28 ms·

Man left shocked as his house is 'stolen'

318 points by lbriner 5y ago

ensignavenger 5y ago
My grandfather was rather fond of telling a story about a neighbor when he was younger who came home from vacation to find that their house had been stolen... like someone had brought a wagon and team of horses in, jacked up the house, and pulled it away. Being in a rather rural area, no one apparently noticed the heist!
Animats 5y ago
This is apparently enough of a problem in the UK that the land registry has procedures for locking a title and for reporting frauds.[1] [1] https://www.gov.uk/protect-land-property-from-fraud https://www.gov.uk/protect-land-property-from-fraud
Androider 5y ago
> Once the house was sold to the new owner for £131,000 by the person impersonating Mr Hall, they legally owned it. That's nuts. Why isn't it the case that the person who failed to properly vet the seller is out of £131,000 and the house? So I can "buy" a local mansion and then say "oops, I didn't know this random guy didn't own it. Oh well."
- sofixa 5y ago
  In France it's the notary's job ( who are the only ones who can validate a sale) to ensure that the seller is who they say they are, and that they do actually own the land/house/apartment. Wonder how that works across the Channel and whose responsibility it was.
  - lbriner 5y ago
    It is the same with a Solicitor but if they followed the correct process and the problem was actually with, say, the DVLA who issued a driving licence in the wrong name, I'm not sure who is liable for the error.
    - koonsolo 5y ago
      Why would you use a driver's license when everyone can have a digital ID card? In Belgium the notary will always ask for your digital ID card.
      - lazide 5y ago
        Plenty of folks haven’t updated, or don’t like dealing with it, or ‘lost it’ or whatever. Most people doing notary/certification on stuff like this are used to that kind of situation, so someone having an acceptable but not ideal ID method isn’t going to slow this process down.
        koonsolo 5y ago
        In Belgium, it's obligatory to carry your ID card everywhere when you are older than 15. So not having it is not allowed. I would be very surprised if a notary wouldn't demand it. They would not put their own job on the line for some idiot.
        jve 5y ago
        In Latvia, nowdays you cant visit restaurant without a covid certificate verified by ID card or passport. Or to receive parcel at post office. Or when dealing with bank or gov. Etc. However I can do the following: use digital identification, that uses multiple factors along with an app, that requires using digital certificate from id card to setup. Afterwards its just my device and that app PIN that is required to impersonate me (well and semi-public national personal identification number)… this applies to almost all gov services with few exceptions like operations with property… Drivers license has been invalidated years ago as an identification mechanism. Let alone for dealing with property - notary is mandatory along with proper identification.
      - the_svd_doctor 5y ago
        Doesn't the UK _not_ have ID cards?
        5y ago
  - laurent92 5y ago
    The Notary in France doesn’t necessarily fully do this job. They have an obligation of means, ie check the last 30 years of ownership and permits, but there are many cracks in that system: - Double ownership for 30 years followed by a proof of ownership from the real, hidden one; - Or simply it is the notary’s understanding that there is no record past 12 years for example, and yet there is. If they have checked “the normal books”, their duty is fulfilled.
    - forty 5y ago
      Is there stories of people getting their property stolen this way? My guess is that in France, if such a story as the article happended, the buyer would be kicked out of the house (and probably lose their money stolen by the fraudsters) but maybe I'm completely wrong.
      - dolmen 5y ago
        I remember to have seen a story in France of someone that had bought a house, but someone else did break in and rented it to a family. The people in the house had a rental contract, so they had the immediate right to stay, even it the contract was invalid. Evicting them was a nightmare. Here is a similar story: https://lemans.maville.com/actu/actudet_--nous-sommes-abandonnes-leur-maison-familiale-est-occupee-illegalement-par-un-inconnu-depuis-des-mois-_54135-4864121_actu.Htm https://lemans.maville.com/actu/actudet_--nous-sommes-abando...
        sofixa 5y ago
        But a notary isn't involved in renting, so there was noone to check.
        forty 5y ago
        Absolutely. This is for secondary houses mostly though, it's slightly easier to expel those from your main accomodation. But I think in any case your ownership of the property is not challenged. It's "just" that you cannot use it, but eventually you can get it back.
  - ElFitz 5y ago
    Don’t we have actual, physical, titles, tied to the property? Could someone actually sell a house without those?
    - gpderetta 5y ago
      Unless the house/land is not yet registered, I believe that the land registry is supposed to be the ultimate authority and deeds are just piece of papers. Ai think you can always argue ownership in a curt of law of course.
      - gpderetta 5y ago
        See this[1] thread on r/legaladviceUK. User pflurklurk is normally very knowledgeable of the UK legal system and probably a solicitor himself (although he claims to be just a random shitposter). [1]https://www.reddit.com/r/LegalAdviceUK/comments/qkew77/is_a_property_transfer_done_fraudulently_through https://www.reddit.com/r/LegalAdviceUK/comments/qkew77/is_a_...
- aclelland 5y ago
  Yeah, that part confused me to. I'm pretty sure that if I bought a stolen xbox from some guy on a street corner and the Police find me with it, they'd not throw up their hands and say "oh well, I guess you own it now, on your way". I assume there is a specific legal quirk with property ownership.
  - dtparr 5y ago
    I believe the 'quirk' here is that the fraud was able to get property ownership updated with the Land Registry, so the new owner is the official owner of record.
    - dgb23 5y ago
      So the Land Registry is at fault? Good luck...
    - thereddaikon 5y ago
      Sounds to me like in the UK you cant truly own land if the government can just decide it belongs to someone else.
      - jopsen 5y ago
        Yeah, you don't truly own land, you pay property taxes, etc. It's more like you lease the land :)
      - codyb 5y ago
        Pretty much true everywhere. It’s not like you can take anything with you when you’re dead, owning materials is really just a societal construct no matter which way you slice it.
        H8crilA 5y ago
        Possession is a physical/real property of the universe. Ownership is a legal abstraction/construct.
- dmoy 5y ago
  It depends on how Title law works in the jurisdiction. I don't know how it works in this part of the UK, but in many states in the US, the buyer would left holding the bag - the original homeowner would keep the property. It's one reason in the US that most property sales include a purchase of title insurance.
  - lbriner 5y ago
    I'm not a lawyer but the article implies that once the title is transferred, the new owner owns it! There might be liability with the Solicitor or the Land Registry, otherwise it would appear to be incredibly unfair!
    - tonyedgecombe 5y ago
      The article says "The Land Registry paid out a total of £3.5m in compensation for fraud last year." which tends to imply they have some liability.
      - pdmccormick 5y ago
        I wonder if that means they don't pay all that much compensation on a case by case basis, or if there isn't that much fraud occurring to begin with.
        pmyteh 5y ago
        I suspect they'd rather you claimed against the fraudster or a solicitor, with the compensation fund as a backstop. If that is the case, it could be neither: just that most people get recompensed elsewhere.
    - pmyteh 5y ago
      That's right, I think. The property can be recovered from the fraudster, but not from an innocent subsequent purchaser. There is at least some form of compensation scheme by the Land Registry. And 'selling on behalf of someone who isn't the actual owner' certainly can found a liability claim on the solicitor.
- _0ffh 5y ago
  Yeah, A gets scammed by B and C pays the price. If you can't get a hold on B, then clearly A should be the one all outta luck, not C. Absolutely insane!
- so_throwaway 5y ago
  You are confusing who actually owned it, or who morally owned it, with who legally owned it. The claim is not that, once the legal issues and the fraud get untangled, the buyer will be held to be the rightful owner. The claim is that AT THE MOMENT, while the 'new owner' is listed in the Land Registry as owning it, and the 'old owner' isn't, the 'new owner' temporarily legally owns it. They have written this article as though to suggest that this is final and the original owner has no recourse. That isn't the case. What is the case is that the police don't have a remit to investigate the fraudulent sale. If person A is listed in the registry (they 'legally own' the property) and person B isn't, the police will follow person A's instructions to remove person B from the property, but not vice versa.
  - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
    > AT THE MOMENT, while the 'new owner' is listed in the Land Registry as owning it, and the 'old owner' isn't, the 'new owner' temporarily legally owns it Not an expert on British law, but I don't think this is the case. The new owner owns it. Not temporarily. Fully, permanently and properly. The previous owner was fraudulently deprived of it, and can likely get damages from the parties who signed off on the conveyance. But I don't think they have the right to reverse the transaction against the new owner's will.
    - so_throwaway 5y ago
      If you're not an expert on British law what makes you feel able to make such a confident and surprising claim?
      - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
        > If you're not an expert on British law what makes you feel able to make such a confident and surprising claim? The hubris of an internet commenter? Also, it's not surprising. It's unusual for a common law country. But in most jurisdictions, particularly those on statutory law, if the buyer is unrelated to the fraudster and is in possession, the register cannot be altered [1]. This comes, in most places, out of the land registry being a reaction to protracted property disputes. (Often violent.) [1] https://www.bdbpitmans.com/insights/how-to-deal-with-property-fraud/ https://www.bdbpitmans.com/insights/how-to-deal-with-propert...
- anonAndOn 5y ago
  In the US, the buyer is often required to purchase title insurance which would likely cover fraudulent transfer.[0] [0]https://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/title_insurance.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/title_insurance.asp
  - iammisc 5y ago
    The us doesn't have centralized land registries. While the counties record titles as a matter of convenience, the true title is determined by the courts. Other countries have centralized registries so that if the country's database says X piece of land is owned by Y, that's final. In the us it can be litigated and title insurance comes into play for the buyer who purchased it fraudulently.
    - bzbarsky 5y ago
      > The us doesn't have centralized land registries. Like any statement about the US, "it's complicated". For example, in Massachusetts there are two types of real estate: recorded and registered. See https://www.deeds.com/articles/understanding-the-difference-between-recorded-land-and-registered-land-in-massachusetts/ https://www.deeds.com/articles/understanding-the-difference-... for a quick rundown. In some cases, the property that goes with a single house will actually be made up of two bits of land, one of which is recorded and one of which is registered. In other cases it's all recorded or all registered. Now this is not a nationwide centralized registry, it is a state-wide registry within Massachusetts, and my understanding is that the sort of litigation you could get for recorded land does not happen for registered land, because transfer of registered land is already a Land Court decision. Key quote from the above link's description of registered land: As the current state of title is sequentially updated by the registration of future transactions, it embodies a certificate of title that not only evidences title, but in fact guarantees title and is subject only to the exceptions provided by statute and matters of federal law.
- anonporridge 5y ago
  Also, how does the seller disappear with that much money without being able to be IDed? That seems like a severe failure of the state. It almost makes me wonder if this is a semi common scam wealthy folks use to take poor people's desirable homes.
  - sdenton4 5y ago
    Paid in bitcoin?
    - anonporridge 5y ago
      Bitcoin is pretty easy to trace. Could more easily disappear if paid in cash.
      - sdenton4 5y ago
        Seems to work well enough for ransomware...
        anonporridge 5y ago
