Driftwood Title Guilty Plea: Unrecorded Mortgages, Fake Commitments, and How to Check Yours

On September 14, 2026, Mortgage Professional America reported that Michael Saracco, 40, of Cocoa, Florida, the former owner of Driftwood Title and All Florida Property Solutions, pleaded guilty to three federal counts of wire fraud. The investigation was run by the Federal Housing Finance Agency's Office of Inspector General and the Brevard County Sheriff's Office; the charges were announced by U.S. Attorney Gregory W. Kehoe. Each count carries up to 20 years, and sentencing is set for December 2. A second report from WRE News adds that prosecutors also describe inaccurate closing disclosures and false representations to title insurers about lien status. We are writing about it for the same reason we wrote about the All Star Title arrest and the Rabideau Klein escrow case: the people who lost money here were not careless. They did what most buyers and lenders do, which is trust the title company. This article shows where that trust was exploited and what to verify instead.

What prosecutors say happened

According to the court documents described in the report, the scheme had four layers, and each one depended on the layer before it.

• Loans on "unencumbered" property. Saracco solicited private lenders and funding companies for loans secured by properties he owned or said he intended to buy, representing them as free of liens.
• Mortgages that were never recorded. He conducted the closings himself and told lenders their mortgages had been filed with the county clerk. Prosecutors say that representation was not honored. The lender held a signed mortgage; the public record showed nothing.
• Stacked loans. With no lien of record to reveal the first loan, he sought follow-on loans from new private lenders without disclosing the existing mortgages.
• Sales with buyers in the dark. He then arranged sales of the properties. Financial-institution wire funds ran through Driftwood's escrow accounts, buyers took title unaware of the unrecorded liens, and proceeds meant to retire the existing debt were diverted through All Florida Property Solutions instead.

On top of that, prosecutors say the company issued title commitments falsely stating that Driftwood had obtained policies backed by underwriters, when no such policies had been issued. Court documents put his take from seller proceeds at "hundreds of thousands of dollars"; the full loss figure has not been made public.

The report also notes the backdrop. Florida ranked among the five highest-risk states for mortgage fraud indicators in the first quarter of 2026 according to Cotality, and undisclosed real estate debt, the exact fraud type at the center of this case, posted the largest year-over-year increase of any category in the second quarter. Cotality's index puts fraud-risk indicators on roughly one in 119 mortgage applications nationally.

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Why an unrecorded mortgage is the whole trick

Florida is a notice-recording state. Under section 695.01 of the Florida Statutes, a conveyance or mortgage that is not recorded in the county's official records is generally not good against a later purchaser or creditor who paid value and had no notice of it. Recording is what gives a lien its place in line. A mortgage that is signed but never recorded is real between the borrower and the lender, and nearly invisible to everyone else.

That single fact makes every other part of the scheme possible. A title search on the property comes back clean, because a search reads the record and the record is empty. A second lender sees no prior lien. A buyer's title commitment shows no mortgage to pay off. The only people who know the debt exists are the borrower and the lender who trusted the borrower's own closing agent to record it.

In a legitimate closing the recording step is boring and fast. Most Florida counties, including Brevard, accept e-recording, and the deed and mortgage are typically recorded the day of closing or the next business day. The clerk returns a recorded copy stamped with an instrument number or an official records book and page, and the closing agent sends that copy to the lender and keeps it in the file. When a loan is paid off, section 701.04 requires the lender to record a satisfaction within 60 days of payoff. Every one of those steps leaves a public trace that anyone can pull for free on the clerk's website. The fraud worked because nobody pulled it.

A commitment is not a policy

The fake commitments deserve their own explanation, because the distinction is one most buyers never learn. A title commitment is the underwriter's conditional promise to issue a policy once the closing happens and the listed requirements are met. It names the proposed insured, the amount, the underwriter, and the exceptions. A title policy is the actual insurance contract, issued after closing, with a policy number the underwriter can look up. The commitment is the menu. The policy is the meal.

