Featured in CEO TIMES: How DeedLock and Gold Patrons Are Reaching for Greater Heights

A thief doesn't need your keys to take your house. He needs a forged signature, a convincing document, and a filing at the county recorder's office. By the time the real owner finds out, the house may already have been sold, borrowed against, or tied up in a legal fight.

That's the problem we set out to solve at Gold Patrons. And CEO TIMES recently took notice, featuring our flagship title surveillance platform in a piece on fighting deed fraud with tomorrow's technology.

We're proud of it. But a feature is a checkpoint, not a finish line. Here's what it represents, where we came from, and where we're headed next.

The feature, and what it really recognizes

Being profiled by a business publication is a nice moment for any company. For us, it means something more specific: deed fraud is finally being treated as the serious, mainstream threat it is.

That wasn't always true. Our founder and president, John Pignetti, puts it plainly on his site: "When I started DeedLock, deed fraud was little more than a whisper in the dark." Most homeowners had never heard of it. As John points out, even the FBI's advice amounted to checking your deed every once in a while.

Checking your deed now and then is not a security plan. It's a hope. We wanted to replace hope with technology.

Built for an industry that didn't exist

Gold Patrons was founded in 2021 on Long Island, New York. The company didn't start as a deed fraud company. It started on a security platform, and because security was our foundation, we were paying attention when we saw how severe, and how quiet, title theft had become. Families were losing everything to little more than forged paperwork.

So we adapted our security technology to a new mission: stop them. That became the original AI Title Surveillance®.

John describes the journey with a line that has become something of a company motto: he built a business for an industry that didn't exist. There was no established category for continuous, automated title protection that followed a homeowner for as long as they owned the property. We had to build the technology, the alerting, the response process, and the partner network from the ground up.

That's the mindset John brings to everything he does, including the Burn the Ships podcast he hosts. You commit fully. You don't keep a way back to the old way of doing things.

Why "tomorrow's technology" isn't just a slogan

Our tagline is "Protection from today's thieves, using tomorrow's technology." It's there for a reason. The criminals have already upgraded.

The numbers tell the story:

• More than 58,000 Americans reported losing a combined $1.3 billion to real estate fraud schemes between 2019 and 2023, and the FBI has warned that quitclaim deed fraud is rising.
• A 2025 National Association of REALTORS® survey found that 63% of real estate association leaders had seen deed or title fraud in their markets within the past year.

At the same time, AI has handed scammers better tools every month: easier impersonation, convincing fake documents, and fast access to the public data needed to pick a target. When John appeared on Brad Lea's Dropping Bombs podcast earlier this year, the episode's title said it all: "How Scammers Steal Homes in 24 Hours (And How to Prevent It)."

If the attack moves at machine speed, the defense has to as well. Here's how we approach it:

1. Watch continuously. Our system monitors property public records 24/7/365 for suspicious deed, recording and lien activity. Not once a year. Not when someone remembers.
2. Alert immediately. The owner hears about a filing the moment it appears, which is when there is the most room to act.
3. Respond with real people. A dedicated fraud specialist and restoration team go to work on getting ownership back if something goes wrong.
4. Lock the off switch. Cancelling coverage requires identity verification, so a scammer who has stolen your personal information can't quietly turn off your protection first.

We're also honest about what technology does and doesn't do. An alert is not a legal finding of fraud. What it gives you is time, and in a deed fraud case, time is the single most valuable thing you can have.

There's a deeper reason this matters. Title insurance protects you on the day you buy your home, but it looks backward, at the history of the title up to closing. Fraud can strike long after closing. Continuous surveillance covers the part of ownership that traditional tools leave exposed.

The heights we've reached in 2026

This year has been a turning point for Gold Patrons, and the CEO TIMES feature arrives on top of real momentum:

• More than 600,000 properties protected nationwide with 24/7 title surveillance and fraud remediation.
• A first for the home warranty industry. In July, Armadillo became the first home warranty company to include title and deed protection in every plan, at every coverage tier, at no extra cost to customers. Our technology powers it.
• Industry recognition. We were named Best Deed Fraud Prevention Service in the United States of 2026 by BestofBestReview.com.
• A sharper business-to-business focus. We're delivering title surveillance through lenders, title companies, mortgage professionals and real estate attorneys, so protection reaches homeowners through the people they already trust.

That last point is central to how we plan to change the industry. A homeowner protected through their lender or title company after closing is a homeowner who never has to discover fraud the hard way. And the professional who provided that protection has given their client something no competitor did.

Revolutionizing the industry, one platform at a time

Title surveillance was the start. It was never meant to be the whole story.

Gold Patrons has grown into a family of AI-powered tools that protect homeowners and give the professionals who serve them an edge:

• Property Terminal brings AI real estate intelligence together in one place: ownership, value, equity and risk.
• SnapQual delivers instant soft pre-qualification at open houses, exclusively for our partner companies.
• Private Line offers direct access to public figures.

Every one of these is 100% American built and operated. That matters to us. When you're protecting someone's largest asset, you should know exactly who built the system and where it lives.

What ties it all together is a simple belief: the real estate industry deserves the same caliber of technology that protects banks and enterprises. Homeowners shouldn't have to become experts in county records to keep what they own. Professionals shouldn't lose a client relationship the moment the closing table clears.

What homeowners and professionals should do right now

Recognition is nice, but our job is protection. If you take one thing from this post, make it this list.

For homeowners:

• Know what's on your title today. Look up the current recorded deed for your property through your county's official land records so you have a clean baseline.
• Take strange mail seriously. A notice about a loan you didn't apply for, or a sale you didn't make, is a red flag. Don't toss it.
• Pay extra attention to properties you don't live in. Rentals, vacation homes, inherited homes and vacant land get far less day-to-day scrutiny.
• Put continuous surveillance in place. Periodic self-checks leave long blind spots. Round-the-clock monitoring with identity-verified cancellation closes them.

For lenders, title companies, agents and attorneys:

• Make post-closing protection part of the deal. Your relationship with the client shouldn't end at the closing table.
• Talk about deed fraud openly. Clients who understand the risk value the professional who raised it.
• Partner instead of building from scratch. We built the surveillance, alerting and restoration so you can offer it under a trusted name.

Higher still

The CEO TIMES feature is a milestone we'll remember. But John didn't build Gold Patrons to collect headlines. He built it so families stop losing homes to forged paperwork, and so the professionals who serve them can deliver protection that lasts as long as ownership does.

We're just getting started, and we intend to keep climbing.

Protect your home, or your clients, today. Visit goldpatrons.com to put DeedLock on watch, or reach out to our team at contact@goldpatrons.com to learn how your company can partner with Gold Patrons.