Resident shares account of 'house stealing'

SIDNEY -- Theft is not limited to materials taken from a store.

Scott Bauer shared with the Cheyenne County Commissioners April 1 how his computer was compromised, leading to possibly losing his house.

"Recently, my personal identity was hacked on my computer. They were able to get all of our family's information including drivers licenses, Social Security cards, passports, and other information. My concern is since they now have all this information, they could rapidly come in and quit claim the deed of our home out from underneath us; especially since it's paid for," Bauer said Monday.

He said he learned there is no process to flag a deed or trust to the title of a property. 

Bauer suggested using methods to verify signatures regarding property transfers. He offered DocuSign as an option. He said DocuSign requires confirmation of identity when sending a signature before sending a document. 

Cheyenne County Clerk Beth Fiegenschuh said her staff does not check property ownership. Her duty is to verify documents have been notarized. 

Sam Wilkins of Wilkins Solutions said shared suggestions on how to avoid a computer getting hacked. One of the suggestions is to turn off the device. He said powering off computers. He said that is how "the other scams" happen; hackers get into the computer, open a terminal window, convince the computer owner to do some "routine maintenance" with a service bill at the end.

He said when they get the payment set up, they will sometimes add a zero, or two, turning a $60 bill into $600, or $6,000. 

"It instantly pulls the money out. It is usually a foreign entity that does this, so it's very hard to get your money back," Wilkins said.

Wilkins said the best step of prevention is training the computer owner and operator; "there's no such thing as free money," if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is, and if you don't recognize the email and link within it, don't open it.