Buying a Lordship or Ladyship: Scam or Legit Life Hack?

Welcome to Scams, Hacks and Frauds, where we explore real life fraud and hacking stories.  This week, we ask if buying a Lordship is a legitimate life hack or just another scam.

Have you come across ads or videos promising to make you a Scottish Lord or Lady? Many wonder if these offers are just fun gifts or outright scams. In this episode of Scams, Hacks, and Frauds, we dive into the true crime behind these claims and explore whether buying a lordship or ladyship is a scam or a clever life hack.

We'll uncover the truth about these noble title promises, revealing whether these sites truly sell you a legitimate title or if it's all a fraudulent scheme. You'll learn exactly what it takes to become a proper lord or lady and discover a free alternative that might just have people calling you Lord or Lady.

Additionally, we'll investigate other claims made by these sites, including the promise of a small plot of land and how your money is supposedly used to protect Scottish Woodlands and plant trees. We look behind the curtain to find out if these are genuine or just more scams.

Tune in to learn how to spot these scams and protect yourself from fraud. Scams, Hacks, and Frauds is your go-to true crime podcast for understanding the deceptive world of scams, hacks, and frauds with real stories that keep you and your family safe.  Cee brings you an epsiode every other Monday, so make sure you subscribe to better protect your family.

Important links for this episode:

• Trees For The Future 
• Legal Eagle's Video
• Fact Fiend's video
• Andy Wightman's work

We publish new content every other Monday. The  10 minutes our episodes may save your wallet, and help protect your family.

If you like shows like "The Perfect Scam" or "Darknet Diaries" then this show might be for you.  

On our website you’ll find more computer hacking, identity fraud, impersonation, consumer rights and Romance Scams.  To find these and to access our transcripts, visit us at www.scamshacksandfrauds.com.

The transcript and spoken audio are available under the Creative Commons, Share Alike, With Attributions license. For more information on this visit creativecommons.org.  

Transcript

Did you receive a Christmas gift that makes you an official Lord or Lady in Scotland?    Are these things legit?  In this episode, we’ll tell you if buying these can really make you a lord, what you’re actually buying, and why some people call this a scam.  Because this is the podcast that helps keep your family safe from Scams, Hacks and Frauds.

Sites like Highland Titles and Established Titles tell us that in Scotland, being a “Laird,” the Scottish for Lord, or a “Lady” goes along with Land Ownership, indicating that it's a Scottish custom for any landowner to use the title.

So rather than sell you a title per se, they sell you a plot of land in Scotland, although Highland Titles goes a little bit further and sells you a right to use its trademark “Laird”, “Lord” or” Lady of the Glen and that you’ll be addressed as Lord or Lady by the 300,000+ members of their community.

However, each of these sites is very clear to say that the titles do not convey any right of nobility.

What that right of nobility bit means is that you’re not a lord or lady in the sense that the government or nobility is going to actually recognise.  If you’re buying one of these hoping it might get you invited to the palace, or sit in the House of Lords, or be part of any official procession, you can forget it.

The Law Society of Scotland, however, goes further, posting this quote from the Lord Lyon (who is responsible for coats of Arms and the like in Scotland) on its website.

"Ownership of a souvenir plot of land does not bring with it the right to any description such as ‘laird’, ‘lord’ or ‘lady’. ‘Laird’ is not a title but a description applied by those living on and around the estate, many of whom will derive their living from it, to the principal landowner of a long-named area of land...It cannot correctly be used to describe a person who owns a small part of a larger piece of land."

Keep that in mind.

Despite that, the websites, advertisements and  videos for websites like this often claim you can update your official documents and passports to use the title 'lord' or ‘lady’.   Established Titles on their website show a picture of an airline ticket issued with the Lord title, and on their FAQs page, to the question “Can I use the titles of Lord or Lady on my documents” they say “Our lords and ladies have successfully changed their titles on many credit cards, airline tickets, hotel reservations and more”. 

However, they also take great pains on many parts of their website to emphasise that the titles are just for fun, and cite an example of a lobster being given one of these titles.

Competitor Highland Titles has a page suggesting that their Lairds and Ladies of the Glen can consider changing their name by Deed Poll, typically countries which can trace their legal history to the Laws of England (which I do have to make this pedantic point, is seperate to the laws of Scotland) allow this, their website says:

“As long as this is done in good faith, you can change your name to anything you want.  Changing your legal name to include “Lord”, “Lady” or “Laid” as part of your name is easy, and we give you instructions on how to do this yourself, at home, for free”.   

