The ability of the land registry insurance funds (assuming they have one) to "refund" lost money is limited and the get out clauses are huge. Basically you can be bankrupted taking "the authority" to law to recover, if they don't cough up. They cough up to preserve integrity in the system. But between the registry/titles-office, the lawyers, the crook who vamoosed the money, the original land owner, the buyers. and the builders its a black hole of blame fingers.
In analogous cases in Australia (torrens title lands registry) there is often somebody left holding the baby (unable to recover their money from the crook, even when the crook is found)
I'm waiting for somebody to throw "solved by blockchain" into this thread. (hint: it isn't, because the crime happens in the real world, not inside hypothesised registries. the real world has processes which break down)