Doorify Partners with Property Shield to Fight Listing Fraud with Miguel Berger

The rise in real estate fraud is forcing agents to rethink how they protect their listings and their reputation. This conversation breaks down a new approach designed to catch scams before they spiral.

Allan Nielsen, VP of MLS Systems at Doorify, sits down with Miguel Berger, Senior Vice President of Growth for Property Shield, to discuss the partnership launching April 21. Miguel brings over four decades of real estate experience, from broker to owner, giving him a clear view of how fraud impacts both agents and clients.

The discussion covers the most common scams happening today and why they are becoming harder to detect. It also highlights how fraud doesn’t just create financial loss, it erodes trust. Most importantly, it explains how this new system works in real time to protect listings.

This is a solution that fits directly into how agents already operate while adding a layer of protection that is increasingly necessary. For those focused on protecting their listings and their reputation, this episode is worth listening to.

Specifically, this episode highlights the following themes:

• The real cost of listing fraud and its impact on agent reputation
• How scammers use MLS data and social platforms to target consumers
• Why fast detection and removal is critical in preventing damage

Links from this episode:
Know more about Miguel Berger: https://www.linkedin.com/in/miguelberger
Learn more about Doorify: https://doorifymls.com
Learn more about Property Shield: https://propertyshield.co

1ae5b43598204883b524f061d4880e6d10fca88c (for podfollow.com)

Transcript

Allan Nielsen [00:00:07]:
Hello, everybody. Allan Nielsen here with Doorify mls and welcome to another podcast. Very excited to have Miguel here. Hey, Miguel.

Miguel Berger [00:00:18]:
Hi, how are you? I'm Miguel Berger, senior vice president of growth for Property Shield. Very excited to be here with Alan and launch our product at Lorify. I've been in the business for 42 years. I've been a real estate broker, broker in charge, owner. You name it, I've done it. So I understand what goes on in the real estate industry.

Allan Nielsen [00:00:36]:
Yeah, yeah. We have known each other for quite a few years, and I'm glad that we finally can get to really work together on this very exciting product. And from Doorify's point of view, you know, fraud is. As we see an increase in fraud, we knew we had to bring something to our subscribers to help them battle this. And when you came and presented what you guys are doing, we thought, this is something we absolutely need. So when we talk about fraud, what is the typical fraud scenario that we see in the marketplace and what is the cost associated with this kind of fraud?

Miguel Berger [00:01:12]:
There's two kinds of fraud. One is the moving scam, where if they find a vacant home, they make you sign a lease, they get a deposit, and they move you in that. We haven't seen too much in the resale part because, I mean, people come and go to the houses, but that exists. Can you imagine having somebody moving into your house and then can you get them out? I mean, the cost of that can be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars because of, number one time, most municipalities are pro tenants, so they don't care if they move into your house. And, you know, it's your problem, not ours. Lawyers fees and everything else. So that is very expensive. But the most common fraud that we see is where they scrape the listings from MLS websites, wherever it might be, and post them in different places for rent for a very low price.

Miguel Berger [00:02:02]:
So let's say you have a house for sale for 4 or 500,000, they put it on Facebook, Marketplace or Craigslist, or even now start to be TikTok. That's the newest place where we find most of the fraud. And they post it for $1,000 or $900 or something like that. And their goal is to get maybe some deposit also. But more importantly, get from the consumer their banking information, Social Security. They package it and resell it in the blackmail. So that's really the cost of that. I mean, there's two things the consumer doesn't know and who they're going to blame.

Miguel Berger [00:02:38]:
The realtor, the Agent, I always said for years and years and years, we as Realtors don't sell homes, we market them. So what is the cost of your reputation? Because who is going to get blamed? For example, has happened that, hey, all of a sudden you get a phone call in the office and say, oh, how come my house is in Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace or wherever it might be and you don't, number one, you don't know anything about it. The seller is going to be very unhappy, the consumer is going to blame you. So at the end of the day, your reputation gets hit big time. And how you recoup from that.

