Greetings, fellow Notaries.
I’m wondering if any of you have received the following message (from different senders) that appears to be a scam aimed at notaries. I’m including the grammar mistakes:
"Hello,
I found your info on _______ (usually Notary Cafe or 123Notary). Are you available to handle a reverse mortgage signing for us Tuesday at 12:00 if so please let me know your fee, so I can send the doc through secure mail"
I’ve received this email twice in the past month. Both times, no company information was included in the email, only a sender name (likely fake) and gmail address. The first one was from “Ben Ruesch” (ben.legaltitleinsurance@gmail.com) and the second from “Mary Cuevos” (mcuevos.atralaw@gmail.com). The one from Mary Cuevos included phone and fax numbers, but the same exact text. I received the second email last week.
I was not available for either signing and responded appropriately and professionally. Had I been available, I would have researched the companies here at Notary Cafe and on other sites. However, my husband, who is also a notary (and a new one at that) did have some availability for this past Tuesday and I forwarded him the message. He responded with his fee, didn’t hear back and forgot about it. Come this past Tuesday, both of us get an email from “Mary Cuevos” at 11:52 a.m. with a “OneDrive” document attached.
The email (again, I include the original grammar mistakes) read:
"Hello,
Thanks for getting back to me.i have attached a document to this email for you to review.kindly review this and get back to me if you’ll be needing anything else.both my office and cell phone number is in the doc (page 3) you can give me a call at your convenient time."
This email was flagged by gmail security as being potentially dangerous. Here is the exact gmail security message:
"Be careful with this message. It contains content that is typically used to steal personal information."
Neither of us opened this document. If you’ve been in this business for any length of time, you have no doubt experienced some flakiness (or in some cases, downright unprofessional behavior) on the part of certain signing agencies. So, to be certain, my husband called the number Ms. Cuevos provided and received no reply.
Everything about this screams scam to me, but I haven’t seen anything about it online.
Cavaet emptor!
5 Likes
The same “Mary Cuevos” e-mail is being discussed on NotaryRotary also. General consensus is it’s a scam.
Another one going around is someone saying they are in the process of buying a house and the r.e. agent told them to line up a notary. There’s also an ‘attachment’ to this e-mail (that is most likely not something you want to open & turn loose on your computer). My point in mentioning this is: A notary is NOT needed ever, anywhere to work with a r.e. agent to buy a house.
2 Likes
It’s a scam… actually, spoofing, using a name similar to a real company name. I got one several months ago with a different name claiming to be from “Chicago Title Company”. I forwarded the entire message (including ISP address and email address) to a contact of mine who works for the REAL Chicago Title Insurance Company, Inc., and she forwarded it to their legal department.
Since then, I’ve been told it took CTIC’s fraud team a whole three hours to shut that particular ring down, and that their lawsuit for over 2 million dollars (!) will be ready and waiting when the six members finish serving their time.
Whoops! Spoofers picked the wrong company that time!
we don’t do debt resolutions or reverse mortgages-just don’t them and stay out of trouble
Have Notary Will Travel
I received a similar email as those above. This is what it said:
Good Afternoon. I have a customer who is purchasing a home here in California. He and his wife will need to sign loan documents in there office on Tuesday (waiting for the lender to finish up some things) is that something you can handle and if so, what is the procedure and the cost?
Thank you,
Sanya David
First America Title.
Then the next email said: "Good Morning,
In the secure link above you will find all of the documents that the borrowers need to sign for the closing on Tuesday 06/11/19 at 2:30pm. The closing location is in the invoice document. Below you will find a list of all the documents that should be in the secured link above.
Fee: $250
Borrower Docs
Payoff Disbursement
UPS Label (send back originals)
Closing Package
Notary Checklist – Refinance
AOT Docs
When printing the closing package (lender documents) please make sure you have your print settings on actual size because there will be legal size and letter size documents (I attached a screen shot below)."
Then they wanted me to click on the secure link for the docs and I got the message from my ISP: that this is not a secure link and that it is a phishing scheme and dangerous. The email address was a Hotmail address.
So many things off on this whole email.
I too have gotten the same emails. At least one a week for the past 3 weeks (sometimes 2). At first, I responded professionally that I was not available and found that the link is a known phishing site. In addtion, the following emails I got were different links.
There is an First American Title Company but they no nothing of a Sanya David. I have forwarded these emails to them and marked them as Junk so now I don’t even see them.
