A woman out on bond, accused of fraudulently claiming a Wake County home as her own, showed up at the Register of Deeds again asking for new records on that same house.
In September, Dawn Mangum was arrested and charged with felony attempting to obtain property by false pretense after investigators say she filed a fraudulent deed on Craig Adams' home.
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It appears she thought it was a vacant foreclosure, and the homeowner believes Mangum was going to move in and use the fraudulent deed to make it harder for courts to evict her.
WRAL 5 On Your Side has been researching this case since it happened and spoke exclusively with Wake County Register of Deeds Tammy Brunner about it.
"It has been puppies and rainbows since I've been here and then that happened and it turned everything upside down," Brunner told us. "The staff person that recorded the fraudulent deed I'm not sure she's been right since then. She's just that person that takes everything very personally and she believes that it was her fault."
WRAL 5 On Your Side asked Brunner if registering the fraudulent deed was their fault.
"Absolutely not, 100% not," Brunner said. "And, that's what I've tried to say to her, she did everything by the book everything exactly the way that we've trained her to do.
"The document had everything on it that it needed to have on it. It showed no signs that it wasn't a valid document. What was on it, what was presented, we get all the time."
Brunner agreed to talk with 5 On Your Side to clear up these misconceptions about this situation. She says people have been critical of her office for not doing more to prevent the fraudulent deed from being filed.
"People were saying 'just because it's not required doesn't mean you can't go further.' It does mean I can't go further. It's not that my staff just doesn't want to work harder, they legally can't go those extra steps," Brunner explained.
Brunner continued, saying if nothing with a deed is obviously wrong or fraudulent, it must be recorded.
She also revealed there have been other encounters between her staff and Mangum.
Brunner told us Mangum tried to file a deed on a second home but was rejected because of a suspicious signature.
"The signature and what she wrote afterwards just looked weird to [the clerk] so, she took it to her supervisor which, that is what they're supposed to do, and the supervisor is supposed to figure out what happens next," Brunner said. "The supervisor took the document, started waiting on Ms. Mangum and looked at the deed of the actual property of the record that Ms. Mangum was trying to record that day. And when she looked it up, she saw that Ms. Mangum wasn't anywhere on the deed."
While Mangum was in jail on the charge related to Adams' home, Brunner said her office received two liens by mail allegedly filed by Mangum. However, they were also rejected for technical errors.
"We have certainly asked staff to be extremely mindful," Brunner said.
WRAL 5 On Your side didn't know during the interview that they'd literally just crossed paths with Mangum moments earlier.
When we arrived, Mangum was standing at one of the clerk stations inside the Register of Deeds office with her back to the door.
As the WRAL 5 On Your Side crew entered a conference room to meet with Brunner, Mangum passed behind them as she left.
About 30 minutes later after the interview was complete, a clerk told us that Mangum was there.
"Ms. Dawn Mangum came in and asked for a title search for the property for Craig Adams," the clerk told Brunner.
"Just now?" Brunner asked.
"Just now," the clerk replied.
Brunner then asked, "And then what happened?"
"I told her we don't do title searches, that would be a title search company," the clerk explained. "And she asked for a marketable title certificate."
"Which we also don't do," Brunner said. "And then what happened? She just left?"
"She just left," the clerk said.
WRAL 5 On Your Side asked Mangum's attorney what she wanted with those documents, but we were told "no comment."
As for legislative reforms to register of deeds operations, that is being discussed.
"I was totally taken aback," said North Carolina State Sen. Mary Wills Bode, D-Granville and Wake counties, about learning of the fraudulent deed on Adams' house.
Adams is in Bode's district and reached out to discuss the possibility of deed fraud reforms.
"We started brainstorming, and I started doing a lot of research, and started reaching out to colleagues, just to kind of hear about what had happened, maybe in their districts," Bode told 5 On Your side. "And it turns out, this is a bigger issue than I think many people had ever realized, unfortunately."
Bode is examining three potential changes:
- Enroll everyone statewide in fraud alerts with an option to opt out.
- Assign numbers or bar codes to notary stamps for easy tracing.
- Make it easier to get fraudulent documents removed from the record.
"Republicans and Democrats are interested in this issue, and so I am hopeful that there's some momentum," Bode said.
The North Carolina Association of Register of Deeds started working on reforms long before the issue with Mangum and Adams happened.
"We've had a conversation going in our association since March about it," said Wayne Rash, Caldwell County's Register of Deeds and Legislative Co-Chair for the North Carolina Association of Register of Deeds. "We want there to be stronger penalties, criminal penalties for the folks that do this."
"It seems like every deed fraud, scam, or whatever you want to call it is a little unique," said Crystal Gilliard, Union County's Register of Deeds, and the association's other Legislative Co-Chair. "So, we started focusing on, how can we help on the back end, because there needs to be stiffer penalties."
Rash says they hope to have something to take to the legislature next year that will also make it easier to remove a fraudulent filing.
"If something is maliciously filed, they can get a remedy for that and get the documents on record that recover that property without having to go hire a private attorney to do so, and so those are the types of things that that we're working on," Rash told 5 On Your Side.
"It is insane that Dr. Adams has to pay to get this record removed, insane," Brunner said. "There should be legislation that if fraud is proven, that it doesn't come back on the homeowner."
But again, any of these proposed changes must be made by lawmakers and be workable for every county in the state, big and small.
"This is a legislative issue, there are 100 register of deeds offices in the state of North Carolina, and we are all guided by the same exact general statutes and until those statutes are changed, we can't change," Brunner said.
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