Allan Nielsen [00:03:12]:
Yeah, yeah. And so with the service and we'll get into a little bit more about the details, but in terms of the reputation or loss of your reputation, so to speak, I suppose with a product like Product Shield, you can actually make that to a big advantage that you can actively display to your consumer or sorry, to your clients, how you're protecting them.

Miguel Berger [00:03:34]:
Of course, I mean actually when you go for a leasing appointment, what a Realtor usually tells says, we will expose your home to the max so we can get the max, the most dollars for the house. Right. Exposure equals value. So at the same time that you're doing that, you're also exposing the house to these fraudsters. So now you can tell your consumers, your clients, potential clients, when you list a house is not only we are going to do the best to get you the best price, but we're also going to do the best to protect you against fraud.

Allan Nielsen [00:04:05]:
Yeah. So who the frustrates that are out there that are trying to trick people, who are they targeting when they're trying to scam? Who are they hoping to reach when they do this?

Miguel Berger [00:04:16]:
Anybody and everybody. I mean, let's face it, housing always has been a shortage. Right. And finding a rental can be impossible because potentially you have bad credit, you have a dog. I mean, you have any kind of reason why not about discrimination, but about, you know, reality. So they targeting anybody that looking for a home that needs a house, that they're in a position where they are desperate for a house. Think about it, if you are trying to relocate or move or your lease ended, what choices do you have? You're going to go to Facebook place and try to find something. It's a matter of inspiration that they are targeting to and they are really good at it, you know, creating a nice scenario.

Allan Nielsen [00:04:57]:
Yeah, yeah. And now they have AI to help them to get even better with it as well. Right.

Miguel Berger [00:05:02]:
So I'm telling you, some of the stuff I've seen is looks very real. I actually for it once, you know, so. And I'm in the business so amazingly real. That's a big problem.

Allan Nielsen [00:05:14]:
Yeah. So let's talk about the product a little bit and how it works. So walk us through what the process is. So from a, you know, somebody lists the property and let's say it gets scraped and stuff, what's the process? What, what do you guys do?

Miguel Berger [00:05:29]:
So basically I always try to explain as having an antivirus in your computer. You set it up and nothing's going to pop up unless there is a problem. Correct. I mean you don't know that the virus is running. So this is the same thing. Basically we work with the mls. So actually we get all the listings. As soon as a listing goes into the mls might be coming soon, new whatever, we get it and we start monitoring for that property.

Miguel Berger [00:05:54]:
Not just the address, the agent's name, the price, but also the images. Because 50% of the fraud that we find is based on the images in Facebook or Craigslist. They don't need you, they don't order you to put an address. So not always is you're going to be able to find it by an address. I mean they put a location, whatever. So we search for that immediately. As soon as it hits the mls, we start searching. Once we find something that is suspicious because we never say, even though we might be 100% sure it's fraud, we will notify the agent immediately, either via text, email or in your case will be in your dashboard.

Miguel Berger [00:06:34]:
So you will see an alert. All you have to do is click on the alert and say yes, this is fraud or not, this is not fraud. Once you say yes, this is fraud, we come into action and we start the process of removing the listing from wherever it might be, Facebook, Craigslist or others.

Allan Nielsen [00:06:52]:
So all the agents really have to do is wait for an email or text who says and then click a button if they think of that as fraud. Well that sounds very easy.

Miguel Berger [00:07:03]:
Yeah. We also give you a link to the fraud listing so you can click on the picture and go right to Facebook or TikTok or where it might be. So you can file is one thing that needs to be done. Needs to understand that the less time that this property gets exposure out there, the better you are. So it's key that agents react quickly to these alerts. Don't ignore it. It's just one click. Very simple.

Miguel Berger [00:07:29]:
And think about it. The insurance that Dora is providing you is amazing. I mean because if you ever try to get something out of Facebook or Craigslist, it's impossible. I mean, I have tested it as a, as a consumer reporting something. Usually it takes them two days to respond. And they said, oh, this is within the guidelines of the community. So nothing. And in the meantime, you have a client or a consumer that is really very upset with you and the longer it takes.

Miguel Berger [00:08:02]:
So it's key that you definitely answer those alerts.