        Actually, no it doesn't. For example, the FBI was able to partially recover the Colonial Pipeline ransom, although that seems to be in part because the perpetrators were stupid by trying to sell it on a US exchange, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonial_Pipeline_ransomware_attack#Partial_ransom_recovery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonial_Pipeline_ransomware_a... Criminals don't use bitcoin anymore. They use cash and monero.
  - koonsolo 5y ago
    Banks offer very little protection for scams like this. Basically "the money seems to be gone".
    - anonporridge 5y ago
      I mean, it's probably hard for bankers to turn in their distant cousins.
- mihaaly 5y ago
  Since it was not sold by the owner it is difficult to argue for the legality of the transaction. Whoever claims bought something has nothing in fact, the person they've been in business with had nothing to sell. Selling nothing is nothing. The records are false! If the authorities assume things are in order here they should also be prosecuted for negligence or being accomplice and at least revert the FALSE transfer of ownership. (are we sure here that the 'buyer' is an unsuspecting party theyself?...)
  - pc86 5y ago
    This sounds entirely like how you want things to work, or how you feel they "should" work in a just, fair world. It doesn't sound like you have any legal education or training to base this on. But I greatly prefer your version of events to what happened in the article so please prove me wrong!
    - mihaaly 5y ago
      Someone sold something that this person did not have. Sold nothing. Then what the buyer has? Nothing! There was an error in registering the transactions, it was a false transaction. How my will has anything to do about this or affecting if selling nothing becomes something or not? Where exactly a legal education needed for being able to recognise that the real owner did not sell or give away his property? If I am not a solicitor I cannot possibly comprehend what is a theft, fraud, or recognise bodily harm or crimes in general that are condemned by the society? I do not buy into that. The recognition of these kind of crimes are older than institutions dealing with those. If the stealing of the property is not prosecuted then the system is wrong, needs a fix.
blunte 5y ago
"You and Yours obtained the driving licence used to impersonate Mr Hall" ... what? who? And then, "Once the house was sold to the new owner for £131,000 by the person impersonating Mr Hall, they legally owned it." The people who sold the house did not have the right to sell the house because they did not own it. The person who bought it does not own it since it was not legally sold.
- jonp888 5y ago
  You and Yours is a long running consumer affairs show on BBC Radio.
  - blunte 5y ago
    Hah! Thank you. I would have never guessed this.
freeqaz 5y ago
Is it roughly the same to "prove" your identity in the US as it is in the UK? In the US, at least for most credit checks, you just need your SSN, some public record data about where you've lived, and personal data (name, DOB, etc). It's largely because there is no "National ID" system in the US (due to political reasons). That makes it hard for companies to track people, and the SSN is the only number that people consistently have. Are there any examples of countries where their government is getting this right and eliminating stupid fraud?
- anonymousisme 5y ago
  "It's largely because there is no "National ID" system in the US (due to political reasons). That makes it hard for companies to track people, and the SSN is the only number that people consistently have." "Real ID" is now a thing. It's a "National ID". https://www.dhs.gov/real-id https://www.dhs.gov/real-id
  - 2fast4you 5y ago
    > REAL ID is a federal law, not an actual piece of ID. Congress passed the REAL ID Act in 2005. The act established minimum security standards for state-issued driver licenses and ID cards. https://www.dol.wa.gov/about/real-id-overview.html https://www.dol.wa.gov/about/real-id-overview.html REAL ID doesn't sound like a federal ID system, it's just security standards for state issued ID cards.
    - anonymousisme 5y ago
      If states are complying to federal standards for ID, then it is effectively a federal ID.
      - 2fast4you 5y ago
        But they aren't issued or backed by the federal government. There isn't a national database for it, each state still has it's own system
WarOnPrivacy 5y ago
I'm in the US. What I see is that stolen+sold property tends to belong to the original owner, not the purchaser. Is it different in the UK?
- klyrs 5y ago
  I'm not sure the police would do anything different in the US. I'm guessing that proper owner, like most people, kept the deed in his house -- which was emptied of his belongings and sold. Without that, the police don't have much to act on.
  - quietbritishjim 5y ago
    Paper deeds are no longer relevant to property ownership in the UK. The HM Land Registry records are authoritative (subject to legal challenges). See for example: https://hmlandregistry.blog.gov.uk/2018/02/19/title-deeds/ https://hmlandregistry.blog.gov.uk/2018/02/19/title-deeds/ Edit: technically they are still relevant if the property has not been sold since the records were digitised in the 1990s
    - Maxburn 5y ago
      In the US I believe your Title Insurance would give you a suitable paper trail as well. That and the registrar.
  - bogle 5y ago
    In England the owner doesn't have the deeds, although they may obtain a copy. It's digital with the Land Registry. Scotland, incidentally, has the oldest land registry in the world (1617 CE), the Sasines.
    - stevekemp 5y ago
      I paid off my flat in Edinburgh back in 2016 or so, and in exchange I received a huge bundle of papers "the deeds", from the bank. I spent a fun evening flicking through the records of owners, the price they'd paid for it, and the few details provided (occupation, etc). All dating back to when the building was built in 1890 or so. Later I left the country, and moved to Finland. After a year or two here I wanted to sell the flat as I'd decided I wasn't going back. Despite going through the process of ensuring the registry was updated I had to mail them back to the solicators based in Scotland prior to selling the flat. The sale was carried out 100% remotely; I had a couple of phone calls, and when I balked at the use of a FAX machine I printed out a few forms/documents from emails, signed them, and physically posted them back to the solicators. Happily I'd had the foresight to leave a spare set of keys with a trusted friend, which were used for the viewings, etc. It probably helped that the solicator who handled the sale had also handled the registration of the deeds when I received them so they were probably confident it was a flat I owned.. When I queried things I was told "The only registry is definitive, but .. things are .. smoother .. with the physical deeds". Made no sense to me, but I wasn't going to argue.
superfamicom 5y ago
I live in the US and had my debit card (number only, one of the bigger data leaks) stolen years ago and ever since then my bank will check every purchase with me over $300. It was really frustrating for years until someone else took my card (from another data leak) and was easily stopped and new card issued. I cannot imagine someone selling my home without involving me, or at the very least without several other of my personal contact methods also compromised at the same time.
- lbriner 5y ago
  The Solicitor has no existing relationship with the real owner of the house. A bloke turns up and says they want to sell their house and has the correct Land Registry details and some ID, the solicitor does other checks and makes it all happen. The illegal seller must have known that the owner was away for some time though because even if everything is ready, it usually takes at least 2 months to go through.
  - wongarsu 5y ago
    But surely the land registry has an existing relationship with the real owner of the land? Isn't that the entire point of the land registry, to be able to contact and deal with the person who owns a particular piece of land?
    - martyvis 5y ago
      I purchased my property in 1989. Any contact detail for me in the land registry in NSW Australia would be the house where I lived and the phone number there. Neither would be valid and lead them to me specifically. I certainly have never had further contact with them or they with me. So if someone presents themselves as me with a government issued driver's licence at the property address they would be none the wiser. (You'd normally also need to present say a utility bill and a credit card to have enough points to prove identity)
      - inglor_cz 5y ago
pjdemers 5y ago
In the US, there is title insurance. If the seller didn't have the legal right to sell the house, the house reverts to the legal owner, and the buyer is paid back by the insurance. It's not possible to get a mortgage without title insurance, and a cash buyer would be nuts to not demand it from the seller. In some states (example, California) it can get more complicated, though, because the right to sell a house isn't the same thing as the right to live in it. They buyer may own the house, but not have the right to force the current occupants to leave. That's why it's important to state in the contract that the house must be completely empty before the seller gets paid, and every month that it is not completely empty, a few thousand dollars is subtracted from the purchase price.
- merpnderp 5y ago
  In some states you can buy a house without title insurance. I assume this is so that people who enjoy Russian roulette and jumping out of planes without parachutes can enjoy the same adrenaline rush when buying a home.
  - tantalor 5y ago
    It's common to buy real estate from someone you already trust, such as a family member. You know the title was good when they bought it, so you can bet the title insurance fee (several thousand dollars) against that trust nothing fishy happened since then.
    - drfuchs 5y ago
      But what if something fishy happened before they sold it to you, but it isn't discovered until after? Does their title insurance still cover it? For instance, if their original purchase turns out to not have been legitimate to begin with for some reason.
      - conductr 5y ago
        Yes, title insurance is a single premium but gives the owner forever coverage. This is essentially the purpose, to give the buyer confidence that they are protected for anything that may have happened that they wouldn't know about, because the seller may not even know about it and potentially it happened 100s of years ago. Where this gets kind of crazy is if you own a property and have title insurance on it from when you bought it, then you do a refinance, you're often required to buy the insurance again because that original policy ends. All said, the loss ratio of title insurance companies is extremely low compared to other types of insurances. But in some places it's cost is fairly high (eg Texas) and it's mostly to do with strong political interests / lobbying
ballenf 5y ago
While people decry the inability for crypto transactions to be adjudicated in court, what we don't talk about as much is that this is also the direction of non-crypto transactions. As the article stated, the police initially refused to even consider the theft of the man's house a crime. We used to say possession is 9/10ths of the law. Now it seems the algorithm is 9/10ths of the law. You have maybe 10% chance to reverse a transaction that was approved by the computers. Or at least we're headed that way.
- lbriner 5y ago
  That's not what they said. They said it was not criminal but civil, which a lot of contract and tort law falls under, it means the police won't do the investigation for you. I don't know why they considered that this was not fraud, which is criminal but maybe they couldn't point to a detail that showed where the fraud took place. They might also have been wrong to say that!
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > the police won't do the investigation for you Even in criminal matters, they don't do the investigation for you, they do it for public prosecutors, which may or may not have incidental utility to you.
  - tonyedgecombe 5y ago
    The article says "Police initially told him it was not fraud but are now investigating." My guess is the police couldn't be bothered. A friend of mine had a problem with squatters moving into his house (which wasn't empty). Initially the police refused to get involved until he got his solicitor to point out it was a criminal issue.
implements 5y ago
Any UK reader can avoid this by signing up to: https://propertyalert.landregistry.gov.uk/ https://propertyalert.landregistry.gov.uk/ It’s the Land Registry itself, it’s free, and: “Once you have signed up to the service, you will receive email alerts when certain activity occurs on your monitored properties, allowing you to take action if necessary.”
- op00to 5y ago
  This is the same bs we have to deal with in the US with financial credit and social security numbers. Because there’s no actual security, the individual must monitor their own credit for abuses, or prevent anyone from accessing it via a freeze.
