Business Innovators Radio - Interview with Curt Moore, Founder and President of Moat Title Security Co.

Episode Date: August 7, 2025

Curt Moore is the Founder and President of Moat Title Security Co.Mr. Moore graduated in 1991 from the University of Northern Colorado with a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration – Marketing. Mr. Moore enjoyed a career in the Energy industry spanning thirty years in the fields of Land Management, Regulatory and Governmental Affairs, and retired to spend time on Moat in 2021. Mr. Moore founded Moat on a simple principle of protecting homeowners from home title identity theft using copyrighted legal documents prepared by licensed agents operating in markets on a local level with a focus on customer service and the communities where Moat is present.Learn more: http://moattitlesecurity.com/Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-curt-moore-founder-and-president-of-moat-title-security-co

Welcome to influential entrepreneurs, bringing you interviews with elite business leaders and experts, sharing tips and strategies for elevating your business to the next level. Here's your host, Mike Saunders. Hello and welcome to this episode of Influential Entrepreneurs. This is Mike Saunders, the authority positioning coach. Today we have with us, Kurt Moore, who's the founder and president of Mote Title Security Company. Kurt, welcome to the program. Thank you for having me, Mike. I look forward to it. Yeah, you know, I want to learn about what you do and how you do it.

Before we dive into some of that, give us a little bit of your story and background and how did you get into the title industry? I spent about 10 years in the mortgage industry in the late 90s, so I'm very familiar with what you do, but I know that you've got a little story on what led you here. So get us updated. Sure, sure. Well, I'll tell you what kind of brought me into the whole notion of founding moat title security, was an experience back in 2014 that I went through with my elderly mother. She had been having some pretty dire medical interactions, and she was out of her home for a period of time.

And we eventually got her well enough to go back home. And she hadn't been back in her home for long. And she experienced an attempt of title fraud. And so that was my first. awareness that such a thing could even happen. And at the time that that was going on, 2014, I was employed in the energy industry as a petroleum landman. And so a 30-year career in that field. And a lot of that field involves, is involved with public records, recording contracts and documents and assignments,

bills of sale and all kinds of legal documents and how to research those in their public records and then how to negotiate and then some of those documents need to get recorded. So a fair amount of time in various county clerk and recorder's offices researching title. So with that background and my experience with my mother, it crossed my mind. What could be done to deter and protect property owners from title fraud? So I came up with what we built here at Mote, which is two documents, one that protects property owners from title fraud. And that's called our notice of title freeze.

It's recorded in the public records to essentially say, hey, look, I own this property. I have no intent of placing a mortgage on it or selling it. If I do intend to do anything to change the title to my property, I will first record a release of title freeze in the absence of my recorded and consent to a change document such as a deed or a mortgage. If something gets recorded, it's fraud because I'm freezing my title. So we wired that to look very similar and behave very similar to a consumer credit freeze. if you're familiar with that. Yeah, kind of like do not open up new credit on my account before notifying me or something like that.

Exactly, exactly. And I would encourage everyone to freeze their credit. I've froze my credit. And it's just, like you just said, it protects you from new credit being opened and opened without your consent. And that's where the most damage can happen to a consumer credit. But I think we all have credit cards and periodically, at least in my experience, one credit card or another credit card, they'll just send you a notice saying, hey, look, we're going to send you a new card. We've discovered fraud on your old ones. So we shut that one off and we're going to send you a new one.

And, you know, that's annoying and it leaves you feeling a little bit violated. And it upsets, you know, anything that you've got monthly charges against that card. you're going to have to reassociate those to the new card number. But it doesn't cost you anything. It's not generally a big blowout. The big risk is someone can use your Social Security number and other personal information to open up new credit. And that's where the damage can really be done. So freezing your credit is, again, I would highly advise it to protect yourself from consumer credit fraud.

And again, that's largely how we've designed our notice of title freeze. to behave. Unfortunately, there's not three places where property deeds and title is recorded. There's literally tens of thousands of places where they're recorded, depending on where you live. So you can't just go to three credit agencies or three public recording outfits and freeze your credit. You have to prepare a document that we've come up with. And we'll prepare that for our clients and tailor it to the state where they live and record it in the county, clerk and recorder, wherever the records are kept in the locale of where their property is. And just put the public on notice that our client has frozen their title and they don't intend to do anything to change their title. And if they ever do, they'll first release that title freeze to make it legitimate.

So that's really curious because I know that in the industry, we all get the, you know, I've seen the TV commercials or the mailings or the emails, you know, monitor your title because of the fraud you mentioned. And I'm familiar with, you know, ID monitoring or credit monitoring like those services. And those make sense because, you know, that's kind of like it's really a known industry like, oh, someone inquired on. your credit and open this up and let's get notified. I, in my opinion, it's really hard to comprehend some service monitoring your title and being accurate about that. So what your solution provides is just like a stake in the ground, boom, we're freezing it. So am I correct in thinking that, that it really seems like it's not as feasible or accurate to monitor, um, title activity?