Although there are steps you can take that will help your name change be recognised officially, which do cost money.

So yes, Phoebe, if you want to change your name legally to “Princess Consuela Banana Hammock”, you can do that by deed poll, in English law at least, as long as you’re not trying to skip out on paying debts or hide your criminal past or some other nefarious reason; still, you might want to check the law in New York first.  

You don’t have to buy one of these kits to do this, and with your name changed by deed poll, you can update all your official documents, bank details, and anything else that has your name on it, so people can start calling you princess.

To give them their credit, Highland Titles at least will tell you that a legally recognised title would require you to actually buy an existing Barony (which have prices starting in the many of thousands of pounds, a lot more than these sites charge) marry someone who’s already got a legally recognised title, or have the Prime Minister appoint you to the House of Lords (with the King then having to confirm this appointment).  Needless to say, these three options are probably out of reach for most of us.

So let's move to the other part of the deal.  These sites will tell you that you’re buying a piece of land, and that land that is going to be used for conservation with trees planted on it, and you can even visit your little micro plot.

In Scotland, for any sort of real estate (or heritable property as it's called here) to be properly transferred, it must be registered with the Registers of Scotland.  In one tragic case - Graingers v Burnett’s trustee [2004] UKHL 8 - Mr and Mrs Grainger bought a home from a developer - Mrs Burnett -  but when they bought the home, the developer, for some reason, did not register this transfer with the Registers of Scotland.

A year after the purchase, the developer went bankrupt.  The Trustee responsible for the bankrupt company successfully repossessed that home to sell for the company’s debts because the registration wasn’t complete, the developer was still the legal owner of that home, even though Mr and Mrs Grainger paid for and lived in the house.

Simply put, if it's not in the register, it did not happen, end of discussion.

This is important because the purchases you make from these companies are not submitted to the Registers of Scotland,and their websites usually explain this.  Instead, what you’re buying is a “souvenir plot” - a plot so small that it cannot actually be registered - and as we said before, if it's not registered with the Registers of Scotland, it did not happen.  The land remains in the ownership of that title company.

In fact, if you look at the terms and conditions on the Established Titles site, it says: 

“The purchase of a Title Pack from Established Titles does not constitute or trigger a transfer of ownership over that souvenir plot or any part of the land in the legal sense.”

So you do not, in fact, own the land.  A portion of the land is instead “dedicated’ to you.  If that’s not clear enough, Established Titles, terms, and conditions say this:

Established Titles, or an entity of its choosing, shall remain the underlying owner of the land itself, but keep its own private records of which souvenir plots have been dedicated, and to whom.

Over on Highland Titles, they link to a page on a different domain explaining souvenir plots, which gives this example of what legal rights a purchaser has:

If, for example, a purchaser of a souvenir plot of land visited his plot to find a lumberjack there chopping down a tree, said purchaser would have no legal remedy against the lumberjack.

However, if the lumberjack argued that the souvenir plot was his, and it transpired that the same plot had been sold twice,  both purchasers would have a legal remedy against the vendor.

So rather than owning land, they have dedicated a piece of land to you, and the real owner of the site can’t dedicate that site a second time.  You have no control over what happens on the land, because you’re not the actual owner.

So, if we go back to the initial legal theory, that owning land in Scotland gives you the title of being a lord, and these sites retain all legal ownership of the land, then are they actually selling Lordships and ladyships to begin with?  It doesn’t even work - in a legal sense - under their own terms and conditions.

But you're supporting Charities and Woodlands, aren't you?

That brings us to their last claim.  Are they a fun way to donate to charity, protecting Scottish Woodlands?  

Established Titles isn’t registered as a company with the UK’s Companies House or the charity regulator under that name, nor could we locate any registered companies at the address listed on their website.

So we started checking into the properties, which isn’t exactly easy because whilst established titles do show a location on Google Maps, they don’t show a street address or postcode, which would make searching the register easy.

You can, of course, visit the sites they claim to be selling, and you can look at them on Google satellite, and if you do, you will indeed see trees.  We have no doubts the land is currently being used for forests.  We decided to look a bit deeper, however.

