Photo: David Martin, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Here’s your Saturday pocketbook warning: your property records in Lucas County are free — but scammers are betting you don’t know that. The Lucas County Auditor is warning residents about a fake website that charges people for property searches, as 13abc reported on Saturday.

The setup is brutally simple: an imposter site looks like the county’s AREIS property search, then asks you to pay for records that should cost nothing. It can catch homeowners checking their assessments, buyers doing their homework, or renters looking up a property owner — especially if you land on the page through a search engine or a sponsored link instead of the county’s own site.

The real thing? Lucas County Auditor Katie Moline says the legitimate AREIS property search, found through the county’s official website, is completely free. The auditor’s office says you should never have to pay for property lookups — no fee, no “processing charge,” no checkout page.

So: bookmark the official county site, and if any page asks for your credit card to look up a property, close it. If you already paid, report the suspicious website to the county auditor’s office.

Pass this one along to a neighbor — scams like this thrive on people assuming the first result on Google is the official one. It isn’t always.