Detroit Talk City | Fake polling numbers and Home deed scams

And the company behind it now, it's calling it, not a fake, but a social experiment. Attorney Todd Perkins weighs in. All right, that brings us to our poll question. Here it is. Are news outlets fact-checking enough? Just scan that QR code right there at the bottom of your screen, and we will show you the results later on in the show. And the show, it's all about hearing from you, the viewer. We just want to have a conversation, so here's how you can do it. You can text us. you can call us the number is 313-765-8844 you can also jump into the zoom room 892-4909-0290 and of course on social media hashtag us at Detroit Talk City all right let's get right into this Todd Perkins always good to see you good to see you how are you in court today yes you win always you know qualified victories qualified besides being an attorney you're Also a candidate for mayor of Detroit. Yes, I was. Came in fourth place. Yes. There were polls done before. Yes. Are they reliable? As of today, they're not. You know, I didn't think they were reliable when I was there. And they turned out, when you look at the polling, at the exit polling, from what I was saying was accurate. And I polled higher than other individuals that they said I was behind. And was that during the course of the campaign that it changed? I don't know. But this thing right here is, I mean, it's incredible. This is called Wedgwood. Have you ever heard of Wedgwood? I've never heard of him, but you sent me the information. I did some little research, and it's shocking. Two guys. Now, this is national, but they focused on Michigan. And in one of our Senate races, the whole country is looking at. But this is for the primary. And they basically came up, and they admitted it, fake numbers. Fake numbers. Correct. And the person that was really upset was Mallory McMorrow. Well, she should be. She should be. Yeah. They just made up the numbers. And she says it caused her, basically, the fundraising dried up, and a week later, she dropped out of the race. Exactly. So what do we make of this? Is this, is this, let's just go, in general, well, let's go criminal, is it criminal, is it criminal? Well, it could be. You know, it depends on how they received, if they received money, then, you know, you were talking about wire fraud, you know, that from receiving money, did they, now, here's Here's another aspect that people might not be thinking about, voter suppression and influencing a vote illegally. Even if they're doing it under the purposes of an experiment, I don't think that that's a defense if the federal government comes in and says, you affected this election. Wedgwood said this was just for a social experiment, cuz what they wanted to do, they wanted to see if us, the media, would just publish the results without fact checking. And a lot of we did, New York Times did, Newsweek did, Politico did, I don't know if we did, I'm not sure, maybe we did. But the victims are the people, the victim is Mallory McMorrow, and those individuals who might have been influenced to say, well, I'm gonna leave this campaign because it doesn't have the steam that it otherwise would have. I mean, this is not only shocking, as I said before, but it's worthy of a conversation And we're in a political climate where we already don't trust. You know what I'm saying? From 2016, where we talked about the influence from Russia and various different things and all of the mechanisms that we put in place to try to protect our elections, now it does, you know, even before the election starts, you know, there's malfeasance or, you know, even... So when you rely, as a candidate, you rely on those polls. You absolutely do, for a lot of reasons, don't you? Well, let me tell you what's more important, who relies upon them. And the people who are paying, giving money to candidates rely upon them. That's even more important. I mean, because all of these candidates, for whatever it is, whoever, whatever side you're on, they do want to serve in some capacity, whatever their interest is. But it's driven by the people that would support them. And people aren't going to support you if you're not high enough in the polls to be a viable candidate. All right, let's talk about the card. You mentioned criminal. I think there's wire fraud here. Wire fraud is you have to use the Internet or the mechanism to distribute the message. Right. You also have to be paid for. There's gonna be some money exchange. They're testing these money exchanges. There was some crowdfunding here. I guess there was some crowdfunding that they used. The crowdfunding is raising money for your cause. I would say that's enough. I think it's enough. But also the issue of voter suppression. That's a criminal act. Is that a criminal act? It is absolutely a criminal act. Is that federal too? Yes. These are federal offenses, both of them. Well, I think the wire fraud also could apply in a state case too. Do you think Dana Nessel should be looking at this? I think everyone's gonna be looking at this. I think Jerome Gordon's gonna be looking at this. I think DOJ out of Washington is gonna be looking at it, cuz what it does is if they look at it and take a heavy hand on it, then it shows that look, regardless of whatever you said that we've been doing, the political, the powers that be, we are taking this seriously and we don't want any, no one wants to be