Property Fraud Alert

Some counties offer the PFA service at no charge while others have elected to charge a small fee. After selecting your respective county from the list of participating counties, you must agree to a Disclaimer before you are able to enter your name or business name. After clicking on the checkbox agreeing to the disclaimer, you can continue to the sign-up screen. If the bottom of the sign-up screen does not contain check boxes for a one-year ($12.99) or three-year ($29.99) subscription fee, the service is provided to you at no charge in this county.

In the case where the county provides PFA at no charge, there is no fee to subscribe with several names (including personal and business names). If a county charges a subscription fee, each name entered will be charged the respective subscription fee amount.

You may enter up to a total of four personal and/or business names per one unique email address, or up to a total of three personal and/or business names per one unique phone number.

No. You must make separate subscription entries for each individual name (personal or business). For a married couple or for those persons who share the same last name, you must make individual subscription entries for each person.

It is highly recommended that you enter only the first letter of your first name in the first name field. For example, with a name such as Steve, Stephen, or Steven, you may wish to enter the letter “S” in the first name field. Or you may wish to enter the first few letters of your first name to limit the number of first name matches. For example, if the letters “St” are entered, a name match may result for the names Steven, Stan, Stacy, Sterling, etc.

To illustrate, let’s use the last name “Van Buren” as our example. This name may at times be spelled with a space in it (“Van Buren”) and at other times with no space (“VanBuren”). For cases like this, it is highly recommended that you make two separate subscription entries with both name variations. For the Property Fraud Alert system to work as intended, and for notification alerts to be sent, the last name spelling, or business name spelling of the subscription name must match exactly.

It is very possible to receive an alert that may actually pertain to another individual with the same last name (and first name) as you. Again, make sure you enter the last name spelling exactly.

It is imperative that you DO NOT enter the suffix of your name (Jr.,Sr., etc.) while entering your name into the subscription form. Only enter your first name information into the first name field and your last name information into the last name field. The same logic applies with middle names; DO NOT enter a middle name (or middle initial) into the first or last name fields.

Business names should be entered exactly as the business name is spelled; “ACME Printing Company”, “Smith & Smith”, “XYZ Business Corporation”. There may be times, however, that the county may possibly index these names differently. For example, “XYZ Business Corporation” could possibly be indexed as “XYZ Business Corp”. In this situation the name match would occur only if you entered “XYZ Business Corp”. Therefore, if your business name could contain variations similar to this, we highly recommend that you make an additional subscription entry with that variation.

For those counties in which PFA is a no-charge service, you can simply go to the PFA website and enter your new data information. For those counties where a subscription fee is required, please email [email protected] or phone 1-800-728-3858 and request the appropriate data change.

If you have subscribed to a county that offers PFA at no charge, your name will remain on the notification list indefinitely. For those counties in which a one-year or three-year subscription is required, you will be reminded 60 days prior to the expiration of your current subscription to renew your subscription.

No. You must subscribe to each county individually. The Property Fraud Alert system is managed county by county. Visit the home page of Property Fraud Alert (www.propertyfraudalert.com) to see the full list of participating counties.

The alert notification will contain the following information: County Location; Document Number, Document Type, Recorded Date, and the matched Party Name (personal or business name).