3 ms·

Are you sure? Do people in some countries lose their money if they, for example, sold their car to a bad guy?

• paulmd 7y ago
  In the US, stolen property is the property of the person it was stolen from. If you bought a stereo from a pawnshop and it turns out it was stolen, the original owner gets his stereo back and you get to try and reclaim your money from the pawnshop. Anything else would create perverse incentives like the grandparent describes. This rather prominently came into play during the 2008 financial crisis when it turned out banks were forging wet copies of the original mortgage paperwork on foreclosed properties. When banks realized that it was a problem, title insurance started specifically excluding this, so the original owner could take their property back and you would end up with a mortgage on nothing.