ostensibly problematic in an election. They admitted that they absolutely faked numbers. There's no basis. They faked them. And then they admit that they published them for this social experiment. Let me ask you this. is there a civil case here? I believe so. You would take this case, wouldn't you? Absolutely. It's a breach of contract. I mean, it's a breach of contract upon the people. I mean, but absolutely, she would be, I think the people are the ultimate people that lose. Yeah. But as a candidate, she's the direct individual that suffered the effects of it. Because now what you have to do is you have to go to get the legitimate polls. And what are the legitimate polls? And then you have to ask, did this poll affect other polling from other individuals? Because once it's out, it's going to affect sentiment. And don't you think that the pollsters that we rely on, the ones that we know, that we know some names, some of the names, but shouldn't they come out and say, these people are absolutely wrong? It hurts their credibility as well. I think that they will, because in order to be that scourge of negativity, they're going to have to stand up for this. They're going to have to do something that's clear and convincing and showing that, hey, we operate in clean hands and we want to be a trusted entity for the people. Let me throw one other thing at you, I hear that the FCC, there's plenty over here, but so we've got criminal, we have civil, now the FCC, now they are the ones that regulate And we know this administration has used the FCC quite a bit. They may not apply to the print media, but they do apply to us and radio, etc. It turns out, Mr. Attorney, you're representing Fox 2 or one of these other news organizations that publish the results. Could we get in trouble? Well, you know, could they make a tangential argument and jump that direction to attack these news stations? It depends on who wants to do it. What if CNN did it? I think it's too much. And here, I've been wrong before. Not much. But the thing is, I've been wrong before. But I think it's a little stretch because if they've been presented as a legitimate source of information, it's almost like in a criminal case. You've done a lot of them. If law enforcement has a legitimate source of information that they relied upon and that source lied, but they had no reason to know that they lied, then there's some sort of protection there. They'll give you the preliminary exam. That's it, but the jury's not gonna buy it, though. What does this do to elections now? What do you think? Is the public really, I don't know, do public really believe polls, or does the only one that count is the one on election day that we've heard so much about? No, I think that people do rely upon polls. It's already a sort of this negativity or this jaundice about elections. I mean, there's voter apathy. This is going to add to it. And we need to come out and do something that's really significant, really dramatic to show, and I say we because I feel like in the legal system, I'm as much a part of it as you are in the media and legal system. But then also the government, they have to step in and make a determination. Are we gonna start regulating pollsters? Then you think about the people who don't want big government, but yet we want clean elections. Today, seven cities in Michigan are going to be, there's oversight by the feds to seven cities. Detroit being one, Warren being another one, Grand Rapids, etc. Exactly. So do we really want that much oversight, too? I don't know how much oversight. You know, there's a lot of people that don't want bigger government. But how much, you know, it's a balancing there. Do we want better elections? But whatever it is, this doesn't help the political cause and voting and respect for the government. It does not. All right. This is the part of the show we want to hear from you. do you trust these polls shown on television as well text us call us with your questions 313-765-8844 we'll get them read live out of the air detroit talk city back after this break so you want to zoom on fox too we want you to zoom on fox too but we want to make you look and sound really really good so four easy steps first of all take the phone and turn on its side we want you to fill up the entire screen then you gotta look around and you've gotta find the light remember we want the light in front of you not behind you that's good and then i we want all of you and finally turn down the television like i'm gonna do right now we want to hear you not the tv all right let's review these easy steps first flip it light it unmute it and then you are ready to zoom remember you can be a part of fox 2's detroit talk city and the sports office just zoom in live at detroit talk city i'm your host charlie langton i are political polls even trustworthy we want to hear from you text us call us 313-765-8844 you can also So join us in the Zoom room at 892-4909-0290. Todd Perkins is here, not only a lawyer, he's been in a lot of campaign stuff before, but a candidate as well for mayor, the subject of polls himself. All right, want to take a phone call? Absolutely. Let's do it. Ryan from Southfield, you're on Detroit Talk City. Hello, Ryan. Hey, Charlie. Hey, Tom. I appreciate you guys even taking my call. Thank you. Thank you, Ryan. What's your question or comment? I really think that news outlets need to do a better job of fact-checking