- m4tthumphrey 5y ago
  Just signed up to this. Only alpha numeric passwords allowed. Always worries me.
  - _0ffh 5y ago
    I guess you'll just have to hope that they don't truncate the password after the first eight characters or so...
    - pc86 5y ago
      Hey as long as they truncate it the same way on login as they do on account creation... /s
- cstross 5y ago
  Only covers England and Wales -- not Scotland and Northern Ireland. So not actually UK wide.
tialaramex 5y ago
For what it's worth. If you own Real Property in England, even if only a Leasehold (Long Lease e.g. 99 years) you can get the Land Registry to email you about activity or, once per year, the lack of activity for your property records. https://propertyalert.landregistry.gov.uk/ https://propertyalert.landregistry.gov.uk/ Land Registry records have a sort of poor man's locking. The buyers (or in practice their solicitor) need to first perform a "Search" which would get recorded as activity, some time before they can file paperwork to claim it was sold, and so that gives you considerable time to say "Hey, I'm not selling this, why is there a Search by Honest But Incompetent Solicitors LLC?" and phone up to yell at somebody.
- brightball 5y ago
  In the US I’ve always been told it’s in the best interest of a home owner to always have some type of bank loan on the property. Mortgage, even a zero balance HELOC. Supposedly, this allows the bank to ensure there’s no title fraud because they maintain a claim to it.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- rectang 5y ago
  That's messed up — it pushes the blame onto the victims for not monitoring.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - _jal 5y ago
    Rather similar to "identity theft", the strange name for a particular form of (usually bank) fraud.
    - K0balt 5y ago
      It’s called identity theft to make it more the victims problem. If it was bank fraud, the bank would definitely have to deal with all aspects. As it is, consumers get a big chunk of the burden.
vmception 5y ago
Another reason to use an anonymous LLC/entity. The owning entity gets a new state identification number which won't have appeared in as many leaks to be impersonated. While the individual owner of the LLC isn't known to impersonate.
- lbriner 5y ago
  Not a reason for the UK. We don't have anonymous companies like the US e.g. by assigning your attorney as a director so they can hide behind privilege. The Directors of your limited company would be available for all to see with their address!
  - vmception 5y ago
    The company that buys the house doesn't need to be formed in the UK.
    - gifnamething 5y ago
      Now you're paying extra SDLT
      - vmception 5y ago
        and still own your house
- gruez 5y ago
  1. doesn't that shift the problem to impersonating the LLC? If anything that seems easier than impersonating a person? 2. does this work with financing? how do mortgages work?
  - vmception 5y ago
    Social engineering is always a threat to anyone. What occurred in this article would not have been available if the entity was the owner.
rkangel 5y ago
I have a friend who was almost the buyer of a house in the UK in a very similar situation. Fundamentally, it relied on the seller buying counterfeit identity documents (passport and driving licence) off the internet. That way, in theory, the identity checks were all conducted. There was the suggestion that the seller's solicitor was in on it, but no firm evidence. The seller has been arrested at least.
- lbriner 5y ago
  It's a shame that the systems that are really important, like passports, id cards, property registers etc. are all still so far behind in basic security. They could easily require certain info up-front on the title like mobile, photo etc. and then if you need to update it, you have to do it via a solicitor or equivalent, it's not like most people change their photo or mobile number every week.
  - 7952 5y ago
    But the phone number system isn't perfectly secure. A fraudster could transfer your account or even have physical access to the phone line. And it still relies on a solicitor to authenticate changes which could then be fraudulent. The advantage of the current system system is that it is fairly explicit and public. It can be checked without any secret codes or processes using the information on the title itself.
- iso1631 5y ago
  How did they find the house? Was it advertised through an estate agent?
Aulig 5y ago
Something similar happened in Germany recently. A house worth millions was fraudulently sold like this. The original owners got it back luckily. German video about it: https://youtu.be/TolvzYzk64c https://youtu.be/TolvzYzk64c
- bellyfullofbac 5y ago
  At least here the thieves were known (or even well-known). What if the buyer transferred money to some Nigerian prince who showed up with fake ID and disappeared after the sale? Would the buyer end up with no money and no house?
- kfprt 5y ago
  These things always happen when a low trust society comes into contact with a high trust society.
kybernetyk 5y ago
Police: “not my problem, lol”. The joy of paying taxes.
- philpem 5y ago
  It is pretty much how policing works in the UK. Declare it a civil matter, get it off the books as soon as possible... and that's not mentioning the mountain of police misconduct court cases that have popped up recently. Sadly the only chance of getting anything out of them is if the media get involved and hold their feet in the fire a bit.
  - kfprt 5y ago
    UK police looked the other way on child rape gangs for decades. Why would they care about this?
- so_throwaway 5y ago
  Why do you expect the police to investigate this? If A says that B is trespassing on their property, and A not B is listed as the legal owner of the property according to the single source of truth, isn't it normal that the police should evict B and defend A's property rights? Imagine if the police took the attitude "we have to give equal weight to B's hard luck story about how he's the technical owner". Harassment and vexatious claims of fraud would be absolutely rampant.
- mhh__ 5y ago
  This is what fiscal responsibility looks like. The police and local councils have been cut to the bone by the Tories.
ineedasername 5y ago
It seems this is becoming somewhat common in the UK: https://www.step.org/industry-news/uk-solicitors-warned-growing-problem-title-fraud https://www.step.org/industry-news/uk-solicitors-warned-grow...
janandonly 5y ago
I am baffled by the fact that a complete house can be had for the little sum of £131,000. That's about €150.000 in real money... I guess where I live that would get me a garage, maybe.
- MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
  Ahem...you're missing a $ :)
- nickkell 5y ago
  It’s an absolute steal
- iso1631 5y ago
  Luton isn't exactly the nicest of places, but £131k is way below the asking price for even the cheapest houses there
fortran77 5y ago
It’s odd that in the UK a person who buys stolen property legally owns it.
- funshed 5y ago
  Every story I have read about this before is the transaction(s) are reversed. I presume the owner opted for cash instead of the property back.
- so_throwaway 5y ago
  They legally own it in the sense that they are the legally registered owners, currently. They do not legally own it in the sense that the original owner will not be able to eventually recover it after the fraud is unravelled. Your instinct that this is odd is correct. It is odd because it isn't actually true. The statement of a police officer made while standing on the street outside someone's house deciding whose story to believe is not the final legal verdict on this case.
stretchwithme 5y ago
Talk about something that needs multifactor authentication.
- funshed 5y ago
  UK does require you to prove your identity but the solicitor seems to have failed here with stolen identity. As the original owner did not update there details to another address.
  - stretchwithme 5y ago
    Getting something in the mail is only imaginarily secure.
iptrans 5y ago
Sounds like the Land Registry is missing a NoTransfers bit in their settings for properties.
- ElFitz 5y ago
  It’s wild to think that DNS registries might be better protected than real estate ownership.
MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
This exact reason is why in the US you physically need to be in person to sign loan documents to purchase property. You need 2 forms of ID, verified by the parties, copies of it taken, and notarized.
- iso1631 5y ago
  It was likely a cash purchase, certainly was a cash sale, and the ID was verified by the solicitors.
anonu 5y ago
This is somewhat the point of "title insurance" in the US. In this case the buyer would be protected since technically the real owner never actually sold the property.
cletus 5y ago
Having gone through the purchase and sale of houses I'm honestly confused at how this happens. It involves a ton of paperwork, phone calls and in-person appointments, generally. If there is a mortgage on the property, the bank holds the title. The bank has a relationship with the owner. How did the bank sign off on the transfer of funds and title? They'd have to verify the identity of the seller. If there was no mortgage, at least in the US some bank normally holds onto the title on behalf of the owner so the same applies. There would need to be a settlement process where the sale proceeds (minus mortgage repayment) needs to be paid to the seller. What happened here? Being aware of the possibility of fraud, banks can and do make simple checks in my experience. A simple phone call with the contact details on record would've probably prevented this. In addition the Land Registry authorizing title transfer, the bank would have to be on the hook here too. It's a colossal screw up and a huge nightmare for the owner to deal with but I imagine restitution will be made. It sounds like he probably won't get his house back. I assume the buyer acted in good faith. It sure does suck though.
- whartung 5y ago
  > Having gone through the purchase and sale of houses I'm honestly confused at how this happens. It involves a ton of paperwork, phone calls and in-person appointments, generally. It seems that this was sophisticated identity theft. If someone managed to get a DL with your name on it, but their picture, and your SSN, then it's pretty much carte blanche at that point. Go into a bank and say "I need to close my accounts". "What are the account numbers?" "Oh, golly, I forget -- here's my DL, my BDay is XX-YY-ZZZZ and my Social is 123-45-6789. I recently moved from 1234 Main St. to 4567 First Ave." "Of course sir, one moment." Next thing you know you're walking out with a check. And..that's it, it all comes from that. Buy a house, sell a house, request some documentation. Especially, since they're SELLING the house, they don't have to go through the rigors of a background check for the loan. The BUYERS are placed under a microscope. The sellers? "So, you got the key?" "Yea." "We're good, sign here." And it's noone's fault except the original perpetrator. Everyone else did "due diligence". If the questions were answered properly, showed appropriate ID, what more can they do?
  - iso1631 5y ago
david-cako 5y ago
isn't there a Steve Martin movie about that
bsanr 5y ago
A reminder, once again, that "identity theft" does not exist. It is fraud, plain and simple, and the responsibility of the businesses which aren't performing due diligence in confirming your identity. 6-figure sums shouldn't be exchanging hands without multiple layers of confirmation. This could easily have been avoided with a search for any other numbers associated with the man and a call to them to confirm.
scosman 5y ago
Imagine if we really did tokenization of assets? This type of fraud would be much easier (steal password vs months long identity theft), and impossible to reverse.
- nootropicat 5y ago
  Easier? It would become borderline impossible. How exactly do you steal the seed for a hardware wallet? How do you even know where it's stored?
  - iso1631 5y ago
    You steal the wallet, you own the house. You lose the wallet, you no longer own the house.
    - nootropicat 5y ago
      The wallet has a pin code and it erases itself after 3 failed attempts. It would be a great improvement in security.
      - pas 5y ago
        So what happens when the owner wants to sell it, but forgets the PIN?
        nootropicat 5y ago
        He recovers the wallet from a seed stored in safe place.
        iso1631 5y ago
        And how does he prove he's the owner to get into that safe space?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
vanilla-almond 5y ago
