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Notes -
I'll do @JulianRota one better — I practiced title law for about a decade and I've never seen it. In theory someone could forge the owner's signature on a deed and have it acknowledged by a rogue notary and record the deed, but this doesn't really get you anything. If the property is occupied they'd have to commence an ejectment action to get the owner out, and at this point they'd be found out. If they wanted to mortgage it or sell to a third party they'd run into guardrails the mortgage companies have in place as part of due diligence. For instance, an appraisal requires an in person inspection and the appraiser needs access to the property. The biggest guardrail, though, is that it requires the perpetrator to use his real name and commit a series of felonies that create a massive paper trail.
That being said, I was at a seminar a number of years back and heard that this was a thing in Philadelphia. The caveat, though, is that the forged deeds involved distressed properties in areas that were seeing renewed development interest. And the guy got caught anyway, because when you're selling for enough that it's worth doing, you're creating a massive paper trail. Also, these were properties where the ownership was in question (usually due to an unresolved estate) so the actual owners probably didn't even know they owned the property, or shared it with other heirs. For a normal owner-occupied residence, this kind of thing is near impossible to pull off.
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