Lisa J. Huriash, South Florida Sun Sentinel

Concerned that a thief could steal a deed of a house and toss the rightful residents to the street, the Broward County Property Appraiser’s Office has started a free service to monitor property ownership.

The initiative, dubbed “Owner Alert,” notifies residents if the county office gets paperwork changing property ownership. It doesn’t prevent the fraud from happening, but alerts rightful owners within 24 hours by email if there’s a mess that needs to be cleaned up before it’s too late.

“The longer the fraud goes on, the more opportunity for these criminals to really take advantage of somebody and cloud the title to their property,” said Marty Kiar, the Broward County Property Appraiser.

“People file fake deeds all the time to fraud people out of their property,” Kiar said.

The thieves determine if homes are empty, often searching people’s photos on social media to find out if they’re on vacation or gone from home. Then they’ll file a fake deed, take the house and rent it out, Kiar said. “It’s a big criminal enterprise. And these criminals are getting more sophisticated.”

Kiar said he came up with the idea after the 2017 after a Hollywood couple forged documents to claim ownership of $17 million worth of real estate in New York and Florida.

Using a fraudulent deed indicating that the property belonged to New York Mortgage Corp., the couple evicted a resident from their home in Hollywood with help from police in 2015, federal officials said. They also changed the locks on the property. It took almost a year to develop the new county program. Since Kiar opened registration last week, it hit 50,000 sign-ups on Monday