You should invest a lot of effort establishing trust when buying a house. Get the seller's details from someone who is not involved in the transaction then visi

You should invest a lot of effort establishing trust when buying a house. Get the seller's details from someone who is not involved in the transaction then visit the seller in person, check their ID and take photos with them. Get the details of everyone involved in the chain from that person. In the UK someone tried to sell me a house that they didn't own. Luckily I worked out that it was a fraudulent sale before transferring significant sums of money. I did out-of-band identity verification by getting the real owners details from two neighbors, then calling up the letting agent who was managing the property. The letting agent was not aware that the property was listed for sale. After the dust settled I attempted to recover some of my costs. According to my lawyer when the seller is committing fraud the buyer is liable for the mortgage, and usually the buyer never gets any money back. Normally the buyer declares bankruptcy. Basically all of the professionals involved have to show that they took reasonable steps to verify the seller's identity. The buck gets passed all the way to the fraudster who is usually long gone. Whenever I tell people this story they usually struggle to believe that the buyer ends up bankrupt, but the buyer does normally go bankrupt. Moral of the story is that your gut is telling you to do the right thing. If the seller won't spend 5 min to take a selfie then buy another house. You are responsible for verifying the identity of everyone in the chain.