New York Newspaper "Steals" Empire State Building

The New York Daily News stole the Empire State Building in 90 minutes by drafting bogus documents and with bogus notary seal. Their stunt showed just how easy it is for anyone to obtain a notary stamp. Link to Story

This story echoed the one of Matthew Cox that aired on Dateline in April of 2007: Matthew Cox Story. The title was "Thief of Hearts" but it should have been "Con Artist of the Year." Cox used single, desperate women to pull off his mortgage fraud schemes. He would purchase a home with them, get a mortgage, then file a bogus deed of reconveyence on the property. He used a fake notary stamp to do so. He would then apply for several mortgages simultaneously on an apparent paid for home. He did this in states like Florida, Tennessee, South Carolina and Texas where there are no regulations on how notary seals are manufactured. To this date Arizona, California, Georgia, North Dakota, Oregon and Washington are the only states that restrict manufacturing of a notary seal. In fact, in this story, Dateline created a notary stamp in Texas with the name of I.D. Fraud. The Texas Secretary of State said that they would not burden businesses with verifying that the person is authorized to have the notary seal.

Further complicating this story is that the county clerks are not verifying that the documents are legit. It would only take a few extra minutes to check to see if the notary stamp was legit.

With more and more of these stories surfacing, hopefully, more states will realize that their archaic notary laws and policies need updating to help deter some of these serious crimes.