PASADENA, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES, YSHG held its Q3 Titanium Real Estate Network Conference in Pasadena, California. It was the first of the company’s quarterly conference, and this year, the guest speaker was Paul P. Cheng, Esq., a trial attorney with extensive legal experience on commercial realty transactions and business operations.

Cheng was also the in-house legal counsel of Titanium Real Estate Network, as well as the owner and managing partner of the Law Offices of Paul P. Cheng. During the conference, one of the crucial topics covered by Cheng is about the lawsuits related to real estate agents forging loan documents under the client’s electronic signature. 

In recent years, there have been many cases and reports of these incidents. Buyers and sellers report that their real estate agents forged their signatures on an extension or to ensure that the sale would go through. There are several methods to forge the signatures, and one of the most commonly used is the electronic signature of the client.

According to Cheng, this occurrence happens a lot of times mostly due to the clients giving verbal permission to real estate agents to sign their names on the documents using DocuSign. DocuSign is an online electronic signature platform often used during the real estate transaction. Cheng went on to explain that doing this is illegal, as well as not covered in an error and omission (e & o) insurance.

The reason is that signing a document by none other than the name signee is considered forgery. Seeing that this is a forgery, it is not included in insurance similar to fraud, and other intentional deceptive acts. Cheng went on to stress the importance of doing every step in the real estate transaction by the book to avoid doing anything that could be considered illegal.

This way, real estate agents can ensure that the transaction will go smoothly and not experience any hindrance. At the same time, real estate agents are expected to behave professionally as the people whom homebuyers and sellers rely on during the transaction. With that, Titanium Real Estate Network always makes sure that its team includes professional agents who know what is expected of them.

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