We recently had the opportunity to sit down with Roger McEowen, Professor of Agricultural Law and Taxation at Washburn University. Professor McEowen discussed the recent hot topic of farmland fraud.
“My article on that stemmed from a conversation I had with a rancher this past spring, and he just, I didn’t know him, but a lot of people know me, and so he calls me, and he’s a fellow that lives in Texas. He’s got two ranches in Kansas. He flies internationally for a major airline, and these ranches in Kansas don’t have any, nobody lives there. There’s no house or anything,” said McEowen.
“And he comes back about once a year to just kind of check with things and talk to the tenant that’s running cattle on it and those types of things. Well, he was back this spring, and he went into town, and he ran into his veterinarian, and the vet said, “I see you got your ranches for sale. What are your plans?” And he looked at him and he said, what are you talking about? My ranches aren’t for sale,” McEowen said.
“Well, you’ve got them posted, you’ve got signs on them. So, he said he left town, drove out to the first ranch, turned out, there’s a for sale sign posted, and he called the realtor that was listed on the sign and told him who he was. And she said, oh, hi, how are you doing? I got them both listed for you. In fact, you’ve got an offer on the other one. And he said, ma’am, I don’t know who you are. I’ve never had a conversation with you and my ranches are not for sale,” explained McEowen.
“And he said there was dead silence on the line. He asked some more questions and the realtor realized that she had been scammed. And what happened was you have these scammers that can pull information from the web and other sources and get enough information that they can cold-call a realtor that doesn’t know the person’s, the actual individual’s voice. And this realtor didn’t do any other type of verification, never met with the person personally. And just based on the conversation that they had, text and phone call, just based on that, went ahead and listed the property. And this is a scam that’s going on,” added McEowen.
“Some sales have been completed. That’s the first I’d heard of it. I called the realtor that sold us our small farm here in Kansas. I asked her, I said, “Have you heard about this?” And she said, oh my goodness, I get two of these calls every week, attempted scams. And so, she told me how, what their office procedure is. They go through a whole bunch of protocols, talk to title insurance companies and so forth, because this can really screw up title,” said McEowen.
“Because what happens is if the sale goes through, the buyer gets a void title and then they get the money because the buyer is paying the money, but the buyer doesn’t get a good title. It’s void because it’s obtained by fraud. So, what happens is that person must be made whole. And then the actual owner has to clear the title to get their property back. And the scammer has got the money and they’re gone. You can’t find them,” McEowen added.
McEowen explains, “This is a, it’s a major problem, particularly in the Plains and the West, where you have wide open spaces and nobody’s around and it’s just cattle grazing. Nobody’s there monitoring the property in person. Those are what they look for.”
Audio Reporting by Elizabeth Sanders for Southeast AgNet.