because in today's world, it seems like there's a lot of pressure to be first. And sometimes that takes a backseat to being actually factually correct. And I think we need to recognize there's a difference between reporting facts and presenting those facts in a way that pushes a particular narrative, right? And you can tell the truth and still mislead people by leaving out important context. Yeah, that's right. That's a good, but when you were running, do you feel the media covered you fairly? You know, not until the end, you know, and I think that what happened was we, we made our mark and we were not going to go away. You know, I felt initially, remember I had, you know, I was the one who called myself being Detroited, you know, silenced and, and, and, and because they wouldn't let me be on stage because they said my numbers weren't not representative of someone who was competing with the rest of them. and it showed to be inaccurate so you know you only got five i mean yeah i i get that five percent but what i'm saying is those other individuals who are on the stage were behind me at the end of the day at the at the exit polling they were behind me so you know to be denied was an opportunity to miss out on fundraising you know what i'm saying and so that was the thing i don't have any bitter bitterness about it because i had a great time i met a lot of people and you know But at the end of the day, it does affect it. And, you know, what he's saying is, what Ryan is saying, there's some accuracy in there. But, you know, we have so much information, you know, that, and I know that news outlets, because I work with a lot of them, they do check. But, you know, it's so much information, then, you know, how do you get to all of it? And sometimes we miss it. Not over here, we try not to. All right, let's start. Daniel from Midland. Hey, Daniel, you're on Detroit Talk City. Hey, Daniel. Good afternoon, gentlemen. And I'm 55 years old, and my question about polls is, how do they come up? Because as a 55-year-old man, any friends or family, since I've been able to vote since I've been 18, I've never been contacted. Friends or family have never been contacted. Any coworkers have never been contacted. And sometimes when you've got neighbors or family members or stuff, they don't even want to talk about who they're voting for at the polls because it seems like an invasion of privacy. So I'm just curious about how they come up with these numbers on the polls. Yeah, do you know? Well, you know, that is a great question, and I know some of it. You know, and they take sort of a stratification of the sample of areas of the population. You know, this geographic area, this economic area, you know, where people's household income is, what people do, their professional status, and they take all of that information, and, you know, how you see that poll is based on 400 or 500 calls. And, you know, to Daniel's point, they say, well, how can you be accurate by only using four or five hundred? But the science behind it is marvelous. And it does have and it does follow that they're pretty accurate. The people that are doing it right, the ones that do it, the ones that are doing it right, the ones that are using the right formula. It's fairly accurate, even though they have just a very small slice of of the population of the voter populace. Let's hold that thought. A lot more calls. We're going to get to them all, our political polls and studies. Are they even trustworthy? Hey, the Zoom room is open as well. You can get there right now. We'll take more calls. Detroit Talk City back after the break. Back to Detroit Talk City. Do you trust political polls? I'm your host, Charlie Langton. text us or call us, 313-765-8844. You can also join us in the Zoom room as well. Attorney Todd Perkins, also a candidate for mayor of Detroit last time around. Maybe he'll do it again. We'll find out at the end of the show. All right. Let's take some text questions, all right? Let's get to the first one. Here we go. Polls are like throwing spaghetti on a wall and betting on how much will stick. Ask Hillary about the polls and the broadcasters reporting the results of the election. Talk about Hallmark, Precious Moments, Ceramic. Oh, it was like The Exorcist's first movie sitting in the front row. Oh, my gosh. Wow. I don't think he believes in polls. I don't think he believes in polls, but this guy can write. He's a great writer. Or a woman. I don't know who wrote it. I think we're hiring. Get that number. That's great. I like that. But there is an element of truth to the polls. But after this Wedgwood fake poll, they admitted it's fake, but they say it was a social experiment to see how many news outlets would just publish the results without any fact-checking. that's what they say but let's go back what he what that text said we went back to 2016 everyone predicted that Hillary was going to to win and you know i wake up in the morning i'm i'm the tv's on and i'm looking up inside dead upside down and on the bottom of the screen is red you know because otherwise it would have been blue and you know everyone predicted that and that's more to that point this time around we have someone who admitted it no one admitted it in 2016, but this time around, they admitted it, a social experiment, why didn't they say it earlier? It's only because they got caught. They got caught. They got caught. They got caught. A second year law