Allan Nielsen [00:08:08]:
Yeah, I think we all know when we see something that we want corrected, whether it's Facebook or any of the social media platforms or whatever it is, just finding out how to report something takes a long time. So that's what we excited about with you guys. You handle all of that. Right. But I think it's important to stress, and you mentioned that how important it is for agents to stay on top of this. Between Privacy Shield and Do0rify, we will deliver it right to you when you see it. And then agents just have to take that final step to do it. Do agents need to do anything to get started with this?

Miguel Berger [00:08:43]:
Doorify has partnered with us with Property Shield. So basically once we go live, and I believe it's on the 22nd of April, if I'm correct, everybody in Doorify will have an account. So there's actually a dashboard too, that you don't never have to log in. Maybe as a manager you might want to, but as an agent, you never have to log in. So everybody gets an account automatically. It's all the same. You log in through the mls, so there's no setting up an account or I forgot or, you know, all the other issues that come up with different things. You know what, I don't blame agents.

Miguel Berger [00:09:16]:
Everybody's so busy. I mean, we work 60, 80 hours a week, you know, easy. And this is one of those details. So when we created the product, we tried to make it as simple and as easy as possible. One thing I have to say, hats off to dorafi for being a forward thinking mls because the only way you can get this product is through the mls. So if a broker came to us or an agent came to us, we don't sell it to brokers or agents. So Dora FI has taken to the next level of protection and that's key.

Allan Nielsen [00:09:48]:
Yeah. And that is important to us. Right. And we think protecting the data and protecting our agents and their clients is very important. And that's why, again, we're very excited to bring this to the agents. So I've seen that some of your material that you guys have Made available there are numbers like $1 billion saved and $100 billion protected. Where does those numbers come from?

Miguel Berger [00:10:14]:
Actually it comes from the FBI reports. They just published a new report last week and the numbers are even bigger. And you know, it's funny because not everybody reports these scams to the FBI or the police or anything like that because they're embarrassed. I mean, how did you fell for it? You know, so these numbers are not even. I think they're higher than that. But we don't know because there is no centralized reporting. And people will ask also how come the authorities don't do anything about it even if it gets reported? Number one, the problem is too small per occurrence is too small for them to bother. Number two is most of these fraud syndicates come from overseas.

Miguel Berger [00:10:56]:
So even we might point where they're coming from, you know, Nigeria, whatever it might be, Africa, UAE via the IP address. We still. There's no way to enforce it. And that's a frustrating part.

Allan Nielsen [00:11:09]:
Yeah. So in terms of that, and I know this might be a question that people will have. So do you work with the authorities when things are being reported or are you solving the issue at hand? Basically there is a fraud and you make sure it's taken down. Is there anything past that?

Miguel Berger [00:11:26]:
No, because honestly we have tried to talk to authorities that they really don't. It's not a big enough problem for them to deal with as a single problem. If, yeah, someday maybe they will try to deal with it at the national level. But right now, no, we. Our focus is identify the fraud, let the agent know and remove it. You know, get the exposure as little as possible.

Allan Nielsen [00:11:49]:
Miguel, you guys have been doing this for, for a little while here and can you tell about a case or some cases that you guys have had where probably SHIELD really came in and made a difference?

Miguel Berger [00:12:01]:
Sure. We had a situation where actually a relative of the CEO of the MLS of one of our clients started to see people driving by the house, you know, and knocking on her door and she couldn't understand what was going on. And all of a sudden, you know, this was before they went, they launched our product. This poor person was going crazy because can you imagine somebody. Cars driving by the street and then all of a sudden people getting off their car and knocking and saying I want to see the house. And the house is not for sale or for rental for anything. So that woke them up because it can't happen to anybody. Usually they target older people too.

Miguel Berger [00:12:36]:
So I mean, can you imagine an older person having this kind of Traffic through their house. I mean medically affected too. I mean because they're project. So we've seen a lot of situations of that type where people don't understand what's going on. Also quiet neighborhood becomes a very busy neighborhood for no reason. So yeah, we've seen that. And they're always thrilled. The agents are always thrilled when we can tell them what's taken down, what's dealt with.