Well, it's, yeah, it's a great observation on your point. Our primary competition is made up of about a dozen companies that will, for a fee, some kind of subscription, perhaps monthly or annually, will monitor your title. And they can do this in a various ways using technology, but essentially they'll say, hey, look, Kurt and his wife own this property here in Canadian County, Oklahoma. Homa, we'll just monitor that. And if something is recorded against that title to that property, we're going to send him a notice. Say, hey, look, did you just sell your house?

Or did you just place a mortgage on your house? And that's, compared to doing nothing, I think that's better. It certainly gives you notice that something happened. And you can determine it's, yeah, we did just sell our house or we didn't just sell our house. What's this all about? So it at least gets you early in the game notice that potentially something bad has happened and it gives you an opportunity to start rallying around that and taking corrective action. The difference between that and what we're doing is we're proactively, like you said,

putting a stake in the ground, putting a notice in the public records. It just says this can happen without my consent. And if it does happen, it's fraud. And those monitoring things, how up to date are they in this sense? Like if you went down to file one of the fraudulent title, you know, scam deals, at what point is that actually even triggering a notice to go out to you, whether by email or mail?

And I'm just thinking that in some counties or some areas, you know, you might file it one day and the fraudsters off doing their thing. And then it might be 30, 60 days before it bubbles up to you. Yeah, that's a good point. You know, if you ever have time or if anyone listening to this call ever has time to go down to your local clerk and recorder and just spend a little time understanding what a day looks like in their world, they're literally getting bombarded with thousands of filings. And, you know, they can come from, you know, legitimate transactions. I would say the vast majority are, you know, generally real estate transactions.

or associated transactions to the property like mortgages, deeds of trust and things of that nature. But it is a tsunami of information. And there certainly is, depending on the county and how busy the county is, I would call some kind of a lag between something got presented to record and it got recorded and then it's discoverable. So that presents some risk. And I just think it's worth noting, you know,

I don't understand how all of the various monitoring companies are doing what they're doing, but we get advertisement from a couple of the companies that do that. And they're literally sending mailers to the prior owner of our property. And we've owned that property since September of 2021. So I think there certainly is some risk that are they, how up to date are they with the records And how is that perhaps negatively impacting what they're able to do with their monitoring program? Yeah, that's a really good point. And it also makes me think of something as well with the kind of the stake in the ground kind of a concept you're taking.

It's kind of like you're preventing that future versus hoping that someone is in a county where they're going to get that, you know, notice and but and and in reality some of these fraudsters they're moving and shaken so they could go file something and within two three weeks you know they're often and got got all kinds of things negative happening whereas your deal and it reminds me too like I mentioned I was in the mortgage industry I know that we would pull title and go okay it looks like you want to refinance oh you've got you know a first and a second and a mechanics lien and what's this tax lien so when these liens go on your title, you've got to clear them. So what you're doing is putting that lean on the title, so to speak, but you're locking it so that nothing can happen, even if it's you. Even if

you want to refinance your own house, you have to unlock it. That's right. Those are all good points. And we've had experience with moat clients that essentially just forget that they've frozen their title. And, you know, for one reason or another, they go down. They go down. down the road of replacing a mortgage because the rates have changed or maybe they're taking out a second. And again, they just simply forgot that they have frozen their title. And it gets disrupted. We usually get a kind of a panicky call from a title company or the owner saying, oh, gee, whiz, you know, we've got a closing set up for next week and we forgot to unfreeze our title. So there's certainly some validity that by recording a notice of title freeze in the public records,

It's going to, it's going to, it sits there. And it's going to be, it needs, there's clear instructions in there of what to do to get it released. And in the absence of that, it's the title's frozen. And anything that gets recorded without first releasing that is presumptively fraudulent because the owner's only allowing and accepting, you know, documents that they've, they personally built. else can record something else. So we believe strongly that it is a proactive and it's a deterrent. And if you think about if I'm a bad guy and I'm perusing through the neighborhood where my wife and I live and say there's 10 homes on our block, if I'm just looking at those houses because they meet my criteria, you know, they're higher value homes and older folks owning them and

little or no mortgage. They've got their matrix of what they're looking for to, to, to, consider an attack. Say of those 10 homes, you know, Kurt and his wife have a notice of title freeze and the other nine don't. Our view is they're going to, they're going to position themselves to consider the other nine and just leave the one with the notice of title freeze alone. It's just, why would I, why would I do that? There's nine others here. Because isn't the, the bad actor going to run title on their target properties? And they're going to see, ooh, free and clear, free and clear, free and clear, let's go. And then they're going to see, oh, this one has a first and a second. Oh, this one has a, what's the title free? Oh, move on. Exactly. Exactly. You're exactly right.