A bit long, but here is a summary from the BBC Radio programme You and Yours which has more detail than the BBC News report: Background Mike Hall (owner of the property) moves around a lot due to his work. He rents out his home, but due to COVID the property has been empty for some time. Returning to his property When Mr Hall returned to his house he could tell clearly the house has been broken into. The front door window pane had been smashed and partially replaced, and the locks had been replaced. Reporting to the police Police told Mr Hall it was a civil matter and Mr Hall had to leave the house and contact his solicitors. Mr Hall put in an online application to Bedfordshire Police Service to notify them of a crime. Every time he got an automated replying stating this was not a criminal offence but a civil matter. He also contacted Action Fraud (UK’s national reporting centre for fraud and cybercrime, run by the City of London Police). They also said it was a civil offence and they could not help him. Mr Hall: "So everywhere I turned, it was a closed door" Contacting the BBC Mr Hall contacted the BBC Radio programme You and Yours (consumer affairs programme) and they confirmed this was a criminal offence, not a civil offence. (Comment from me: speaks a lot about the police that the owner ends going to a BBC Radio programme due to inactivity and incorrect information from police sources.) The BBC put Mr Hall in touch with the Bedford Fraud Squad who agree Mr Hall is a victim of fraud and is now investigating. How did it happen? The criminal contacts the solicitor and pretends to be Mr Hall. But how did the criminal convince the solicitor he was Mr Hall? Solicitors require identity documents e.g. Passport, Driving Licence (both include owner photo). The criminal applied for and got a genuine duplicate driver licence from the DVLA (Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency) in Mr Hall's name ("genuine document fraudulently obtained"). Mike Hall's driving licence is in Welsh and contains the title 'Reverend', his address, his photo and signature. The criminal's licence is in English, with the title 'Mr', a different address, signature and photo. This is the fraudulent driving licence the solicitor saw. It gets worse... In April 2021, the DVLA contacted Mike Hall to confirm if he had applied for a duplicate driving licence as they has a suspicion the request they had received could be fraudulent. Mike Hall confirmed to the DVLA he didn't apply for a duplicate licence. The DVLA said they would cancel the fraudulent request. Unfortunately, they failed to cancel the duplicate licence even though they promised they would. The criminal gets the genuine duplicate driving licence and changes the picture in the driving licence. The DVLA would not comment on how the criminal altered the driving licence details. However, they say they are taking this matter very seriously (they described what happened to Mike Hall as "awful") and are working with Bedfordshire Police. Fraudulent bank account In April, a new TSB bank account is fraudulently created in Mike Hall's name. In July, over two days, £131,000 is deposited into the bank account - and then withdrawn. The BBC reporter contacted TSB to ask them: why did they not flag this as suspicious activity? TSB said the activity didn't trigger any suspicions and they are working with the police on the case. Will Mike Hall get his house back? Reporter: "Very possibly not" Reporter: "If your name is on the Land Register for a property, that property is yours and it doesn't matter if you bought that property from a fraudster." "The Land Registery is the only record of property ownership we have in the UK [England and Wales]. It is state guaranteed and that means if there is fraudlent change of title, which has happened in this case, victims of fraud and mistakes can be compensated." This type of fraud ("vendor fraud") is on the rise. Compensation has risen from £2m to £3.5m in just twelve months - a 40% rise. The Land Registry say they rely on solicitors to make checks to spot fraudulent attempts to impersonate property owners. Empty, rental and properties with no mortgages are particularly vulnerable to this type of fraud. And what about Mike? The BBC showed Mike the fake driving licence used to impersonate him: "I felt sick actually - seeing someone else's face on my driving licence...I felt an emptiness in my stomach and it make it all very real to me."
ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
I remember reading about a "sovereign citizen" outfit, doing something similar, in the US. In that case, the "sovereign citizen" would get bounced out on their ear, but they can still make the homeowner's life a nightmare. https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/sovereign-citizens-sentenced https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/sovereign-citizens-sentence... https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/26/nyregion/moors-newark.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/26/nyregion/moors-newark.htm...
jokoon 5y ago
It became much funnier when I remember the old saying "property is theft". Quite fitting to this news.
koonsolo 5y ago
It's weird that people get identified by their driver's license. Don't they have digital ID cards that are better suited for veryfying who is who?
- karatinversion 5y ago
  The UK is funnily backwards about some things. In particular, they have neither national ID cards, nor a population registry. You end up sending utility bills to the government as proof of address.
  - mhh__ 5y ago
    It can be an absolute farce. I signed up for a GP, still living with my parents, they needed proof of address which I obviously don't have because I didn't pay for the water bill, so instead they accepted a written note from my father who provided no ID, and wasn't registered at the GP. That may sound relatively minor but if I were doing some ID fraud it's all I would've needed to get started i.e. you need the first level of trust to exploit. The British state is carefully designed to have the nationalized and privatized parts in the wrong places.
lifeisstillgood 5y ago
UK house owner - just signed up to the Land Registry alert system. Which has to be a record from not knowing something existed to signing up in four minutes. 1. The registry seriously refuses passwords that do not have alphanumeric characters only. Did not try Unicode. 2. Most of the UK is not in the land registry - it only is compulsory for land sold IIRR since the 1990s and generally has records going back to early 1900s. If someone owns land from before then, no-one publically knows who they are or who owns it. As most land in the UK is held by government or aristocracy and they have not needed to sell it for centuries we don't know who owns what. 3. This simply cannot be the first time - something this sophisticated, the original fraudster did not so this the first time now. How common is this? I mean see above - the land registry has a monitoring service for this ? 4. Thinking about it, I just added a monitoring account with just an email. If I create a new account and try to add $TargetAddress I find out if it is monitored - and I suspect that that is not going to count as a monitoring event !
- iso1631 5y ago
  About 85% of land in the UK is registered - including the vast majority of domestic dwellings.
  - lifeisstillgood 5y ago
    My apologies - bad memory https://whoownsengland.org/2019/01/11/the-holes-in-the-map-englands-unregistered-land/ https://whoownsengland.org/2019/01/11/the-holes-in-the-map-e...
    - iso1631 5y ago
      You can get INSPIRE polygons from https://use-land-property-data.service.gov.uk/datasets/inspire/download https://use-land-property-data.service.gov.uk/datasets/inspi... Either download the GML or view it on the map. This gives you a number which you can pump into https://eservices.landregistry.gov.uk/eservices/FindAProperty/view/LrInspireIdInit.do https://eservices.landregistry.gov.uk/eservices/FindAPropert... And the spend £3 buying the deeds for the property. One look at the coverage in your local area shows the type of properties available, for example Parliament Square (North and South), or tiny bits of rock off the edge of the Isles of Scilly, as well as more pedestrian locations like "Flat 1-14, Grosvenor Court, 55 Upper Grosvenor Road, Tunbridge Wells, TN1 2DY" A lot of unregistered land, certainly in towns, are roads and railways that have been there for over 100 years
jchook 5y ago
Reminded of Victor Lustig, who sold someone the Eiffel Tower. He impersonated a government official and told a group of scrap metal dealers it was too costly to maintain and that it was set to be demolished and sold as scrap. The man who purchased it was too embarrassed to go to authorities, lest it ruin his reputation.
theonlybutlet 5y ago
"it's a civil matter" seems to be the go to excuse for British police. There's a whole TV series following property owners in the UK who have experienced issues and this response comes up way too often in the series.
zeristor 5y ago
Seemingly the gem Earth of the issue is the proof of identity. Mention is made of a driving licence being obtained to open a bank account, was this the actual Driving licence? If it had been faked then the bank should have raised a flag. There is a fair amount about having a government account to log in for taxes etc, is this robust enough to be used in property transaction like this? I not why? Will this example highlight a number of other similar cases? Will it prompt others to try it?
gumby 5y ago
Seems like the point of the conveyancer is to prevent this sort of thing. In California it seems that a title transfer company is in practice the only way to transfer property, and for their exorbitant fee they do at least insure the buyer against this risk in perpetuity. (Last time I bought a house in California I read the seller’s insurance policy and discovered its perpetual nature. I realized that if I ever had a problem I could sue the seller and their policy would cover me (and them). Unfortunately the title company refused to do the transfer until I bought my own title insurance. What a ripoff)
desktopninja 5y ago
When signing/transferring over the title deed, aren't all parties involved supposed to be physically present in front of a lawyer/notary? Me thinks due diligence by all members involved in this transaction was severely lacking and they should be held accountable. I.e. Real Estate agent, bank, brokers, what have you. One could even say they all conspired in this property theft. Alternatively, perhaps the victim was lacking some sort of documentation that allowed the illicit procurement to occur?
pintxo 5y ago
Really interesting, a very similar case has recently been reported in Berlin, Germany [1]. Here the fraudsters tried to get legal ownership of a whole apartment building in Berlin. It seems they nearly made it, but then some insurance company sent a letter to the actual owners who could successfully blocked the transaction from committing. [1] (in German) https://www.spiegel.de/panorama/justiz/berlin-wie-ein-rentnerpaar-sein-haus-beinahe-an-den-abou-chaker-clan-verlor-a-a9183516-ac2d-4b1d-afbd-a123f096ace3 https://www.spiegel.de/panorama/justiz/berlin-wie-ein-rentne...
shric 5y ago
Really close to https://youtu.be/CS9ptA3Ya9E https://youtu.be/CS9ptA3Ya9E (satire from Mitchell and Webb)
apricot13 5y ago
I remember reading about something similar a few years ago. A lady had paid off her mortgage turned out that made her property vulnerable because without the mortgage company being involved there were less checks. Someone stole her post, impersonated her and sold her property without her knowledge obtaining the deed as well I think. Its always stuck in my brain! I wonder if thats what happened here too?
fennecfoxy 5y ago
Lol how does this sort of shit even happen in 2021. It's meant to be "the future".
- lal 5y ago
  Ironically it being "the future" is at least part of the reason why it happened. In the UK, all the land records are digitized nowadays, so the scammer didn't need to steal the physical deed to the property to pull off the scam. All they me had to dk was present their fraudulent identification to the office holding those digitized records and it was over without the owner even having to know.
EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 5y ago
System doesn't seem very secure, but it relies on thiefs being lazy. If this happens 10 times a year, it's couple million pounds - much less than the cost of setting up a more secure (and thus more inconvenient) system. Just like credit card payments are very insecure, but they just charge some extra % in transaction fees to cover the losses. PS later it mentions that Land Registry pays out $3.5m/year compensating fraud victims, so my estimate wasn't too far off)
sonicanatidae 5y ago
I love that everyone's take on it is, "welp, it's legally theirs now". How in the hell can an illegal, fraudulent transaction lead to legal ownership?
samueldamon 5y ago
> "I have read of a gentleman who owned a so fine house in London, and when he went for months of summer to Switzerland and lock up his house, some burglar came and broke window at back and got in. Then he went and made open the shutters in front and walk out and in through the door, before the very eyes of the police. Then he have an auction in that house, and advertise it, and put up big notice; and when the day come he sell off by a great auctioneer all the goods of that other man who own them. Then he go to a builder, and he sell him that house, making an agreement that he pull it down and take all away within a certain time. And your police and other authority help him all they can. And when that owner come back from his holiday in Switzerland he find only an empty hole where his house had been." - Dracula, 1897.