Miguel Berger [00:13:03]:
Usually we take it down within an hour to hour and a half. Because what happens? Also be aware that if we take down a listing, for example from Facebook, they will notify the fraudster and the fraudster can push a button and reposted it. So we continuously monitoring this listing and sometimes we have to take them down 10, 15 times before they are completely gone.

Allan Nielsen [00:13:25]:
So on those three occurrences for the same listing, is that an automated process from then on? Okay.

Miguel Berger [00:13:31]:
Now we don't let the agent, I mean can you imagine bombarding an agent with 15 notifications every five minutes? They will kill us. Now once we agent says it's fraud, then we continuously monitor the listing, the URL to make sure it didn't pop up again.

Allan Nielsen [00:13:46]:
Yeah. So what can agents expect in terms of being alerted? Is it typically multiple times for a particular listing? What kind of determines whether a listing is sensitive to fraud?

Miguel Berger [00:14:02]:
Actually the MLS and the agents, the brokers are going to be able to see their dashboard. How many times a potential listing has gotten listed? Multiple times. So not just relisted, but different URLs, different times. Those are the high risk properties. What we recommend. If you see a high risk property in your office, in your company, then you might want to do a drive by. Because the reason that they're reposting is because they're getting a lot of traction.

Allan Nielsen [00:14:31]:
Yeah. So we have obviously the agents themselves and then we have as we call them in our market here, brokers in charge. So as a broker in charge or a manager of an office, does Property Shield provide information up to that level?

Miguel Berger [00:14:47]:
Yes. So in dashboard, how it's set up to begin with, the agents get immediate notifications. Of course the broker in charge will get a weekly summary, but they can always locate into the dashboard and see what's active. My recommendation, I will strongly recommend that you designate an admin in the office to log into the dashboard on a daily basis and see what is pending for all your agents. So if somebody didn't respond, why they didn't respond. And also actually as an admin or as a broker garbage, you can take action right from the dashboard. For.

Allan Nielsen [00:15:22]:
Yeah.

Miguel Berger [00:15:23]:
Behalf of an agent.

Allan Nielsen [00:15:24]:
Yeah. And maybe that's a good thing for clarification too. So we as storify MLS won't take actions on the agent's behalf. Property Shield won't take actions on behalf of the agent either. They have to take that action because we don't know necessarily if it is fraud. So that's important. So the agents really have to engage with this and stay on top of it, as you mentioned earlier. So if agents are hearing this for the first time, just as we kind of close out here, Miguel, what is the one thing that we want them to take away from this in order to get them interested enough to take this seriously and start looking for these notifications from Property Seal Agents spend a

Miguel Berger [00:16:08]:
lot of money and time on creating their image in the market. This is just one more tool, like the same thing that you will advertise yourself or come up with your bio. This is a tool that is essential in your toolbox. Like I said the beginning of the podcast, how much is your reputation worth? You know that that's how I'm going to live it. And people can answer different ways, but I. That's really the bottom line.

Allan Nielsen [00:16:36]:
Yeah, yeah. Even use it as a proactive tool like you, I think you indicated earlier. Bring this up during your listing presentations. Right. And how you're looking out for the seller in terms of fraud as well. Well, thank you, Miguel. Anything else that you want to tell the D0orify subscribers before we end?

Miguel Berger [00:16:55]:
We're going to have webinars and stuff like that and if you ever have any question, you can go through dorafi, you can contact us directly. Again, we haven't seen major issues with tech support because it's. Push a button. That's it. Remember, just one push, one click and you're all set. It's not complicated.

Allan Nielsen [00:17:13]:
We are big fans of One Click Simple. So love it. And yeah, so Property Shield is available to subscribers very soon and we can't wait to hear some of the responses we get for subscribers. We think this is an important product that we provide here. So, Miguel, thank you for joining us today and for all the subscribers. We look forward for you to join us on another podcast sometime soon.

Miguel Berger [00:17:36]:
Thank you.

Allan Nielsen [00:17:36]:
Thank you.