had signed a contract virtually. 

"So the key is making sure that you know who you're talking to because anymore. You don't always think that you're going to have to when you get a phone call from somebody to sell a piece of property, that you have to look up the obituaries and make sure that they are really alive," Kruse said.

Langfedler told WAND News there is a key tool to help protect you property- the Recorder's Office Property Fraud Alert Program.

"So you get notified no matter what. You pay off your mortgage, you're going to get notified. You, buy a new piece of property, you're going to get notified, you get another mortgage, you get a home equity loan or something, you're going to get notified," Langfelder said.

He started the program in May of 2009. If someone files a document for your property, and it doesn't look familiar, you should call the Recorder's Office immediately.

"It's that one time that you get notified and it potentially could be fraud. So we want the homeowner to tell us, hey, you notified us. We tell them what the document is, and then they tell us whether or not it's fraud," Langfelder said.

Kruse said criminals seem to be targeting vacant plots of land and those who don't have a mortgage, or where the property owners has recently died.

"It's all public knowledge and you can find out. And I think there are people that just kind of prey on if they see an obituary or something, you know," Kruse added.

In Illinois, all sales are required to go through a title search. So scammers should be caught before a sale is final. But criminals can use quick claim deeds to get around the search.

"I never thought the recorder's office would be on high alert on that. You know, we record where the library or land records, but, now we're in the forefront of, you know, a, scamming industry that's going across the country," Langfelder said.

The Champaign County Recorder's Office has a similar program- click here to sign up.

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