student came up with that defense. Is that a good defense? Is that a good defense in a criminal case? It depends on your jury. I don't think a judge would even allow that to be a defense. You gotta have some basis of law. Jury nullification. Jury nullification. All right, let's take a phone call. Brian from Detroit, behind Detroit Talk City. Hello, Brian. Hey, man, can you hear me pretty good? Oh, yeah, I can hear you, Brian. You got my buddy on there. We were just in the restaurant. I ain't going to say the name. Shoutout to Terry Charles The man. There we go. That is the man. We were just talking about old times downtown a couple of days ago. But the thing of it is this, and I don't know if you guys agree with it, but I asked Ed Sepulveda years ago on the radio, So how do you call about maybe 8, 90 people, maybe 115 out of thousands of people and expect to get an accurate poll win? And I just used a number out of 50,000. You call 1,000. How do you get a poll out of that, Charlie? I want to talk to you guys for a second about that because I think that's not fair to say what a poll number is. And then you actually can persuade a voter based off you guys giving an accurate number saying that X amount of people are voting for this guy. I don't like that. But I want to sit back and do it with you guys for a second. And Brian, you mentioned Ed Sepulveda, who's been on the show many times. I respect him. I know his numbers. But how do you answer that? Well, you know, I guess to Brian's point is are the polls influencing elections is essentially the case, which shouldn't happen. You know what I'm saying? And the people should be voting because the candidates have presented themselves as somebody who's worthy of their vote, and not because of a poll. But I do believe in the science. I do trust the science, and you need to get Ed on the show, that would be a great person to have on here. And I'm not just saying it for Ed, all the other ones too, but his name comes to mind. But the science is that looking at all the demographics and picking those from various different people to make those 1,000 calls that would represent 100,000 votes. You know, a lot of candidates, before they even get into the race, they do their own poll. Oh yeah, they do. For name recognition. Exactly. And they hire a pollster, or a whole bunch of pollsters, and they go out there and they say, and they do a sampling. I don't know if it's 90 or 100, the more you want, the more it comes. It's a small number, yeah. It's relative. Absolutely, yes. That's the one. But that gives you an idea of how much you need to do or no one knows who you are. That means something, too. But also to Brian's point is that the polls, the smaller the number, if you look at the bottom in the very small print, it's got that plus or minus 2% or 3%. But the smaller the number, the larger the plus or minus is going to be. If it's a small number, it's going to be plus or minus 5% instead of 1% or 2% if you have a lot more. And that's within the margin of error. It is within the margin there. All right, Todd Perkins, are you going to run again? You know something? That's a home question. Let's do a poll. That's a home question and a God question, you know. So, you know, right now I'm very happy back at the firm and working. I'm very happy. We are happy to have you here. Thanks, Todd Perkins. Always appreciate it. All right, coming up this next half hour, do you actually own your own home? There are thieves, some of them, at your front door. There's a big deed scam going on, and we'll talk about that next on Detroit Talk City. This advertising. Detroit Talk City, I'm your host, Charlie Langton. Still to come this half hour, scammers quietly stealing your house right from under your family's nose in and around Metro Detroit. Daryl Bowers is here. She's the former director of the Detroit Association of Realtors, and she's going to tell us why these scams are a growing crisis in Detroit. Let's go back to our poll question, though, one more time. Are news outlets fact-checking enough? You can scan that QR code. It's right there. It's right down there at the bottom of your screen. We'll show you the results a little bit later on in the show. And the show is all about hearing from you, the viewer. We're just going to have a conversation, and we want to know what you are thinking. text us call us 313-765-8844 or you can jump in the zoom room as well 892-4909-0290 that's our meeting id number and of course you can social us on social media hashtag us detroit talk city all right Darrell and Bowers all right Darrell always good to see you you too sir you selling any houses these days we're doing very well so our customers are following us through the years we are one of the oldest firms in the city yeah you've been around uh selling houses for a long time 60 years yeah interest rates are high though aren't they right now if you depends about what kind of customer you're going to be you put if you're trying to buy minimum down and you're buying as much house as you can afford you might have to pay a little higher interest rate but that's in anything yeah uh the banks are anxious to go loan they're doing everything they can to accommodate All right, Darlene, let's talk about this. For many, it's a dream to own your own home. We've talked about tenants' rights and landlord-tenant, but if you own it, it's a big deal. It's a big deal. There's scammers out