Seniors beware, Fred Weekley, the mayor of the district of Katepwa Beach in Saskatchewan, remembers the sunny October day in 2013 when a staff member alerted him to an unusual fax. A title transfer firm wanted a land description of his home on Katepwa Lake, a resort community about 100 kilometres east of Regina in the Qu’Appelle Valley.

When Mr. Weekley called the Vancouver-based company to inquire why, he was told his house had been sold and that the title was about to be transferred to its new owner. As he puts it, he became “unglued,” as the home he’d shared with his wife for 15 years had never been put on the market. A former senior financial planner, Mr. Weekley suspected a fraudulent title transfer was in the works. He quickly placed calls to his lawyer, the bank that held the line of credit against his home, the country’s two credit-reporting bureaus so that fraud alerts could be placed on his accounts, and the RCMP (which he says to this day hasn’t returned calls). He also talked to the provincial land title office, which told him all that’s required to execute a transfer of title is to have a letter with the owner’s signature on it that’s been notarized.

Mr. Weekley says he was fortunate to have averted the fraud – which he thinks began with identity theft. “You can very easily be in real trouble,” Mr. Weekley says. “You don’t even know what’s happened until the truck pulls up with the new owner’s stuff. It can be really, really disastrous. … What do you do? You’re 60 or 70 years old and your house has been taken and you have to get out. It’s a frightening thing.”

According to the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada, title fraud can happen in one of two ways. With identity theft, fraudsters can use stolen or fake identification or documents to pretend to be a homeowner and obtain one or more mortgages on the property, then walk away with the cash. Fraudsters can also register forged documents to discharge any existing mortgages then transfer the property to themselves and register a new mortgage against the property’s clear title, pocketing the proceeds.

Then there are other factors that leave seniors vulnerable just as with other types of fraud: medical conditions that might lead to diminished mental capacity; lack of familiarity with computerized documents; and isolation. Older adults living with a spouse or partner are less likely to be abused than those who are single or widowed and living alone, Mr. Webb says, adding that older women are at an even higher risk of all forms of financial abuse, including title fraud, than men.