The Seller Who Refused to Get on a Video Call

The situation

Linh, an investment advisor in her mid-thirties, had spent the better part of a year house-hunting in Ottawa before she found what looked like the right fit: a well-kept detached home on a quiet street, listed at roughly $1,950,000. The listing described the seller, a woman named Analyn, as an elderly widow moving into a retirement residence, no longer able to manage the stairs or the upkeep of a large property. The listing agent explained that Analyn's son was handling the sale on her behalf under a power of attorney — a legal document that lets one person make decisions, including selling property, for another person who can no longer manage those decisions themselves. That is a common and legitimate arrangement, and nothing about it should have raised an eyebrow on its own.

Linh's offer was accepted quickly, at close to asking price. From there, things moved with unusual speed. The listing agent pushed for a tight closing, said the family wanted the matter settled before Analyn's move, and asked that most communication go through the agent rather than directly with the family. Linh, buying on her own for the first time and eager not to lose the house, did not think much of it. She retained our firm to act on the purchase, as she would have for any resale, and the file came in through our usual intake process a few weeks before the scheduled closing.

What our review found

Every purchase file that comes through our office gets a title search and, where a seller is signing through a power of attorney rather than personally, a closer look at that document. Ontario law sets out how a valid power of attorney has to be made — signed by the person granting it while they have the capacity to understand what they are signing, and properly witnessed. It does not, on its own, require the document to be registered anywhere or verified by a central authority, which is exactly what makes a forged one dangerous: on the surface, a fake can look just as clean as a real one.

Two things did not sit right once our team started pulling the file together. First, the power of attorney supplied to us was dated only a few months earlier, with no earlier version on file anywhere and no lawyer or notary listed who our office could reach and confirm. Second, when we asked — as we ask on every file involving a POA seller — for a short video call with Analyn herself, simply to confirm she understood and supported the sale, the agent came back with reasons why that would not be possible: she was unwell, she found video calls confusing, her son would speak for her. Reasonable requests get reasonable answers. This one kept getting deflected.

This pattern matches a known type of real estate fraud in Ontario: someone identifies a property — often one owned outright with no mortgage, often belonging to an elderly or absent owner — and uses forged identification and a fabricated power of attorney to pose as the owner or the owner's representative, sell or mortgage the property, and disappear with the proceeds before anyone notices. The true owner, in these cases, usually has no idea the sale is happening until it is done, or nearly done.

What we did

1. Paused the file rather than pushing toward closing. We told Linh directly that we were not comfortable proceeding until we could independently confirm who we were actually dealing with, and that meant accepting a delay she had not planned for.
2. Ran an independent search behind the listing. We searched the property's registration history and prior ownership records rather than relying solely on documents supplied through the transaction, and confirmed the registered owner's name matched the seller identified in the listing — but nothing else about her circumstances did.
3. Located the real owner through an independent channel. Using publicly available means rather than the contact information supplied by the listing agent, we traced a family member — Analyn's actual son, Tuan — and reached him directly, outside the transaction entirely.
4. Confirmed the fraud. Tuan had no knowledge of any listing, any offer, or any power of attorney naming him. His mother was alive, competent, and living independently — not in a retirement residence, and not selling her home. The power of attorney used in the transaction was a forgery, and the person negotiating through the listing agent was not connected to the family at all.
5. Reported it and locked down the deposit. We flagged the file to the title insurer's fraud unit and to police, and made sure Linh's deposit, still held safely in trust, was never released toward closing.
6. Helped the real family respond. Once Tuan understood what had happened, he arranged a proper power of attorney with his mother, put a caution on the title to flag any further attempts to deal with the property, and — because the house genuinely was for sale in his mother's plans, just not this way — asked whether Linh might still be interested in buying it, honestly this time.

The outcome

The fraudulent sale never closed. No funds moved, and Linh's deposit came back to her in full once the file was formally terminated — the protection that comes from holding purchase funds in trust and refusing to release them until identity and authority are actually confirmed. That was the clean part.

The rest was a genuine compromise. Linh had already spent roughly $4,000 on a home inspection and an appraisal for the original deal, money that is not usually recoverable when a purchase falls through for reasons outside either real party's control. She also lost several months she had not planned to lose, moving back into a competitive market she thought she had already left. On the other side, Analyn and Tuan had to work through the discomfort of learning a stranger had tried to sell her home out from under her, arrange proper legal authority for Tuan to act for her going forward, and deal with a caution on title that would need to be addressed before any real sale could proceed cleanly.

Months later, once Tuan's authority was properly documented and the caution resolved, the family did sell the home — to Linh, in a straightforward transaction handled the normal way, with the real owner's actual wishes behind it. The price had moved up modestly in the meantime, and the home closed at roughly $1,995,000, about $45,000 more than Linh's original offer, reflecting the months the market had continued to move while the fraud was untangled. Linh got the house she wanted. She also paid more for it and waited longer than she should have had to, which is the honest shape of a partial win: the fraud did not succeed, but it was not free for anyone it touched.

What you can learn from this