318 points by lbriner 5y ago

My grandfather was rather fond of telling a story about a neighbor when he was younger who came home from vacation to find that their house had been stolen... like someone had brought a wagon and team of horses in, jacked up the house, and pulled it away. Being in a rather rural area, no one apparently noticed the heist!

Animats 5y ago

This is apparently enough of a problem in the UK that the land registry has procedures for locking a title and for reporting frauds.[1] [1] https://www.gov.uk/protect-land-property-from-fraud https://www.gov.uk/protect-land-property-from-fraud

Androider 5y ago

> Once the house was sold to the new owner for £131,000 by the person impersonating Mr Hall, they legally owned it. That's nuts. Why isn't it the case that the person who failed to properly vet the seller is out of £131,000 and the house? So I can "buy" a local mansion and then say "oops, I didn't know this random guy didn't own it. Oh well."

sofixa 5y ago
In France it's the notary's job ( who are the only ones who can validate a sale) to ensure that the seller is who they say they are, and that they do actually own the land/house/apartment. Wonder how that works across the Channel and whose responsibility it was.
- lbriner 5y ago
  It is the same with a Solicitor but if they followed the correct process and the problem was actually with, say, the DVLA who issued a driving licence in the wrong name, I'm not sure who is liable for the error.
  - koonsolo 5y ago
    Why would you use a driver's license when everyone can have a digital ID card? In Belgium the notary will always ask for your digital ID card.
    - lazide 5y ago
      Plenty of folks haven’t updated, or don’t like dealing with it, or ‘lost it’ or whatever. Most people doing notary/certification on stuff like this are used to that kind of situation, so someone having an acceptable but not ideal ID method isn’t going to slow this process down.
      - koonsolo 5y ago
        In Belgium, it's obligatory to carry your ID card everywhere when you are older than 15. So not having it is not allowed. I would be very surprised if a notary wouldn't demand it. They would not put their own job on the line for some idiot.
      - jve 5y ago
        In Latvia, nowdays you cant visit restaurant without a covid certificate verified by ID card or passport. Or to receive parcel at post office. Or when dealing with bank or gov. Etc. However I can do the following: use digital identification, that uses multiple factors along with an app, that requires using digital certificate from id card to setup. Afterwards its just my device and that app PIN that is required to impersonate me (well and semi-public national personal identification number)… this applies to almost all gov services with few exceptions like operations with property… Drivers license has been invalidated years ago as an identification mechanism. Let alone for dealing with property - notary is mandatory along with proper identification.
    - the_svd_doctor 5y ago
      Doesn't the UK _not_ have ID cards?
      - 5y ago
- laurent92 5y ago
  The Notary in France doesn’t necessarily fully do this job. They have an obligation of means, ie check the last 30 years of ownership and permits, but there are many cracks in that system: - Double ownership for 30 years followed by a proof of ownership from the real, hidden one; - Or simply it is the notary’s understanding that there is no record past 12 years for example, and yet there is. If they have checked “the normal books”, their duty is fulfilled.
  - forty 5y ago
    Is there stories of people getting their property stolen this way? My guess is that in France, if such a story as the article happended, the buyer would be kicked out of the house (and probably lose their money stolen by the fraudsters) but maybe I'm completely wrong.
    - dolmen 5y ago
      I remember to have seen a story in France of someone that had bought a house, but someone else did break in and rented it to a family. The people in the house had a rental contract, so they had the immediate right to stay, even it the contract was invalid. Evicting them was a nightmare. Here is a similar story: https://lemans.maville.com/actu/actudet_--nous-sommes-abandonnes-leur-maison-familiale-est-occupee-illegalement-par-un-inconnu-depuis-des-mois-_54135-4864121_actu.Htm https://lemans.maville.com/actu/actudet_--nous-sommes-abando...
      - sofixa 5y ago
        But a notary isn't involved in renting, so there was noone to check.
      - forty 5y ago
        Absolutely. This is for secondary houses mostly though, it's slightly easier to expel those from your main accomodation. But I think in any case your ownership of the property is not challenged. It's "just" that you cannot use it, but eventually you can get it back.
- ElFitz 5y ago
  Don’t we have actual, physical, titles, tied to the property? Could someone actually sell a house without those?
  - gpderetta 5y ago
    Unless the house/land is not yet registered, I believe that the land registry is supposed to be the ultimate authority and deeds are just piece of papers. Ai think you can always argue ownership in a curt of law of course.
    - gpderetta 5y ago
      See this[1] thread on r/legaladviceUK. User pflurklurk is normally very knowledgeable of the UK legal system and probably a solicitor himself (although he claims to be just a random shitposter). [1]https://www.reddit.com/r/LegalAdviceUK/comments/qkew77/is_a_property_transfer_done_fraudulently_through https://www.reddit.com/r/LegalAdviceUK/comments/qkew77/is_a_...
aclelland 5y ago
Yeah, that part confused me to. I'm pretty sure that if I bought a stolen xbox from some guy on a street corner and the Police find me with it, they'd not throw up their hands and say "oh well, I guess you own it now, on your way". I assume there is a specific legal quirk with property ownership.
- dtparr 5y ago
  I believe the 'quirk' here is that the fraud was able to get property ownership updated with the Land Registry, so the new owner is the official owner of record.
  - dgb23 5y ago
    So the Land Registry is at fault? Good luck...
  - thereddaikon 5y ago
    Sounds to me like in the UK you cant truly own land if the government can just decide it belongs to someone else.
    - jopsen 5y ago
      Yeah, you don't truly own land, you pay property taxes, etc. It's more like you lease the land :)
    - codyb 5y ago
      Pretty much true everywhere. It’s not like you can take anything with you when you’re dead, owning materials is really just a societal construct no matter which way you slice it.
      - H8crilA 5y ago
        Possession is a physical/real property of the universe. Ownership is a legal abstraction/construct.
dmoy 5y ago
It depends on how Title law works in the jurisdiction. I don't know how it works in this part of the UK, but in many states in the US, the buyer would left holding the bag - the original homeowner would keep the property. It's one reason in the US that most property sales include a purchase of title insurance.
- lbriner 5y ago
  I'm not a lawyer but the article implies that once the title is transferred, the new owner owns it! There might be liability with the Solicitor or the Land Registry, otherwise it would appear to be incredibly unfair!
  - tonyedgecombe 5y ago
    The article says "The Land Registry paid out a total of £3.5m in compensation for fraud last year." which tends to imply they have some liability.
    - pdmccormick 5y ago
      I wonder if that means they don't pay all that much compensation on a case by case basis, or if there isn't that much fraud occurring to begin with.
      - pmyteh 5y ago
        I suspect they'd rather you claimed against the fraudster or a solicitor, with the compensation fund as a backstop. If that is the case, it could be neither: just that most people get recompensed elsewhere.
  - pmyteh 5y ago
    That's right, I think. The property can be recovered from the fraudster, but not from an innocent subsequent purchaser. There is at least some form of compensation scheme by the Land Registry. And 'selling on behalf of someone who isn't the actual owner' certainly can found a liability claim on the solicitor.
_0ffh 5y ago
Yeah, A gets scammed by B and C pays the price. If you can't get a hold on B, then clearly A should be the one all outta luck, not C. Absolutely insane!
so_throwaway 5y ago
You are confusing who actually owned it, or who morally owned it, with who legally owned it. The claim is not that, once the legal issues and the fraud get untangled, the buyer will be held to be the rightful owner. The claim is that AT THE MOMENT, while the 'new owner' is listed in the Land Registry as owning it, and the 'old owner' isn't, the 'new owner' temporarily legally owns it. They have written this article as though to suggest that this is final and the original owner has no recourse. That isn't the case. What is the case is that the police don't have a remit to investigate the fraudulent sale. If person A is listed in the registry (they 'legally own' the property) and person B isn't, the police will follow person A's instructions to remove person B from the property, but not vice versa.
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  > AT THE MOMENT, while the 'new owner' is listed in the Land Registry as owning it, and the 'old owner' isn't, the 'new owner' temporarily legally owns it Not an expert on British law, but I don't think this is the case. The new owner owns it. Not temporarily. Fully, permanently and properly. The previous owner was fraudulently deprived of it, and can likely get damages from the parties who signed off on the conveyance. But I don't think they have the right to reverse the transaction against the new owner's will.
  - so_throwaway 5y ago
    If you're not an expert on British law what makes you feel able to make such a confident and surprising claim?
    - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
      > If you're not an expert on British law what makes you feel able to make such a confident and surprising claim? The hubris of an internet commenter? Also, it's not surprising. It's unusual for a common law country. But in most jurisdictions, particularly those on statutory law, if the buyer is unrelated to the fraudster and is in possession, the register cannot be altered [1]. This comes, in most places, out of the land registry being a reaction to protracted property disputes. (Often violent.) [1] https://www.bdbpitmans.com/insights/how-to-deal-with-property-fraud/ https://www.bdbpitmans.com/insights/how-to-deal-with-propert...
anonAndOn 5y ago
In the US, the buyer is often required to purchase title insurance which would likely cover fraudulent transfer.[0] [0]https://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/title_insurance.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/title_insurance.asp
- iammisc 5y ago
  The us doesn't have centralized land registries. While the counties record titles as a matter of convenience, the true title is determined by the courts. Other countries have centralized registries so that if the country's database says X piece of land is owned by Y, that's final. In the us it can be litigated and title insurance comes into play for the buyer who purchased it fraudulently.
  - bzbarsky 5y ago
    > The us doesn't have centralized land registries. Like any statement about the US, "it's complicated". For example, in Massachusetts there are two types of real estate: recorded and registered. See https://www.deeds.com/articles/understanding-the-difference-between-recorded-land-and-registered-land-in-massachusetts/ https://www.deeds.com/articles/understanding-the-difference-... for a quick rundown. In some cases, the property that goes with a single house will actually be made up of two bits of land, one of which is recorded and one of which is registered. In other cases it's all recorded or all registered. Now this is not a nationwide centralized registry, it is a state-wide registry within Massachusetts, and my understanding is that the sort of litigation you could get for recorded land does not happen for registered land, because transfer of registered land is already a Land Court decision. Key quote from the above link's description of registered land: As the current state of title is sequentially updated by the registration of future transactions, it embodies a certificate of title that not only evidences title, but in fact guarantees title and is subject only to the exceptions provided by statute and matters of federal law.
anonporridge 5y ago
Also, how does the seller disappear with that much money without being able to be IDed? That seems like a severe failure of the state. It almost makes me wonder if this is a semi common scam wealthy folks use to take poor people's desirable homes.
- sdenton4 5y ago
  Paid in bitcoin?
  - anonporridge 5y ago
    Bitcoin is pretty easy to trace. Could more easily disappear if paid in cash.
    - sdenton4 5y ago
      Seems to work well enough for ransomware...
      - anonporridge 5y ago
        Actually, no it doesn't. For example, the FBI was able to partially recover the Colonial Pipeline ransom, although that seems to be in part because the perpetrators were stupid by trying to sell it on a US exchange, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonial_Pipeline_ransomware_attack#Partial_ransom_recovery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonial_Pipeline_ransomware_a... Criminals don't use bitcoin anymore. They use cash and monero.
- koonsolo 5y ago
  Banks offer very little protection for scams like this. Basically "the money seems to be gone".
  - anonporridge 5y ago
    I mean, it's probably hard for bankers to turn in their distant cousins.
mihaaly 5y ago
Since it was not sold by the owner it is difficult to argue for the legality of the transaction. Whoever claims bought something has nothing in fact, the person they've been in business with had nothing to sell. Selling nothing is nothing. The records are false! If the authorities assume things are in order here they should also be prosecuted for negligence or being accomplice and at least revert the FALSE transfer of ownership. (are we sure here that the 'buyer' is an unsuspecting party theyself?...)
- pc86 5y ago
  This sounds entirely like how you want things to work, or how you feel they "should" work in a just, fair world. It doesn't sound like you have any legal education or training to base this on. But I greatly prefer your version of events to what happened in the article so please prove me wrong!
  - mihaaly 5y ago
    Someone sold something that this person did not have. Sold nothing. Then what the buyer has? Nothing! There was an error in registering the transactions, it was a false transaction. How my will has anything to do about this or affecting if selling nothing becomes something or not? Where exactly a legal education needed for being able to recognise that the real owner did not sell or give away his property? If I am not a solicitor I cannot possibly comprehend what is a theft, fraud, or recognise bodily harm or crimes in general that are condemned by the society? I do not buy into that. The recognition of these kind of crimes are older than institutions dealing with those. If the stealing of the property is not prosecuted then the system is wrong, needs a fix.

