Side question: why don't i hear horror stories about identity theft from those areas that have those evil bureaucratic notaries authenticating everything?
Actually there's been at least one known case of someone "stealing" an entire building worth about 6 million € in Berlin. Even bureaucracy and notaries didn't prevent it, so there's your potential 100% fraud prevention rate going down the drain...
Link to an article about this case (in German language, unfortunately): https://www.t-online.de/region/berlin/news/id_91147122/berli...