CHECKING ID AT CLOSING

I was doing a closing recently where title was held in the name of John Doe.   The name on the seller's driver license was John Doe Jr.  and the seller had no other ID.   A definite red flag situation, although the seller gave a reasonable explanation for this discrepancy in his names and told us that his father had passed away many years ago.   Was the person sitting in front of me the owner of the property, or his son acting as an impostor?   Even if he produced a second ID with no "Jr." on it, the risk was there.  The first thing I checked was the seller's mortgage being paid off at closing.  I went on ACRIS and pulled a copy to see of the signature on the mortgage matched the signature on the the driver license and the documents signed at closing, which it did.  I then ascertained the age of the Seller.  Obviously if title was taken thirty years ago and the guy was twenty eight  years old, we had a problem.   It turned out that the Seller was in his late fifties and he would have been twenty eight when he bought the house.  Just in case, I asked him how old he was when he bought the house and he answered the right age.   For what ever it was worth, I also made sure that the checks for the proceeds were made out to John Doe and not to John Doe Jr.  In the end I was reasonably satisfied but not one hundred percent certain that this was the real seller.   When there are variations between the ID and the name on title, there is often no iron clad way to establish the seller's identity.   However,  the title company and the attorneys at the table must take steps to to at least reasonably verify the seller's identity and then make a judgment call whether  to accept such verification.  Unfortunately,  title closers often do not closely check ID or think that incomplete matches are fine, and attorneys relying on the title closers, don't even bother to look.