Agent averts £800,000 property fraud at last minute

A London agent has sent out a fraud alert  after a ‘tenant’ almost got away with selling one of the firm's rental properties for £800,000.

Disaster was averted at the eleventh hour. Contracts had already been exchanged. The purchaser then realised he was not dealing with the real owner, and called in police.

The scam began when the agent dealt with a woman who wanted to rent the property. She said she was married with a child, and had a husband working in Dubai.

The property she targeted is let out on behalf of a landlord who is currently abroad. The house in Fulham had no mortgage on it. Most unusually, the tenant asked for details of the landlord, which he supplied.

She passed independent tenancy checks – the agent is now looking at these procedures –  and produced an apparently valid passport. She took possession of the property on the day her tenancy commenced and keys were handed over to her.

However, she never moved into the property, citing personal reasons and saying her father had died. She also insisted that she did not want any workmen to access the property until after she had moved in.

It turned out, however, that she had been masquerading as the owner and had ‘sold’ the property privately to an unsuspecting purchaser.

The scam came to light by chance, when the purchaser – who had been an applicant at the agency – contacted the agency for a valuation because he wanted to make certain changes to the property.

An alert sales negotiator recognised the address of the property as one on the firm’s lettings book, and contacted the firm’s management department.

The managing director said: “After some investigation, it came to light that the woman and her associates had stolen the landlord’s identity and offered the property for sale to our applicant in a private sale for a price considerably less than market value.

“They posed as the landlord’s relatives, showed the empty property as vacant possession and had employed the services of a small solicitors firm outside London to act on behalf of the alleged fake owner.

“Their sophisticated scam fooled all security measures by the two solicitors firms involved and their fake referencing procedure was passed by an independent referencing company. The sale was almost completed.”

He went on: “We suspect that our client’s property was attractive to the fraudsters because there was no mortgage/ charge against the property and the client lived abroad.

“The tenant also asked for confirmation of the landlord’s identity which the landlord was prepared to give.

“We suggest that any tenant requesting this should be scrutinised with extreme care.”

The firm’s managing director added: “We managed to have the scam averted through a combination of quick thinking and also the size of our agency. We have only three offices and our sales people have a close working relationship with their property management colleagues. This turned out to be a safety valve. A larger agency, with departments working separately from each other, might never have noticed what was going on.”

Property frauds and ID theft have become more common, particularly where landlords are absent and properties are mortgage-free.

Fraudsters can easily get Land Registry title changed, on application. Whilst the Land Registry has to write to the registered owner, it will only do so at the address provided. In practice, the address provided is often that of the absentee owner.

Agents should advise such owners that it is vital to protect themselves against fraud by checking and if necessary amending  their Land Registry details: if only one address has been used for ‘service’, this is insufficient. Property owners can use up to three addresses, so that the Land Registry will have to, for example, write to the owner’s email address plus their solicitor as well as the property.

A further ‘brake’ can be applied by informing the Land Registry that no changes at all can be made to the title without the express permission, in writing, of the property owner’s solicitor or other professional representative.