there scamming your house without you even knowing it? Well, they're trying to get you to sign papers, so you should sign nothing unless you have a valid title insurance, a report saying that the person who you're sitting with really owns that property. That's where the void is. It's called deed scams, right? Scams or deed fraud. Deed fraud. What's a deed fraud? You prepare a deed and you make it look like you own this property. And you prepare papers and people think their signature alone is enough to acquire ownership. That's not. So just so I understand, we're going to play a little game over here. So if you sold me the house, you're the real estate agent, you're going to sell me the house. I'm going to go to a closing, right? I'm going to sign a bunch of papers. right one of those papers it's not technically a deed but there's a deed right yes and a deed means you own the house no a deed means you signed a document that you thought transferred ownership and it may not have transferred ownership you do not ever sit down with someone and assume because they had you sign a paper that you have acquired ownership but if it's done the right way a deed is the document that you take and record it meaning you you go to the register of deeds and you record it that's official right yes but people are scared so how do i get scammed here you deal with reputable firms you first of all you should never sign a deed with someone that you don't have any credibility with uh the title companies do that before you get there they researched that document and considered it valid yeah and so a lot of these are quitclaim deeds right that are that are being that are being phonyed up phonyed up that's it that's a good that's a good way to describe it it's phonyed up okay and and that person who's doing it may be as phony as a paper doll I'm not saying it's a legal word word but it is kind of a something it's funny and usually it's not done in a title an office a title office no I I wouldn't insist upon being somewhere that somebody tells me that person is valid. How many deed frauds are going on these days, Darlene? Well, we hold the record. Let's see. We have the most of any state in the union, I think. Michigan? Michigan. The most deed fraud in the whole country? It's very bad. And how about in the Detroit area? It's still bad. There has to be a way. it's getting better because the Detroit Police Department has a department actually assigned to be there. We had a closing once and we found out that the people were not who they were supposed to be and the title company came right in from that department. They have an office there and they took care of business and it was amazing to watch. And the prosecutor's office, Kim Worthy's office also has a special unit too that's dedicated to arresting, to prosecuting these people. Yes, and I think that's wonderful because the people that are taken advantage of are really people that can't afford to be taken. We have a housing crisis and people can't find housing at a marketable rate. And so we're really at, the people are, they're at the mercy of these people. All right, let's give you some tips. We're gonna take a quick break over here. Even if you're a tenant in a house suppose you're all of a sudden you come in there and the locks are on the doors hold that thought a lot more to come we do want to hear from you is there a housing scam a crisis in metro detroit call us text us 313-765-8844 we'll get those questions answered live on the air detroit talk city back after this break detroit talk city i'm your host charlie all right have you fallen victim to a home scam or do you really even own your home oh no uh Daryl and Bowers is here, she's a former president of the Detroit Association of Realtors talking about deed fraud, it's a big problem in Michigan, she says it's a problem, Michigan is one of the worst in the entire country, people stealing your home, let's go to the phones right now Rod from Madison Heights, you're on Detroit Talk City, hello Rod, hey how are you doing today good, so this is real uh my home was, I had deed theft in 2015 in Oakland County, Lisa Brown um helped save my home, her and Judge Grant and it was due to a guy who him and his associates were picking on elderly people and people who had who were behind on their taxes and they would send out fake documents and record them with the court, and that's how they get caught. And Rod, from what I understand, catching the bad guys, the criminals, it's really hard, isn't it? very, because they don't make themselves available. They disappear, and once they disappear into another area, or they stop working in that neighborhood, they're not there. And they're mostly victimizing people who are in stress situations like... there's a tax issue. There may be some issues there. There was a time once that before that people who had to get windows, doors, they would sign the property away as security for something you had to have. It was a roof. And the people are just there at their mercy. They don't know. You don't know. They say, sign right here. You can get your new windows. And sure enough, you were signing away the property and putting the windows up as security. Let's try to get one more call in if we can. No, we're not going to be able to get a call in. But, Becky, I know Becky's there. We're going to get your call in. Just real quick how to do that. Like, Rod, for example, you own