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Recorder of Deeds Donna Gentile urges Carbon County to adopt voluntary deed-record alert service
Summary
Recorder Donna Gentile recommended the county implement a voluntary record-alert service that would notify property owners within 24 hours of a recorded document; the system would cost about $8,000 to set up and $2,000 per year and requires owners to sign up through the county's Landex system.
Recorder of Deeds Donna Gentile told the Carbon County Board of Commissioners she has received “lots of emails, letters, [and] phone calls” from property owners worried about deed fraud and urged the county to adopt a voluntary record‑alert service that would notify owners when a document affecting their property is recorded.
Gentile said the service “will alert you if there was a record recorded in my office” and that “if there was a mortgage recorded, the service would just alert you that something happened.” She told the board implementation would cost about $8,000 up front and roughly $2,000 per year to maintain, and that property owners must sign up to receive alerts: “It is free to the property owners, but they do need to sign up for it.”
Gentile cautioned the board that the system is a detection tool, not fraud prevention. “It does not protect you from deed fraud,” she said; “it is an after‑the‑fact thing … Your property has been stolen. Now you take over. You file a complaint and it sometimes takes years to undo the damage.”
During a question period commissioners and members of the public asked whether Carbon County had experienced deed fraud. Gentile said she was not aware of specific local cases but described examples from other counties where a recorder’s office caught fraudulent filings only after contacting the recorded owner. She also explained legal limits on county recording staff: when a document meets statutory recording requirements staff must record it and cannot unilaterally refuse documents that appear suspicious.
Gentile said sign‑up and instructions would be provided through the county’s Landex recording system and on the county website. She noted some property owners seek additional protections from private insurers or monitoring services; she said those products can be costly and may provide different levels of coverage.
The commissioners thanked Gentile for bringing the issue forward and asked residents who are concerned to contact state legislators to pursue statutory changes that would give recorders more tools to prevent fraud. No formal county vote to fund the alert service was recorded during the meeting; Gentile said implementation would proceed “if it gets voted on today,” indicating the board could consider a funding motion on a later or related agenda item.
