Could you spot a fake ID? Many seasoned real estate professionals know this skill is useful to more than club bouncers or police officers.

Jaime Kosofsky, executive vice president of business development and compliance at Brady and Kosofsky, can attest to this fact.

He shared with October Research Chief Knowledge Officer Mary Schuster a real-life cautionary tale of the potential costly consequences of missing the tell-tale signs of a phony ID. He also lamented that title professionals often have access to technology capable of exposing this type of fraud but neglect to utilize it.

“We’re dealing with the largest investment of most people’s lives,” he said. “And it makes no sense that we’re not using the technology. I think it’s incumbent on us as the title industry to know the driver’s licenses.”

Plenty of reference materials exist online and several other businesses avail themselves of simple, affordable tech tools designed to spot an all-too-common type of scam, he said.

Even absent such tools, there are a handful of things anyone can look for on most state licenses that can immediately distinguish a legitimate ID from a fake.

Listen as Kosofsky relays lessons he’s learned in this episode of the Keys to Real Estate podcast and plan to catch his session on business continuity strategies at the 2025 National Settlement Services Summit (NS3) in Pittsburgh, Pa.