Logan County Fraud Guard alerts owners to possible property fraud

Absentee landowners, heirs, elderly homeowners and ranch families with inherited property are among the Logan County owners most exposed to deed fraud when a filing lands on land no one checks every day. Logan County’s free Fraud Guard service turns that risk into an early warning, sending an automated email any time a document is recorded in the clerk and recorder’s office using a subscriber’s name or parcel number.

Pamela M. Bacon, Logan County’s clerk and recorder, has held the office since her first term in 2007, and her office says property fraud is a growing white-collar crime. The county’s message is simple: be vigilant and subscribe to the free alert before a suspicious filing shows up in the record. A Logan County notice said the online subscription is offered to help protect residents against property fraud, while a Sterling Journal-Advocate notice on Jan. 29, 2025, described Fraud Guard as a free way to help prevent people from becoming victims of possible fraud.

The timing of the alert is the point. Fraud Guard does not wait for an owner to stumble across a bad deed months later; it triggers when the document is recorded, then gives the owner a chance to decide whether the filing is legitimate or fraudulent. That matters in Logan County, where land can sit in family ownership for generations and where vacant acreage or inherited tracts may not draw daily attention. The county’s online document site and recording office create the official paper trail, and Fraud Guard adds a notification layer on top of it.

State regulators say the concern is not hypothetical. The Colorado Division of Real Estate says real estate fraud and scams are on the rise, and it identifies title fraud as a mix of identity theft and mortgage fraud. In one common scheme, a scammer forges a deed, records it with the county and then tries to use that false record to obtain a mortgage on the property.

Logan County is not alone in responding. Teller County said in 2024 that it was alerting property owners to rising mortgage and property fraud and later said its Fraud Guard service came at no cost. El Paso County, Jefferson County, Adams County, Douglas County, Denver and Mesa County all offer similar recording alert systems. In Logan County, the practical step is straightforward: enroll, keep the contact information tied to the name or parcel current, and review any unfamiliar filing as soon as the email arrives.