It looks like the Nigerian 419 scammers are getting more sophisticated. A South African investor found his Australian property sold to third party purchasers without his knowledge after having his email account hacked:
Fraudsters swiped Mildenhall’s email login credentials and obtained personal property documents before selling a house and sending funds to Chinese bank accounts. The scammers hoodwinked real estate agents, banks and local land registrars.
Mildenhall only learned of the scam, seemingly by chance, after he contacted by a former neighbour last week, just in time to stop the finalisation of the sale of a house. Another house owned by Mildenhall was sold in June.
“They had a comprehensive understanding of how transactions take place and of the legal processes. If they are sophisticated as they seem to be, identity checks will not be enough — they can forge them.”
Here’s the property in question. Unfortunately for Mr Mildenhall, under Western Australian real property law, he’s unlikely to have a claim against the purchaser if the new interest was registered. However, he will probably be able to get compensation from the Torrens claim pool.
Of course, an electronic system of conveyancing (to which many state governments are in the process of moving) would only increase these risks. Should a portion of fees from conveyancing filings continue to be pooled into a compensation fund for victims of fraudulent transfers, or is there a better solution? Perhaps the estate agents, conveyancers and transaction brokers should be liable in negligence — this seems a paradigmatic case of gatekeeper liability. Or caveat erus?