blunte 5y ago

"You and Yours obtained the driving licence used to impersonate Mr Hall" ... what? who? And then, "Once the house was sold to the new owner for £131,000 by the person impersonating Mr Hall, they legally owned it." The people who sold the house did not have the right to sell the house because they did not own it. The person who bought it does not own it since it was not legally sold.

jonp888 5y ago
You and Yours is a long running consumer affairs show on BBC Radio.
- blunte 5y ago
  Hah! Thank you. I would have never guessed this.

freeqaz 5y ago

Is it roughly the same to "prove" your identity in the US as it is in the UK? In the US, at least for most credit checks, you just need your SSN, some public record data about where you've lived, and personal data (name, DOB, etc). It's largely because there is no "National ID" system in the US (due to political reasons). That makes it hard for companies to track people, and the SSN is the only number that people consistently have. Are there any examples of countries where their government is getting this right and eliminating stupid fraud?

anonymousisme 5y ago
"It's largely because there is no "National ID" system in the US (due to political reasons). That makes it hard for companies to track people, and the SSN is the only number that people consistently have." "Real ID" is now a thing. It's a "National ID". https://www.dhs.gov/real-id https://www.dhs.gov/real-id
- 2fast4you 5y ago
  > REAL ID is a federal law, not an actual piece of ID. Congress passed the REAL ID Act in 2005. The act established minimum security standards for state-issued driver licenses and ID cards. https://www.dol.wa.gov/about/real-id-overview.html https://www.dol.wa.gov/about/real-id-overview.html REAL ID doesn't sound like a federal ID system, it's just security standards for state issued ID cards.
  - anonymousisme 5y ago
    If states are complying to federal standards for ID, then it is effectively a federal ID.
    - 2fast4you 5y ago
      But they aren't issued or backed by the federal government. There isn't a national database for it, each state still has it's own system

WarOnPrivacy 5y ago

I'm in the US. What I see is that stolen+sold property tends to belong to the original owner, not the purchaser. Is it different in the UK?

klyrs 5y ago
I'm not sure the police would do anything different in the US. I'm guessing that proper owner, like most people, kept the deed in his house -- which was emptied of his belongings and sold. Without that, the police don't have much to act on.
- quietbritishjim 5y ago
  Paper deeds are no longer relevant to property ownership in the UK. The HM Land Registry records are authoritative (subject to legal challenges). See for example: https://hmlandregistry.blog.gov.uk/2018/02/19/title-deeds/ https://hmlandregistry.blog.gov.uk/2018/02/19/title-deeds/ Edit: technically they are still relevant if the property has not been sold since the records were digitised in the 1990s
  - Maxburn 5y ago
    In the US I believe your Title Insurance would give you a suitable paper trail as well. That and the registrar.
- bogle 5y ago
  In England the owner doesn't have the deeds, although they may obtain a copy. It's digital with the Land Registry. Scotland, incidentally, has the oldest land registry in the world (1617 CE), the Sasines.
  - stevekemp 5y ago
    I paid off my flat in Edinburgh back in 2016 or so, and in exchange I received a huge bundle of papers "the deeds", from the bank. I spent a fun evening flicking through the records of owners, the price they'd paid for it, and the few details provided (occupation, etc). All dating back to when the building was built in 1890 or so. Later I left the country, and moved to Finland. After a year or two here I wanted to sell the flat as I'd decided I wasn't going back. Despite going through the process of ensuring the registry was updated I had to mail them back to the solicators based in Scotland prior to selling the flat. The sale was carried out 100% remotely; I had a couple of phone calls, and when I balked at the use of a FAX machine I printed out a few forms/documents from emails, signed them, and physically posted them back to the solicators. Happily I'd had the foresight to leave a spare set of keys with a trusted friend, which were used for the viewings, etc. It probably helped that the solicator who handled the sale had also handled the registration of the deeds when I received them so they were probably confident it was a flat I owned.. When I queried things I was told "The only registry is definitive, but .. things are .. smoother .. with the physical deeds". Made no sense to me, but I wasn't going to argue.

superfamicom 5y ago

I live in the US and had my debit card (number only, one of the bigger data leaks) stolen years ago and ever since then my bank will check every purchase with me over $300. It was really frustrating for years until someone else took my card (from another data leak) and was easily stopped and new card issued. I cannot imagine someone selling my home without involving me, or at the very least without several other of my personal contact methods also compromised at the same time.

lbriner 5y ago
The Solicitor has no existing relationship with the real owner of the house. A bloke turns up and says they want to sell their house and has the correct Land Registry details and some ID, the solicitor does other checks and makes it all happen. The illegal seller must have known that the owner was away for some time though because even if everything is ready, it usually takes at least 2 months to go through.
- wongarsu 5y ago
  But surely the land registry has an existing relationship with the real owner of the land? Isn't that the entire point of the land registry, to be able to contact and deal with the person who owns a particular piece of land?
  - martyvis 5y ago
    I purchased my property in 1989. Any contact detail for me in the land registry in NSW Australia would be the house where I lived and the phone number there. Neither would be valid and lead them to me specifically. I certainly have never had further contact with them or they with me. So if someone presents themselves as me with a government issued driver's licence at the property address they would be none the wiser. (You'd normally also need to present say a utility bill and a credit card to have enough points to prove identity)
    - inglor_cz 5y ago

pjdemers 5y ago

In the US, there is title insurance. If the seller didn't have the legal right to sell the house, the house reverts to the legal owner, and the buyer is paid back by the insurance. It's not possible to get a mortgage without title insurance, and a cash buyer would be nuts to not demand it from the seller. In some states (example, California) it can get more complicated, though, because the right to sell a house isn't the same thing as the right to live in it. They buyer may own the house, but not have the right to force the current occupants to leave. That's why it's important to state in the contract that the house must be completely empty before the seller gets paid, and every month that it is not completely empty, a few thousand dollars is subtracted from the purchase price.

merpnderp 5y ago
In some states you can buy a house without title insurance. I assume this is so that people who enjoy Russian roulette and jumping out of planes without parachutes can enjoy the same adrenaline rush when buying a home.
- tantalor 5y ago
  It's common to buy real estate from someone you already trust, such as a family member. You know the title was good when they bought it, so you can bet the title insurance fee (several thousand dollars) against that trust nothing fishy happened since then.
  - drfuchs 5y ago
    But what if something fishy happened before they sold it to you, but it isn't discovered until after? Does their title insurance still cover it? For instance, if their original purchase turns out to not have been legitimate to begin with for some reason.
    - conductr 5y ago
      Yes, title insurance is a single premium but gives the owner forever coverage. This is essentially the purpose, to give the buyer confidence that they are protected for anything that may have happened that they wouldn't know about, because the seller may not even know about it and potentially it happened 100s of years ago. Where this gets kind of crazy is if you own a property and have title insurance on it from when you bought it, then you do a refinance, you're often required to buy the insurance again because that original policy ends. All said, the loss ratio of title insurance companies is extremely low compared to other types of insurances. But in some places it's cost is fairly high (eg Texas) and it's mostly to do with strong political interests / lobbying

ballenf 5y ago

While people decry the inability for crypto transactions to be adjudicated in court, what we don't talk about as much is that this is also the direction of non-crypto transactions. As the article stated, the police initially refused to even consider the theft of the man's house a crime. We used to say possession is 9/10ths of the law. Now it seems the algorithm is 9/10ths of the law. You have maybe 10% chance to reverse a transaction that was approved by the computers. Or at least we're headed that way.

lbriner 5y ago
That's not what they said. They said it was not criminal but civil, which a lot of contract and tort law falls under, it means the police won't do the investigation for you. I don't know why they considered that this was not fraud, which is criminal but maybe they couldn't point to a detail that showed where the fraud took place. They might also have been wrong to say that!
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > the police won't do the investigation for you Even in criminal matters, they don't do the investigation for you, they do it for public prosecutors, which may or may not have incidental utility to you.
- tonyedgecombe 5y ago
  The article says "Police initially told him it was not fraud but are now investigating." My guess is the police couldn't be bothered. A friend of mine had a problem with squatters moving into his house (which wasn't empty). Initially the police refused to get involved until he got his solicitor to point out it was a criminal issue.

implements 5y ago

Any UK reader can avoid this by signing up to: https://propertyalert.landregistry.gov.uk/ https://propertyalert.landregistry.gov.uk/ It’s the Land Registry itself, it’s free, and: “Once you have signed up to the service, you will receive email alerts when certain activity occurs on your monitored properties, allowing you to take action if necessary.”

