Couple lose almost £60k to fraudsters

Couple lose almost £60k to fraudsters

A couple in the midst of a property transaction found they’d have fallen victim to a property scam after sending almost £60,000 to an account they thought belonged to their conveyancer.

Whilst they were hoping to complete on the 21 December, the couple now fear that this won’t be the case and that they could even be left homeless if they fail to recover the lost funds.

The scenario follows the same pattern as similar cases involving conveyancing fraud, with legitimate email correspondence between the solicitor, mortgage broker and couple being intercepted by a criminal. In this instance, it led to their deposit of £137,500 being transferred to the fraudster’s account.

Although £80,112 has now been recovered, the remainder is still missing as it was taken out before the scam was detected.

In the past, the Payment Systems Regulator has stressed that banks need to do more to prevent ‘APP’ or authorised push scams from taking place but stopped short of saying that they should provide compensation. However, they have since put forward a scheme which would see compensation being issued in certain circumstances where consumers have been tricked into sending money.

Whether they’re refunded or not will depend on whether they’ve taken an appropriate degree of care to protect themselves, and if the company or bank concerned had met the required standards.

Whilst this holds out a certain degree of hope for future victims of APP fraud, the same cannot, unfortunately, be said for the couple in this case.

Intending to send a Chaps payment to their solicitor, the couple visited a Barclays Bank. However, whilst they stated that the process took a while due to security checks, the facts that the solicitor’s account information did not match the bank details was not flagged, even though a payment had already been sent.

Whilst Barclays later told the couple that they had been able to recover some of the money, just under £60,000 remains missing.

The couple hired a forensic computer analyst who found that the emails had been intercepted through the use of ‘reply-to’ headers. A tool reportedly used by fraudsters in the past, this would make it appear that the email was from a trusted sender, meaning the recipient would be unlikely to question its legitimacy.

Whilst the fraud took place over two months ago, the couple told Guardian Money that they have since had little redress, stating: “The criminals seem to get away with anything, and we have absolutely no support from the institutions technically supposed to help and protect us.”

The case has since been transferred to Manchester police.

Georgia Owen

Georgia is the Content Executive and will be your primary contact when submitting your latest news. While studying for an LLB at the University of Liverpool, Georgia gained experience working within retail, as well as social media management. She later went on to work for a local newspaper, before starting at Today’s Conveyancer.

1 Comment

  • This raises the question – why are lawyers still using email? Time to move into the 21st century everyone – secure portals are the only solution.

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