your home for a while. Then you sign something, the criminal. But then the next day, the criminal signs and sells it. And so. He sells the paper. He sells the paper. So you don't know. You're sitting there and all of a sudden someone comes in and they padlock your door. What if you had a tenant in there? What do the tenants do? I hold that thought. All right. Daryl Lynn Bower. She's the former president of the Detroit Association of Realtors. We're going to get your questions. We want you to know. What are you thinking about this? You are watching Detroit Talk City back in a moment. Fit right in. Detroit Talk City. Home deed scams. Could you lose your house? Well, it's possible, though. Daryl Bowers is with us. She is the former president of the Detroit Association of Realtors. She's been doing real estate for a long time, and she says there are a lot of scams out there, deed fraud. All right, let's go to the phones. Becky from Southgate, you're on Detroit Talk City. Hello, Becky. Hey, Charlie. I was wondering if Ms. Bowers could answer a question regarding this deed theft. I've been trying to sign up for these free county property fraud alerts to avoid the expense of subscription. And I just can't get through to anybody. I've even emailed Mr. Youngblood. I've called. I've messaged. I wondered if she might know a way to, you know, get through and get this service from Detroit. Now, you're trying to get exactly what's your end game. What are you trying to do? So that, you know, my house is paid off. So what I'm trying to do is get free notification service, you know, free county property fraud alerts when somebody attempts to do something on your title. You know, there's a way that you might know I can do that. You know, the whole time in Detroit, I saw a commercial they offer, you know, notifications if there's a, someone's trying to take over your deed. I certainly would like to hear where that service is being given because we really need it. In order to find out if somebody's trying to take over your property, you can really go to the city clerk and find out if anybody's attempted to record anything okay that that is not it's free but it may not give you what you want and the county clerk they should help you if you actually go to the county as well and sometimes if you're doing having work done at your house you want to make sure that there's no uh liens put on your house so that would be a way that could be with the city or the county but there is a service there so check it out with the uh with the county that's probably where you record any kind of mortgage or encumbrance on the title right all right let's go to nora from wayne hello nora hi hi nora nora what's your uh question or comment question is there was a quitclaim deed that was stolen house was basically stolen is there any way we can retrieve the property back Your property was stolen by a quit-claim deed? I think that's what... Yeah. Yeah. Is that common? That's the common way? That's a common way, especially for elderly people. Like somebody passes away and it succeeds to no one and maybe it does succeed to someone, but people take that as an opportunity to go in and check. And if they find that nobody has taken over the property after a period of time, that gives them a feeling that there's an opportunity here. But these are fake deeds. I can make something called a quick claim deed, and I don't even need to see. You're the homeowner. I don't even need to see you. I can fill it out, and I can record it. That's exactly right. Does the clerk's office even check to see if it's legit? They do now. There is a story that goes around that says that once one of the clerks was at the desk and took a deed for recording, and it was actually for her own home. Oh, the criminals have to know which house you're stealing. They got to have guts. That's a pretty bold move. Real quick, let's get another phone call, all right? Gerardo. Hey, Gerardo from Detroit. You're on Detroit Talk City. Hello, Gerardo. Hello, and thank you for having your show on. As a matter of fact, I'm going to try and do this as fast as I can. All right, here. Mr. Daniel, his wife and adult kid, they paid for property. Here's the story. Husband and wife lived in the property. They were separated, still married. Husband passed away. Family friend came in, took over to help the widow. Family friend passed away. Then the family friend's son, who's a criminal, wanted for crimes here in Detroit and in New York, was helping her, but he got it listed with REMAX. I'm saying the name, Remax Realty. Mr. Daniel and his family paid Remax with their sons in full for the property. They kept giving them excuses of getting papers and whatever and everything. They even went downtown to try to get papers and whatever and nothing. Comes to find out that there's different people trying to claim that the property is theirs. Mr. Daniel has even filed for case in court and then they tell him everything's good fine your case will go through good enough evidence then he gets letters saying lack of evidence or lack of interest and trying to get through the Kim Worthy's office is ridiculous as well even uh as a matter of fact this person claiming that the property is his I investigated him. This guy's got like about four or five different names. And we don't know where this guy came from. So please dig. So there's a lot of facts there, but I think we can get an answer, Gerardo. Do