Moving home is an exciting, busy and often stressful time. And also an expensive one! Your mind is often busy planning one step ahead and you’ll be keen to keep the exchange process flowing smoothly. This, coupled with the inevitable changeover of significant amounts of money along the way, has unfortunately made the home buying process a target for criminals intent on defrauding homebuyers of their hard-earned money.
The story of a newlywed couple who were victims of one of the most recent scams to come to light was recently featured in The Daily Mail.
It appears that con artists had hacked into their email account and impersonated the couple’s solicitors who were handling the conveyancing. When the couple received an email saying the bank details that they should pay their deposit into had changed, they believed it to be genuine and deposited £45,000 cash straight into the criminals’ account.
It was only when the solicitors contacted them to say they had not received the deposit that they realised something was wrong. By that time it was too late for the bank to retrieve all of their deposit.
Please make anyone you know who is buying a home aware of this scam to stop a similar thing happening to someone else. It is a sensible idea to check any emails you receive which you are not 100% sure to be genuine by telephoning your contact at your solicitors. Better safe than sorry!
