Somebody ordered satellite TV to be installed at my house. A few days later they went to a phone shop and walked out with an iPhone in my name, using (I assume) the invoice from the TV service as proof of identity. They then did the same with a few other phone companies. The only way I found out about these was when they sent me bills demanding payment a month or so later :-)

They also opened a bank account in my name, which I found out via a credit search, but the bank would not confirm or deny it as I was not the person who opened it.

This last bit is more interesting as I believe it had a different address, but was in my name. Technically that is not fraud, as in the UK names are freely changeable without needing any official registration. I could go into a bank tomorrow and ask to open an account, saying my name is "Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson" (the Prime Minister's full name) and that would be legal. The bank would probably send me away as I don't have any supporting evidence to prove that's my name, but there's ways around that.

You can easily see how you could use this to have enough evidence to back up the claim that you are the owner of the property - especially if the property was vacant and you broke in so you could get the post (I assume the buyer was shown around before they bought it?).

Most people doing notary/certification on stuff like this are used to that kind of situation, so someone having an acceptable but not ideal ID method isn’t going to slow this process down.