you want to take a stab at that? The person who is attempting to acquire the property has got to give proof that they actually bought it or it succeeded and someone sold it to them. They have to do that as proof before the city is going to let you record that deed. So they have an issue. And if they can get somebody to accept the deed and let it go on record, then they win. That doesn't usually happen because they're trying to cut down on the deed fraud. But this was at a, you said it before, Daryl, you have a closing. It was a real estate agent. The real estate agent, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but they should figure out who is the rightful owner, who can sign the agreement to sell the property. They should do that before they start trying to sell the thing. No question, but that is not a legal requirement. It's not. The title company should be present. They will verify it, and they'll make sure that you're not going to get in any trouble. It's simple. It's not expensive. It's something that they do almost as a course of doing business. So protect yourself. And it might not be a Kim Worthy thing. It could be a criminal, but give it a civil attorney probably at that point. All right, let's take another phone call. Deborah from Livonia. You're on Detroit Talk City. Hello, Deborah. Hi, how are you? I have a question. My mom passed away, and I was the one who paid off her home. How big? Turn your television down, Deborah. Okay, I'm saying that my mom passed away, but I was paying the house off. I paid the house off. Her daughter lives in the house, but it's still in her name. What should I do? Mom owned the house, and then mom passed away? Yeah, my mom passed away, but I was the one who paid off the house. And how it is, they can verify it by my checks that I sent to pay it off. all right well okay you you have a dilemma that can be resolved if that person you paid the house off and you show proof that you paid it off and it came from your money your funds then you have a good argument for showing that the way that that person acquired it or came up with the defense that they acquired it is not legal and if you can prove your position you will find very very uh good resources to protect you uh that one that's very winnable because they have not they don't have a a trail where they got the ownership but you could always go through the legal way of recording a new deed or have your mother there's a lot of ways to get that deed good that you're paying it off it's probably your equity but there's a legal way of doing it good call there let's take another one regina from ferndale you're on detroit talk city hello regina hi how are you good i want to say first thank you in time past for helping catch cooks i'm also a former worker of city of detroit in the courts these scammers that just like this young lady prior to me got my mother uh they'll come in all types of ways i took up real estate zoning property they'll make fake licenses i'm telling everything because i wanted to stop they've been doing it since 1994 you get the brokers different ones that know it if you don't if you get a paper or someone tells you and you don't have your lawyer present stop it there's a lien they'll sell you real good they got my mother 40 for 30 years she owned her house within one they took it away from 1900 it's horrible terrible terrible oh see you gotta you gotta be careful right that's the thing you have to get help the minute you find out somebody's wrong get help let's get to gwen real quick uh gwen from detroit gwen detroit talk city hello gwen hi hello hello gwen can you hear me yes we can hi all right so here's my question um my mother passed away two years ago but before she passed away we went to see an attorney and she signed uh over the deed to the home for a ladybird deed for me. And so I want to know, is it easy to steal the property still with a lady bird deed that is listed down on the city court's office? It makes it harder, but you still need to protect yourself. You sit down with someone who handles deeds, handles title, and you have proof of ownership. And if your proof of ownership does not name you as a party that should be in in entitled then you don't have proof but yeah you need to just watch everything that you're doing and again the title company insures you that's like an insurance policy you you have a fender bender then they pay for your car to get fixed title company will pay for your title to be corrected daryl lemurs the former president detroit association of realtors talking about deed scams or deed fraud very prevalent around here be careful thank you so much thank you that was great all right stay with us we've got the results of our poll when detroit talk city returns after this 10 of this advertising welcome back to detroit talk city now it is the time for the results of our question of the day our poll and here it is our news outlets fact checking enough oh no i don't know if i want to know the results of this poll do i see 95% of you say, we're not fact-checking enough. Oh, Ruf Rudge, can you believe that? We fact-check. We fact-check. The Pulse fact-check. We fact-check everything. That must be the 5%. All right, that's all for Detroit Talk City. Remember, you can tune in every Monday through Friday at 4 o'clock. We will be here. Great show for you today. Thank you so much. at the 5 o'clock news where the Ruf Rudge is next.