Take, for example, the property they describe as on their website as Dunfermline.  Their website provides general information about Dunfermline - it's a smaller city in Scotland - but nothing about the plot of land itself - it shows the location on Google Maps, but gives no street address or postcode for easy navigation.  

We were, however, with much trial and error, able to find it on the Registers of Scotland; On the register it's called Saline, Dunfermline.

It is owned by United Conservation Holding Limited of Hong Kong, and has been since March 2025, which strangely enough is when UNITED CONSERVATION HOLDINGS LIMITED appears to have been registered with the Hong Kong Authorities;

Using the Wayback machine it seems that Established Titles have been advertising this location since at least 2021, showing that they’ve been able to transfer the ownership of the site without any problems despite claiming to sell little pots of it - but remember the terms and conditions of the sale of those plots allow them to transfer it. 

The previous owner was Galton Voysey Ltd, another Hong Kong Company which claims to be a Private Equity firm focused on E-Commerce.  We don’t know what the link, if any, is between these companies, but Wikipedia, at the time of publication, claims that Galton Voysey Ltd owns Established Titles, and YouTuber Legal Eagle, who declined an offer of  $7000 per Video for Established Titles, says it was Galton Voysey Ltd who approached him.

A researcher, Andy Wightman, in 2022 conducted a deeper dive into the properties that Established Titles claim to own and found that they did not own at least one of the plots of land, and, in total, owned less than half the acreage they claim on their site.  A link to his work is in the show notes. 

A YouTube Channel called Fact Feind, which Established Titles previously sponsored, claims to have seen information that confirms charitable donations by Established Titles, but did not, in turn, publish any of these and did not state specific amounts donated to any cause other than to claim it's a substantial donation - we have no reason to doubt them.  Still, we can’t verify their claims either, as they weren’t shown at all.  There’s a link to them in the Show notes and on our website.

Established Titles links to an American Charity called Trees for the Future, which claims that over 2,500,000 trees that they’ve planted have been funded by Established Titles, and Established Titles claims that every sale funds the planting of a tree.  We have no reason to dispute that claim, so we do not, but Trees for the Future claims to be planting trees presently in 5 Sub-Saharan African countries. 

Scotland, of course, is not in Sub-Saharan Africa.  We’re not saying that's not a good cause or that it doesn’t deserve your support, but if you’re buying something specifically to fund Scotland’s forests, you should know that some of your money might be used to fund other projects elsewhere in the world, too.

Turning to Highland Titles, they’re not Scottish either.  They’re a company called Scottish Highland Limited, registered in the Isle of Guernsey, a mostly self-governing island in the English Channel. 

Highland Titles doesn’t make any mention of Charity that we’ve been able to spot on their website, and doesn’t seem to suggest that their product in any way is charitable giving.  They, however, do publish an address and directions for visitors to their current forestry site at Duror of Appin, and we have been able to verify on the register that they definitely own that land.

If you’re inclined to give to a charity, we suggest giving directly rather than through a middleman company.  That way, you know your entire donation is going to the place you think it is, on a non-profit basis.  That's not to say the money spent on these does not go to do the work that cause promoted, it's just not as clear when the organisation isn’t a registered non-profit.  If you want to give to Trees for the Future, you can.  I’m not affiliated with them, and this isn’t a specific endorsement, but there’s a link in the show notes if you want to check them out or make a donation.

In Conclusion:

If you’re buying these as a fun gift that both you and the person you’re buying it for will understand is just a bit of fun, a novelty like buying a “Jar of nothing”  for someone who says they want nothing for Christmas or a Birthday, then that's fine, they’re a fun novelty and on that basis they aren’t a scam.  

If you’re buying this to get a real, recognised title or become a landowner, then perhaps your money would be better spent elsewhere.  

If you want to support a charity, please consider giving to a registered charity directly rather than a middleman.  

And lastly, if you want people to call you Lord or Lady, consult what the local laws are in your area to see if changing it by deed poll is right for you.  We won’t judge you.

I’ve been Cee, and this has been Scams, Hacks and Frauds.  

You might have seen news and videos recently regarding PayPal Honey,  a product previously promoted heavily by YouTubers, but has since led to YouTubers suing PayPal, claiming it fraudulently stole money from them.  Some expected court updates are coming around the time you’ll be hearing this, so our next edition will look into this scandal and discuss what the best ways to support the creators you like without getting scammed yourself.