Today’s Conveyancer in conjunction with Lawyer Checker: Latest Fraud Cases

Today’s Conveyancer in conjunction with Lawyer Checker: Latest Fraud Cases

Industry leading conveyancing publication, Today’s Conveyancer, brings you a FREE webinar presented by Lawyer Checker’s Paul Tucker.

These last twelve months have been a busy time for conveyancers; faced with the stamp duty changes of last year and ever demanding clients, keeping on top of the case law can often feel like an impossible challenge.

As a leader within the industry, Today’s Conveyancer has created an informative webinar covering all aspects of recent conveyancing fraud cases and news. It will include commentary on cases from the past year to help conveyancers keep up with the ever-changing landscape of the conveyancing industry.

Given the amount of money transacted every day, the legal industry and particularly the area of conveyancing has become a huge target for fraudsters. Criminals aren’t just stealing client money, but are also taking advantage of clients’ sensitive information for their own financial gain.

What will the webinar include?

As you’ll be aware, this year has already seen some noteworthy decisions made in the courts.

Although many cases have seen large amounts of client money being lost, the webinar provided by Today’s Conveyancer will also cover examples of cases where fraudster attempts to intercept a transaction were thwarted.  

SRA’s Rebuke of Perry Hay & Co

The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) rebuked Perry Hay & Co after the firm sent £333k directly into fraudsters pockets during a conveyancing transaction – unfortunately, the firm did not undertake sufficient checks to ensure the transaction was safe to go ahead. The fraudsters had put a property up for sale which they had no legal rights to.

As well as breaching account rules, the firm also admitted that they had failed to report the incident to the SRA. They were made to pay £1,350 in costs.

How Hayward Moon thwarted criminal conveyancers

Lawyer Checker’s Account and Entity Screen has recently prevented a firm losing £375k of client money to criminals. During part of a real conveyancing transaction, fraudsters hacked into emails between the buyer and seller’s solicitors, pretending to act for the seller and asking for the bank details to be changed. Hayward Moon performed a Lawyer Checker Search and found that the new details were not recognised, leading the firm to discover that the other side had not, in fact, amended their bank details.

Hayward Moon stated: “Our policy of using Lawyer Checker helped us identify this fraud and later that evening all I could think of were the consequences on me and our firm if we had not used Lawyer Checker as a matter of course”.

Arrest and subsequent sentencing of Mother and Daughter Dubai Duo

A mother and daughter who tried to sell a £3million Kensington property are to be jailed after being found guilty of conspiracy to commit fraud.

This is yet another example of a situation where criminals have posed as property owners. The pair conspired to rent a property, with the mother successfully opening bank accounts in Dubai using a passport in the name of the deceased homeowner. She was then able to apply for a £1.2 million loan against the property.

Cases like this reinforce the need for conveyancers to be increasingly vigilant in their area of work.

To find out more, sign up now to the FREE Fraud Round Up webinar by clicking here.

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