Paper Presentation on Notarial Fraud

This is a brief paper presentation based on one of my articles published this spring in the North East Journal of Legal Studies (Vol. 44, Article 1, 2024) that deals with the problem of unscrupulous notaries public who engage in the unauthorized practice of law and prey upon unsuspecting foreign-born individuals who mistakenly believe U.S. notaries public to be highly trained lawyers who have successfully completed additional training and rigorous exams to become notaries public (or Notarios in Spanish-speaking countries) unlike U.S. notaries public who are not required to be lawyers and have a very limited purpose and power such as verifying the validity of signatures in legal documents. Unlike their foreign counterpart in the vast majority of countries around the world, U.S. notaries public have few if any training or educational requirements beyond being 18 years old with a high school diploma or equivalency, and a clean criminal record.