That's that's the ascension that we believe. Because if I'm going to attack Mike Saunders home, I need to, I need to know how to build the fraudulent deed. So I need to go to the public records and see how does he own it and what names does he own it in. So when I prepare my fraudulent deed, it's synced up right. So they are going to do some level of research. I don't know if they're, you know, a 10 out of 10 or an 8 out of 10 or a 2 out of 10 in skills, but they are going to have to at some point get in there. And that's why we put our documents right out there so they can see them and A, be deterred. So that's the win. But if they ignore it or don't understand it or don't care and attack anyway, our second

level of defense is if you're attacked, you're going to have to, you're going to have to clean that up. You're going to have to take some action. to get that fraudulent recording out of the public records and clear your title up. Otherwise, it's going to be a cloud on your title. So we believe our notice of title freeze will expediate how quickly you can get that fraudulent recording out of the title and not be an impact on your title. And have you had cases or done research where, I mean, I don't want to use the word guarantee impenetrable.

But in other words, is it possible to pierce through that? Like if you had a notice of title freeze and some fraudster wants to come in, are there cases where someone still lost their house and now they're kicked out because someone took it over? Or does this take care of it because of having that freeze on the title? You know, it's a great question. And we just don't have any experience with an attack being made against a property where we have work with a client to freeze their title.

I imagine that they will come. But so far, we've not had an attack. It's probably just like anything like, oh, we need to go off the grid because people can access and steal your identity. And it seems like no matter what you try, there's people out there that can get whatever they want. But we should be careful to put as many protections in place. So I, and again, before we start.

started talking, I thought you owned a title company that research title for real estate transactions. And so to me, with my knowledge of just seeing the industry and watching the TV this and getting the mailers and going, I just don't know that I feel comfortable with a monitoring thing because I think that there's, that's right for still having people pull the rug out from under you. To me, this makes total sense because you're filing something on the, on the title. So now, um, um, let's say that I had that on my property and I want to go and refinance or sell my property. Is it just a matter of me getting notified, oh, hey, it looks like you've got this title freeze on there.

You need to approve this or what's the process to then get that removed so I can do the next thing I need to do? Sure, sure. That's a great question. And we actually have two ways to do that. if the owner is frozen their title and they intend to either sell their home or place a new mortgage on or place a second mortgage on, they can reach out to us and say, hey, look, I need to unfreeze my title. I've got a closing that I want to do and will help them build a release of title freeze and get that executed and recorded so it doesn't trip up their closing. the alternative to that is the filing party, the intentful filing party, such as a mortgage company or the party that wants to contract to buy the home, they can reach out as well and say,

hey, look, we see that the title's frozen on this property and we intend to put a mortgage onto that or we intend to close and convey that property to a new owner. they can also request a release of title freeze. Of course, the property owner is engaged in that, and we confirm that's truly their intent. So there's two different ways that the release can be requested. And then we will confirm. Because once the freeze is on title, it's kind of like if Bank of America has a mortgage, then the other title company that is saying, oh, we need to put this, you know,

new lien on for a first mortgage or whatever. They know, oh, let's call 1,800 Bank of America to get this. released to do our thing. Well, same with you, your information's on there. They can contact you, and you would go, okay, great, let's start processing this, which then you reach out immediately to the homeowner to say, is this legit? Are we moving forward? That's exactly right. That's exactly right. So we want to make it, we want to make it as protecting and as protective as it can be for property owners to feel like their property is not at risk, or as least. is not as much risk of property title fraud, but we don't want to make it such a burden to

them that when they want to conduct legitimate business, it's tricky and onerous and time-consist. It's a six-month process. It's the normal process of as if you had a first mortgage and a second mortgage, you've got to go and contact those two entities, get the payoff. Oh, here's the balance of the mortgage. So pay that off. And in the process, we're going to release that. And I haven't seen a closing HUD statement in a decade or more, but I'm confident that if we were to pull one up right now and we were doing a legitimate refinance and we're paying off a first and a second mortgage, those two mortgage companies that were paying off, they would have the same process. Oh, we need to have a release of and there's a fee that is charged there. So it's just part of the real estate process. Yeah, it's getting this document in the chain of title. So anyone else that wants to do legitimate business, you know, they're going to have to run that title forward and see what needs to be done so that they can have their closing and have clean title at closing. So it's certainly putting a document in the records that's going to trip up future closings. And that's its intent. So we're pretty proud of it.