op00to 5y ago
This is the same bs we have to deal with in the US with financial credit and social security numbers. Because there’s no actual security, the individual must monitor their own credit for abuses, or prevent anyone from accessing it via a freeze.
m4tthumphrey 5y ago
Just signed up to this. Only alpha numeric passwords allowed. Always worries me.
- _0ffh 5y ago
  I guess you'll just have to hope that they don't truncate the password after the first eight characters or so...
  - pc86 5y ago
    Hey as long as they truncate it the same way on login as they do on account creation... /s
cstross 5y ago
Only covers England and Wales -- not Scotland and Northern Ireland. So not actually UK wide.

tialaramex 5y ago

For what it's worth. If you own Real Property in England, even if only a Leasehold (Long Lease e.g. 99 years) you can get the Land Registry to email you about activity or, once per year, the lack of activity for your property records. https://propertyalert.landregistry.gov.uk/ https://propertyalert.landregistry.gov.uk/ Land Registry records have a sort of poor man's locking. The buyers (or in practice their solicitor) need to first perform a "Search" which would get recorded as activity, some time before they can file paperwork to claim it was sold, and so that gives you considerable time to say "Hey, I'm not selling this, why is there a Search by Honest But Incompetent Solicitors LLC?" and phone up to yell at somebody.

brightball 5y ago
In the US I’ve always been told it’s in the best interest of a home owner to always have some type of bank loan on the property. Mortgage, even a zero balance HELOC. Supposedly, this allows the bank to ensure there’s no title fraud because they maintain a claim to it.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
rectang 5y ago
That's messed up — it pushes the blame onto the victims for not monitoring.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- _jal 5y ago
  Rather similar to "identity theft", the strange name for a particular form of (usually bank) fraud.
  - K0balt 5y ago
    It’s called identity theft to make it more the victims problem. If it was bank fraud, the bank would definitely have to deal with all aspects. As it is, consumers get a big chunk of the burden.

vmception 5y ago

Another reason to use an anonymous LLC/entity. The owning entity gets a new state identification number which won't have appeared in as many leaks to be impersonated. While the individual owner of the LLC isn't known to impersonate.

lbriner 5y ago
Not a reason for the UK. We don't have anonymous companies like the US e.g. by assigning your attorney as a director so they can hide behind privilege. The Directors of your limited company would be available for all to see with their address!
- vmception 5y ago
  The company that buys the house doesn't need to be formed in the UK.
  - gifnamething 5y ago
    Now you're paying extra SDLT
    - vmception 5y ago
      and still own your house
gruez 5y ago
1. doesn't that shift the problem to impersonating the LLC? If anything that seems easier than impersonating a person? 2. does this work with financing? how do mortgages work?
- vmception 5y ago
  Social engineering is always a threat to anyone. What occurred in this article would not have been available if the entity was the owner.

rkangel 5y ago

I have a friend who was almost the buyer of a house in the UK in a very similar situation. Fundamentally, it relied on the seller buying counterfeit identity documents (passport and driving licence) off the internet. That way, in theory, the identity checks were all conducted. There was the suggestion that the seller's solicitor was in on it, but no firm evidence. The seller has been arrested at least.

lbriner 5y ago
It's a shame that the systems that are really important, like passports, id cards, property registers etc. are all still so far behind in basic security. They could easily require certain info up-front on the title like mobile, photo etc. and then if you need to update it, you have to do it via a solicitor or equivalent, it's not like most people change their photo or mobile number every week.
- 7952 5y ago
  But the phone number system isn't perfectly secure. A fraudster could transfer your account or even have physical access to the phone line. And it still relies on a solicitor to authenticate changes which could then be fraudulent. The advantage of the current system system is that it is fairly explicit and public. It can be checked without any secret codes or processes using the information on the title itself.
iso1631 5y ago
How did they find the house? Was it advertised through an estate agent?

Aulig 5y ago

Something similar happened in Germany recently. A house worth millions was fraudulently sold like this. The original owners got it back luckily. German video about it: https://youtu.be/TolvzYzk64c https://youtu.be/TolvzYzk64c

bellyfullofbac 5y ago
At least here the thieves were known (or even well-known). What if the buyer transferred money to some Nigerian prince who showed up with fake ID and disappeared after the sale? Would the buyer end up with no money and no house?
kfprt 5y ago
These things always happen when a low trust society comes into contact with a high trust society.

kybernetyk 5y ago

Police: “not my problem, lol”. The joy of paying taxes.

philpem 5y ago
It is pretty much how policing works in the UK. Declare it a civil matter, get it off the books as soon as possible... and that's not mentioning the mountain of police misconduct court cases that have popped up recently. Sadly the only chance of getting anything out of them is if the media get involved and hold their feet in the fire a bit.
- kfprt 5y ago
  UK police looked the other way on child rape gangs for decades. Why would they care about this?
so_throwaway 5y ago
Why do you expect the police to investigate this? If A says that B is trespassing on their property, and A not B is listed as the legal owner of the property according to the single source of truth, isn't it normal that the police should evict B and defend A's property rights? Imagine if the police took the attitude "we have to give equal weight to B's hard luck story about how he's the technical owner". Harassment and vexatious claims of fraud would be absolutely rampant.
mhh__ 5y ago
This is what fiscal responsibility looks like. The police and local councils have been cut to the bone by the Tories.

ineedasername 5y ago

It seems this is becoming somewhat common in the UK: https://www.step.org/industry-news/uk-solicitors-warned-growing-problem-title-fraud https://www.step.org/industry-news/uk-solicitors-warned-grow...

janandonly 5y ago

I am baffled by the fact that a complete house can be had for the little sum of £131,000. That's about €150.000 in real money... I guess where I live that would get me a garage, maybe.

MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
Ahem...you're missing a $ :)
nickkell 5y ago
It’s an absolute steal
iso1631 5y ago
Luton isn't exactly the nicest of places, but £131k is way below the asking price for even the cheapest houses there

fortran77 5y ago

It’s odd that in the UK a person who buys stolen property legally owns it.

funshed 5y ago
Every story I have read about this before is the transaction(s) are reversed. I presume the owner opted for cash instead of the property back.
so_throwaway 5y ago
They legally own it in the sense that they are the legally registered owners, currently. They do not legally own it in the sense that the original owner will not be able to eventually recover it after the fraud is unravelled. Your instinct that this is odd is correct. It is odd because it isn't actually true. The statement of a police officer made while standing on the street outside someone's house deciding whose story to believe is not the final legal verdict on this case.

stretchwithme 5y ago

Talk about something that needs multifactor authentication.

funshed 5y ago
UK does require you to prove your identity but the solicitor seems to have failed here with stolen identity. As the original owner did not update there details to another address.
- stretchwithme 5y ago
  Getting something in the mail is only imaginarily secure.

iptrans 5y ago

Sounds like the Land Registry is missing a NoTransfers bit in their settings for properties.

ElFitz 5y ago
It’s wild to think that DNS registries might be better protected than real estate ownership.

MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago

This exact reason is why in the US you physically need to be in person to sign loan documents to purchase property. You need 2 forms of ID, verified by the parties, copies of it taken, and notarized.

iso1631 5y ago
It was likely a cash purchase, certainly was a cash sale, and the ID was verified by the solicitors.

anonu 5y ago

This is somewhat the point of "title insurance" in the US. In this case the buyer would be protected since technically the real owner never actually sold the property.

cletus 5y ago

Having gone through the purchase and sale of houses I'm honestly confused at how this happens. It involves a ton of paperwork, phone calls and in-person appointments, generally. If there is a mortgage on the property, the bank holds the title. The bank has a relationship with the owner. How did the bank sign off on the transfer of funds and title? They'd have to verify the identity of the seller. If there was no mortgage, at least in the US some bank normally holds onto the title on behalf of the owner so the same applies. There would need to be a settlement process where the sale proceeds (minus mortgage repayment) needs to be paid to the seller. What happened here? Being aware of the possibility of fraud, banks can and do make simple checks in my experience. A simple phone call with the contact details on record would've probably prevented this. In addition the Land Registry authorizing title transfer, the bank would have to be on the hook here too. It's a colossal screw up and a huge nightmare for the owner to deal with but I imagine restitution will be made. It sounds like he probably won't get his house back. I assume the buyer acted in good faith. It sure does suck though.

whartung 5y ago
> Having gone through the purchase and sale of houses I'm honestly confused at how this happens. It involves a ton of paperwork, phone calls and in-person appointments, generally. It seems that this was sophisticated identity theft. If someone managed to get a DL with your name on it, but their picture, and your SSN, then it's pretty much carte blanche at that point. Go into a bank and say "I need to close my accounts". "What are the account numbers?" "Oh, golly, I forget -- here's my DL, my BDay is XX-YY-ZZZZ and my Social is 123-45-6789. I recently moved from 1234 Main St. to 4567 First Ave." "Of course sir, one moment." Next thing you know you're walking out with a check. And..that's it, it all comes from that. Buy a house, sell a house, request some documentation. Especially, since they're SELLING the house, they don't have to go through the rigors of a background check for the loan. The BUYERS are placed under a microscope. The sellers? "So, you got the key?" "Yea." "We're good, sign here." And it's noone's fault except the original perpetrator. Everyone else did "due diligence". If the questions were answered properly, showed appropriate ID, what more can they do?
- iso1631 5y ago

david-cako 5y ago

isn't there a Steve Martin movie about that

bsanr 5y ago

A reminder, once again, that "identity theft" does not exist. It is fraud, plain and simple, and the responsibility of the businesses which aren't performing due diligence in confirming your identity. 6-figure sums shouldn't be exchanging hands without multiple layers of confirmation. This could easily have been avoided with a search for any other numbers associated with the man and a call to them to confirm.

scosman 5y ago

Imagine if we really did tokenization of assets? This type of fraud would be much easier (steal password vs months long identity theft), and impossible to reverse.