A licensed title agency issues commitments on its underwriter's forms under an agency agreement. The underwriter is on the hook for the policy, so the underwriter tracks which agents can issue for it and audits what they issue. When a company puts an underwriter's name on a commitment it has no authority to issue, or never reports the policy to the underwriter after closing, the buyer walks away holding a document that looks like coverage and insures nothing. The premium the buyer paid went into the closer's account, not the insurer's.

That is why the checks below focus on the underwriter, not the agent. An agent can print anything. An underwriter can confirm, in writing, whether it stands behind a specific agent and a specific policy. For the difference between the owner's and lender's policies involved, see owner's vs. lender's title insurance; for what a real policy protects against, see what title insurance covers.

The four checks that would have caught it

None of these requires an attorney or a subscription. They take a few minutes each.

• 1. Look up the agency and the agent. Every Florida title agency and every title agent must be licensed by the Florida Department of Financial Services. The DFS licensee search is public. Confirm the agency name on your closing documents matches a licensed agency at that address, that the license is active, and that the individual signing your documents holds an active title agent license. A closing run by someone who is licensed only as an attorney, or not licensed at all, is a different conversation.
• 2. Get a closing protection letter, and get it from the underwriter. A CPL is the underwriter's own written promise to cover you if its agent steals or misapplies your funds or fails to follow closing instructions. It is issued in the underwriter's name, for your specific transaction, and it is the single strongest protection a buyer or lender has against a dishonest closer. Lenders require them; buyers rarely ask. Ask. If an agent cannot produce one from the underwriter named on the commitment, stop.
• 3. Pull the recorded instrument yourself. Within a week of closing, go to the county clerk's official records site, search your name, and confirm your deed and, if you are a lender, your mortgage are of record with an instrument number. If you paid off a loan, watch for the satisfaction within 60 days. Do not rely on the closer's copy; rely on the clerk's.
• 4. Confirm the policy was issued. An owner's policy normally arrives within a few weeks of closing with a policy number. If it has not arrived in 60 days, call the underwriter, not the agent, and ask whether a policy was issued on your property. Underwriters have consumer lines for exactly this.

For private lenders, add two more. Order your own title search from a company the borrower does not control, and never let the borrower's own title company close your loan. A closer who works for the person borrowing your money has every incentive to tell you the mortgage was recorded. And confirm the wire instructions by phone using a number you found independently; our wire fraud guide covers the procedure.

If you closed with Driftwood Title between 2019 and 2025

If you bought, sold, borrowed or lent on a file that ran through Driftwood Title or All Florida Property Solutions during the period in the plea, do the following now, in this order.

• Pull your recorded documents from the Brevard County Clerk's official records (or the clerk in whatever county the property sits). Confirm your deed is recorded. If you lent money, confirm your mortgage is recorded and check what else is recorded against the property.
• Find your policy. Look for an owner's or lender's title policy with a policy number and an underwriter name. If you have only a commitment, or nothing, contact the underwriter named on it and ask whether a policy was ever issued for your property. Do this in writing and keep the response.
• If you paid off a loan through the company, confirm a satisfaction of mortgage was recorded. If it was not, contact the lender directly; the payoff may never have reached them.
• If a policy exists and you find a lien you did not know about, file a claim with the underwriter. That is what the policy is for. If no policy exists, the closing protection letter, if one was issued, is the next place to look.
• Talk to a real estate attorney if any of the above comes back wrong. Federal prosecutors are handling the criminal case; recovering your money is a separate civil matter, and there may be a restitution process after sentencing.

We will run a current title search on any property that closed through Driftwood, at no charge, and tell you what is of record. Send the address and your closing date through the form below. If we find a problem, we will tell you who to call.

The last word is the obvious one. Every check above is something a licensed closing agent should welcome. When you ask a title company for its DFS license number, a CPL from its underwriter, and the recorded instrument number after closing, an honest agent hands them over without a pause. If you get resistance instead, you have learned what you needed to know.

Related Reading

Closing Security

Title Agency Owner Charged With Escrow Theft

The closing protection letter, and how to vet a Florida title company.

Wire Fraud

Fake Title Company Website Scams

How impostor sites and cloned emails redirect closing funds.

Wire Fraud

Wire Fraud at a Florida Closing

The verification steps that keep your money in the right account.

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