Hey David, Looks like the first thing they should do take their records off-line ( why give the criminals a way to perform background checks on their victims) . It does not seem practical for the goverment to get involved , but for those involved in the current procedure of property transfer to be more vigilant then before. The only thing i can see the county doing that can possibly help would be a surrogate search and a public posting of pending sale ( both of which also has drawbacks).  But of course as always the #1 problem I feel should be corrected is removing public records from the world wide web.

Michael Quinn