nootropicat 5y ago
Easier? It would become borderline impossible. How exactly do you steal the seed for a hardware wallet? How do you even know where it's stored?
- iso1631 5y ago
  You steal the wallet, you own the house. You lose the wallet, you no longer own the house.
  - nootropicat 5y ago
    The wallet has a pin code and it erases itself after 3 failed attempts. It would be a great improvement in security.
    - pas 5y ago
      So what happens when the owner wants to sell it, but forgets the PIN?
      - nootropicat 5y ago
        He recovers the wallet from a seed stored in safe place.
        iso1631 5y ago
        And how does he prove he's the owner to get into that safe space?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

vanilla-almond 5y ago

A bit long, but here is a summary from the BBC Radio programme You and Yours which has more detail than the BBC News report: Background Mike Hall (owner of the property) moves around a lot due to his work. He rents out his home, but due to COVID the property has been empty for some time. Returning to his property When Mr Hall returned to his house he could tell clearly the house has been broken into. The front door window pane had been smashed and partially replaced, and the locks had been replaced. Reporting to the police Police told Mr Hall it was a civil matter and Mr Hall had to leave the house and contact his solicitors. Mr Hall put in an online application to Bedfordshire Police Service to notify them of a crime. Every time he got an automated replying stating this was not a criminal offence but a civil matter. He also contacted Action Fraud (UK’s national reporting centre for fraud and cybercrime, run by the City of London Police). They also said it was a civil offence and they could not help him. Mr Hall: "So everywhere I turned, it was a closed door" Contacting the BBC Mr Hall contacted the BBC Radio programme You and Yours (consumer affairs programme) and they confirmed this was a criminal offence, not a civil offence. (Comment from me: speaks a lot about the police that the owner ends going to a BBC Radio programme due to inactivity and incorrect information from police sources.) The BBC put Mr Hall in touch with the Bedford Fraud Squad who agree Mr Hall is a victim of fraud and is now investigating. How did it happen? The criminal contacts the solicitor and pretends to be Mr Hall. But how did the criminal convince the solicitor he was Mr Hall? Solicitors require identity documents e.g. Passport, Driving Licence (both include owner photo). The criminal applied for and got a genuine duplicate driver licence from the DVLA (Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency) in Mr Hall's name ("genuine document fraudulently obtained"). Mike Hall's driving licence is in Welsh and contains the title 'Reverend', his address, his photo and signature. The criminal's licence is in English, with the title 'Mr', a different address, signature and photo. This is the fraudulent driving licence the solicitor saw. It gets worse... In April 2021, the DVLA contacted Mike Hall to confirm if he had applied for a duplicate driving licence as they has a suspicion the request they had received could be fraudulent. Mike Hall confirmed to the DVLA he didn't apply for a duplicate licence. The DVLA said they would cancel the fraudulent request. Unfortunately, they failed to cancel the duplicate licence even though they promised they would. The criminal gets the genuine duplicate driving licence and changes the picture in the driving licence. The DVLA would not comment on how the criminal altered the driving licence details. However, they say they are taking this matter very seriously (they described what happened to Mike Hall as "awful") and are working with Bedfordshire Police. Fraudulent bank account In April, a new TSB bank account is fraudulently created in Mike Hall's name. In July, over two days, £131,000 is deposited into the bank account - and then withdrawn. The BBC reporter contacted TSB to ask them: why did they not flag this as suspicious activity? TSB said the activity didn't trigger any suspicions and they are working with the police on the case. Will Mike Hall get his house back? Reporter: "Very possibly not" Reporter: "If your name is on the Land Register for a property, that property is yours and it doesn't matter if you bought that property from a fraudster." "The Land Registery is the only record of property ownership we have in the UK [England and Wales]. It is state guaranteed and that means if there is fraudlent change of title, which has happened in this case, victims of fraud and mistakes can be compensated." This type of fraud ("vendor fraud") is on the rise. Compensation has risen from £2m to £3.5m in just twelve months - a 40% rise. The Land Registry say they rely on solicitors to make checks to spot fraudulent attempts to impersonate property owners. Empty, rental and properties with no mortgages are particularly vulnerable to this type of fraud. And what about Mike? The BBC showed Mike the fake driving licence used to impersonate him: "I felt sick actually - seeing someone else's face on my driving licence...I felt an emptiness in my stomach and it make it all very real to me."

ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago

I remember reading about a "sovereign citizen" outfit, doing something similar, in the US. In that case, the "sovereign citizen" would get bounced out on their ear, but they can still make the homeowner's life a nightmare. https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/sovereign-citizens-sentenced https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/sovereign-citizens-sentence... https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/26/nyregion/moors-newark.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/26/nyregion/moors-newark.htm...

jokoon 5y ago

It became much funnier when I remember the old saying "property is theft". Quite fitting to this news.

koonsolo 5y ago

It's weird that people get identified by their driver's license. Don't they have digital ID cards that are better suited for veryfying who is who?

karatinversion 5y ago
The UK is funnily backwards about some things. In particular, they have neither national ID cards, nor a population registry. You end up sending utility bills to the government as proof of address.
- mhh__ 5y ago
  It can be an absolute farce. I signed up for a GP, still living with my parents, they needed proof of address which I obviously don't have because I didn't pay for the water bill, so instead they accepted a written note from my father who provided no ID, and wasn't registered at the GP. That may sound relatively minor but if I were doing some ID fraud it's all I would've needed to get started i.e. you need the first level of trust to exploit. The British state is carefully designed to have the nationalized and privatized parts in the wrong places.

lifeisstillgood 5y ago

UK house owner - just signed up to the Land Registry alert system. Which has to be a record from not knowing something existed to signing up in four minutes. 1. The registry seriously refuses passwords that do not have alphanumeric characters only. Did not try Unicode. 2. Most of the UK is not in the land registry - it only is compulsory for land sold IIRR since the 1990s and generally has records going back to early 1900s. If someone owns land from before then, no-one publically knows who they are or who owns it. As most land in the UK is held by government or aristocracy and they have not needed to sell it for centuries we don't know who owns what. 3. This simply cannot be the first time - something this sophisticated, the original fraudster did not so this the first time now. How common is this? I mean see above - the land registry has a monitoring service for this ? 4. Thinking about it, I just added a monitoring account with just an email. If I create a new account and try to add $TargetAddress I find out if it is monitored - and I suspect that that is not going to count as a monitoring event !

iso1631 5y ago
About 85% of land in the UK is registered - including the vast majority of domestic dwellings.
- lifeisstillgood 5y ago
  My apologies - bad memory https://whoownsengland.org/2019/01/11/the-holes-in-the-map-englands-unregistered-land/ https://whoownsengland.org/2019/01/11/the-holes-in-the-map-e...
  - iso1631 5y ago
    You can get INSPIRE polygons from https://use-land-property-data.service.gov.uk/datasets/inspire/download https://use-land-property-data.service.gov.uk/datasets/inspi... Either download the GML or view it on the map. This gives you a number which you can pump into https://eservices.landregistry.gov.uk/eservices/FindAProperty/view/LrInspireIdInit.do https://eservices.landregistry.gov.uk/eservices/FindAPropert... And the spend £3 buying the deeds for the property. One look at the coverage in your local area shows the type of properties available, for example Parliament Square (North and South), or tiny bits of rock off the edge of the Isles of Scilly, as well as more pedestrian locations like "Flat 1-14, Grosvenor Court, 55 Upper Grosvenor Road, Tunbridge Wells, TN1 2DY" A lot of unregistered land, certainly in towns, are roads and railways that have been there for over 100 years

jchook 5y ago

Reminded of Victor Lustig, who sold someone the Eiffel Tower. He impersonated a government official and told a group of scrap metal dealers it was too costly to maintain and that it was set to be demolished and sold as scrap. The man who purchased it was too embarrassed to go to authorities, lest it ruin his reputation.

theonlybutlet 5y ago

"it's a civil matter" seems to be the go to excuse for British police. There's a whole TV series following property owners in the UK who have experienced issues and this response comes up way too often in the series.

zeristor 5y ago

Seemingly the gem Earth of the issue is the proof of identity. Mention is made of a driving licence being obtained to open a bank account, was this the actual Driving licence? If it had been faked then the bank should have raised a flag. There is a fair amount about having a government account to log in for taxes etc, is this robust enough to be used in property transaction like this? I not why? Will this example highlight a number of other similar cases? Will it prompt others to try it?

gumby 5y ago

Seems like the point of the conveyancer is to prevent this sort of thing. In California it seems that a title transfer company is in practice the only way to transfer property, and for their exorbitant fee they do at least insure the buyer against this risk in perpetuity. (Last time I bought a house in California I read the seller’s insurance policy and discovered its perpetual nature. I realized that if I ever had a problem I could sue the seller and their policy would cover me (and them). Unfortunately the title company refused to do the transfer until I bought my own title insurance. What a ripoff)

desktopninja 5y ago

When signing/transferring over the title deed, aren't all parties involved supposed to be physically present in front of a lawyer/notary? Me thinks due diligence by all members involved in this transaction was severely lacking and they should be held accountable. I.e. Real Estate agent, bank, brokers, what have you. One could even say they all conspired in this property theft. Alternatively, perhaps the victim was lacking some sort of documentation that allowed the illicit procurement to occur?

pintxo 5y ago

Really interesting, a very similar case has recently been reported in Berlin, Germany [1]. Here the fraudsters tried to get legal ownership of a whole apartment building in Berlin. It seems they nearly made it, but then some insurance company sent a letter to the actual owners who could successfully blocked the transaction from committing. [1] (in German) https://www.spiegel.de/panorama/justiz/berlin-wie-ein-rentnerpaar-sein-haus-beinahe-an-den-abou-chaker-clan-verlor-a-a9183516-ac2d-4b1d-afbd-a123f096ace3 https://www.spiegel.de/panorama/justiz/berlin-wie-ein-rentne...

shric 5y ago

Really close to https://youtu.be/CS9ptA3Ya9E https://youtu.be/CS9ptA3Ya9E (satire from Mitchell and Webb)

apricot13 5y ago

I remember reading about something similar a few years ago. A lady had paid off her mortgage turned out that made her property vulnerable because without the mortgage company being involved there were less checks. Someone stole her post, impersonated her and sold her property without her knowledge obtaining the deed as well I think. Its always stuck in my brain! I wonder if thats what happened here too?

fennecfoxy 5y ago

Lol how does this sort of shit even happen in 2021. It's meant to be "the future".

lal 5y ago
Ironically it being "the future" is at least part of the reason why it happened. In the UK, all the land records are digitized nowadays, so the scammer didn't need to steal the physical deed to the property to pull off the scam. All they me had to dk was present their fraudulent identification to the office holding those digitized records and it was over without the owner even having to know.

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 5y ago

System doesn't seem very secure, but it relies on thiefs being lazy. If this happens 10 times a year, it's couple million pounds - much less than the cost of setting up a more secure (and thus more inconvenient) system. Just like credit card payments are very insecure, but they just charge some extra % in transaction fees to cover the losses. PS later it mentions that Land Registry pays out $3.5m/year compensating fraud victims, so my estimate wasn't too far off)

sonicanatidae 5y ago

I love that everyone's take on it is, "welp, it's legally theirs now". How in the hell can an illegal, fraudulent transaction lead to legal ownership?

samueldamon 5y ago

> "I have read of a gentleman who owned a so fine house in London, and when he went for months of summer to Switzerland and lock up his house, some burglar came and broke window at back and got in. Then he went and made open the shutters in front and walk out and in through the door, before the very eyes of the police. Then he have an auction in that house, and advertise it, and put up big notice; and when the day come he sell off by a great auctioneer all the goods of that other man who own them. Then he go to a builder, and he sell him that house, making an agreement that he pull it down and take all away within a certain time. And your police and other authority help him all they can. And when that owner come back from his holiday in Switzerland he find only an empty hole where his house had been." - Dracula, 1897.