[mschuster91]

> But in NY, house sale records are made public but much to the detriment, many mortgage companies fake a bill for payment.

That frankly sounds more like a failure of enforcement, on top of a failure of the construction of the financial system. Here in Germany, it is absolutely not a common thing that mortgages or the banks holding them get sold like a hot potato towards some other sucker, and thus such a letter would cause immediate suspicion.

[wongarsu]

Here in Germany, founding a company creates a public record. There are a number of companies who then send all newly formed companies an invoice that looks like a legitimate invoice for expenses related to creating said company, but on closer inspection actually contain a dense paragraph of text that details that this is not an invoice at all, merely an offer you accept by paying. Quite possibly even a subscription

It's a well-known trick, our notary warned us that these letters would come and we should scrutinize any invoice for a while. But they manage to skirt at the edge of legality

[TomatoCo]

In the USA you'll get buttloads of mail urging you to do things such as confirm your home warranty at risk of not being covered. With addresses that says "RE: (your mortgage provider)" to make it look like it's from them.

[Guvante]

Are they actually legal?

Generally those kind of scams setup an illegitimate transaction that would be reversed in a court case.

Whether they rise to a criminal matter is complicated but the vast majority of such scams hold up to scrutiny and instead rely on shell games to make retrieving your funds to expensive to be possible.

[LocalH]

Legality is a matter of enforcement, not of legislation

[inigyou]

Germany follows the law extremely strictly, even more than the USA. If there's no law that says they can't do this, they can do it. Common sense rarely enters the picture in German legal battles

[Guvante]

In the US these kinds of scam fail to be legal on the basis of contract law which is way more nuanced than "can't do this"...

I am not talking about common sense I am talking about things like informed consent and consideration.

[inigyou]

German law doesn't really care if your consent to a contract was informed or not. If you technically consented, then you consented. This is also how we got the recent thread about .at domains renewing automatically and the registry suing you if you don't pay.

[Guvante]

That can happen in the US too... When you agree to a contract you are bound to the terms of it.

Why do you think it is so common to hear horror stories about gym memberships?

But in your example no one agreed to the contract which means no agreement exists.

Generally you can say that payment was agreement to terms but that doesn't work if you deceived to get the payment.