I haven't heard of anyone getting caught, but since airbnb has digital records of your whole history, that could in theory be used in any case the city brings against you.

Kind of what I am trying to mirror here digitally.

I made that deal directly with a seller-who found me in a $79 newspaper ad which I placed for 7 days.That ad produced a few more wholesale deals and people began taking me seriously in the business.  

There are a lot of costs to cover before realizing net profit, which is often in the single digits for contractors (which, I presume, is the 3-5% figure that @Manolo D. refers to as I know of no business which can operate on a 3-5% markup).Your post is unclear in defining that the project "should cost about $100K"... when you say "cost", are you referring to the hard costs of the job (less overhead and profit) or what you think the net cost of the project should be to you?  

I use Craigslist, the newspaper, as well as just googling other random websites on the web to see what I can dig up ..

A search for OWC, or owner will carry, say on Craigslist or the local newspaper, is how these deals are still found.  

This enjoy the double digit returns notes can offer without leverage, and keep your tax benefits associated with real estate. 

Just to give you a few steps to help make sense out of it:1) Homeowner decides they cannot keep up with the payments and wants to sell but they owe more than it is worth.2) Homeowner calls bank and asks if they can sell for less than worth3) Bank says "no" you made the last payment you can do it.4) Homeowner gets behind on payments enough to make bank decide to tell them to get a BPO.5) Agent looks at house and gives a price opinion and contacts bank6) Property gets marketed on MLS and signage/newspaper ads etc7) Offer comes in8) Owner accepts whatever the offer is because if it closes they don't get foreclosed on9) Bank gets signed offer and sends it to their groups to look at and decide if they like the deal (can take months)10) Bank comes back and says "not enough"11) Repeat steps 7-10 until bank says "yes"12) Begin closing processThis of course ignores the hardship documentation that has to be submitted etc.

All they need is your name and last 4 digits of your account number.  

They put together an entire securities filing for you, even set you up with a digital presence and an investor's portal to manage all the investor prospects and paperwork for an incredibly reasonable fee compared to the $15-$50K I've come across in the past.Also if all of your partners are active participants in the deal/holding company and not just silent investors, you may be able to forgo the necessity of a securities filing.