In addition to that, we have what's called a notice of occupancy. And what that's all about, Mike, is protecting owners, property owners from squatters, which is becoming a whole new phenomenon here. Yeah, I've seen some news about that. Oh, I know. We've got a news page on our website that has numerous examples of both title fraud and squatters. But the whole notion of squatters is, hey, look, I'm just going to go install my... different mentalities of how they will respond to these claims. But at the end of the day, if my wife and I own

a rental property, if someone jumped in there and took over and said, hey, look, we're your tenant. And we discovered that, you know, the first line of defense is call all the authorities. You're going to call the police off the police. You're going to call the sheriff. You're going to call somebody and say, hey, look, on this property. And there's somebody in there. Go get them out. Generally, squatters will just when that comes knocking at their door, they're going to say, oh, no, no, no, I've got a lease. And they may even make up a fake lease.

Or they may just say, hey, I've got a verbal agreement with the owners that I can be here. And look, I've got the keys to the house. I mean, I've got the garage door openers. I mean, everything's legitimate. I'm in here. What are you talking about? I don't know why they're saying that.

So if you think about, you know, a police officer or a sheriff's deputy, their whole purpose in life is to investigate crime. and they're going to try to get to, is there a crime here? And the notion is, well, Mr. Morris says there's been trespassing, breaking, entering, trespassing, occupying. But now that I'm out here, they're saying, no, there's not. I'm fine. I'm right here.

Look at all my furniture. I got keys. So it becomes, well, I don't know which party to believe thing. And generally, the authorities will say, well, this feels like more of a civil matter. There's a dispute between. I got more calls coming over the ready. so I'm leaving. Yeah.

Yeah. They're not going to, more likely, they're not going to take action on the porch to a victim. So that becomes a civil matter. So now the legitimate property owner is faced with, well, okay, I'm going to have to hire an attorney. I'm going to have to start spending all these legal dollars and going before a judge to establish that I'm the owner

and these people are unauthorized occupants in my property. And they're squatting. And that can take months. Different states treat it differently. But you have to realize if it takes weeks or months, no matter how long it takes, these people are not going to be taking care of your property. They're not going to be treating the property nicely. They're going to destroy it.

So time is of the essence to get them out of there. And the best case in there is don't let them in there. So what we've done, a sister document to our notice of title freeze has come up with what we call a notice occupancy, which essentially says, hey, look, I own this property. Whether I'm occupying it or not, I have no intent whatsoever of any other party occupying it. Full stop. And, you know, if, if I elect to have somebody occupy my property, I will first record a notice of property lease and I'll identify them so that there would be one person on the whole planet that is legitimately a tenant of this property. If anybody else is discovered in my property, it should be found that they,

have trespassed and they're unauthorized illegal occupant of my property. So again, if I'm going to attack that property, if I see a house that looks to be vacant, maybe a second home or, you know, there's even examples of people squatting on vacant land, you know, you just think at some point, if they're going to argue that Mr. Moore gave me permission to be in here, they're going to need to know who owns that property and they're going to need to know Mr. Moore's name. So they're going to do a little bit of research to, and they're going to bump into that notice of occupancy. And if I'm a squatter and I'm going to go to the trouble of essentially breaking into property and changing out the locks and recoding the garage door openers and moving in and going to all

this length to build my story of I'm a legitimate tenant, and I bump into a notice of occupancy that essentially says there can be no tenants here, again, we believe that's a big deterrent and they're going to shoe away to another property. but if they do attack and they do occupy, we believe our document will be very much useful to expediate the process of getting them out. Well, I love it, Kurt, and you've put together some great protections. I love the moat name because you put a moat around your house, and that's wonderful. So if someone is interested in learning a little bit more, what's the best way that they can learn more and reach out and connect with you? We've got a website.

It's moat title security.com. There's just a ton of information on there. You can learn more about our notice of title freeze or a notice of occupancy. We've got, again, a news page that has a lot of examples of title fraud and squatter risks. You can certainly apply for those documents online. You can reach out if you have questions. Our motto at Mote is not to overuse technology in the client experience. So we want to quickly connect parties to people and not make people go through chat robots and 1-800 numbers and things of that sort.

So we want to have more of a personal experience. So if you reach out, you're going to be connected to someone and they'll be your point of contact for any questions you might have. And if you become a moat client, they're going to remain your point of contact for future business. So that's how they could reach out. We've got a phone number there. We've got an address. If you want to send mail, however you want to reach out, we can definitely engage. Perfect.

Well, Kurt, thank you so much for coming on. It was a real pleasure chatting with you today. Well, thank you for having me. I really enjoyed it. You've been listening to Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saunders. To learn more about the resources mentioned on today's show or listen to past episodes, visit www. www.

www. www.influentialentrepreneurs radio. com.