Man left shocked as his house is 'stolen'
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.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.
No one is claiming that the victim is at fault. But I do think it's useful information to pass along that it's possible to get notified of things like this before they become big problems.
It's like... it's not my fault if I get mugged at 3am in a part of the city known for being full of violent crime, but I also should have known better than to be walking around in a part of the city known for violent crime at 3 in the morning. Just because I am the victim, it doesn't mean I couldn't have avoided an incident if I'd used common sense.
It's about outcomes and reality: sometimes we have to take on a little extra responsibility in order to make it less likely a bad thing will happen. That's not fair or just, but it's the way the world works.
A system that requires constant, complicated intervention to function properly ensures that those with the resources and background to know that they have to exercise constant vigilance against malfeasance will come out ahead over the long run.
If that would keep you up at night, then given all the actual dangers in the world you have never slept.
What would you have be done differently, immediately turf out the new 'owner', who in his eyes paid for it fair and square?
Assuming it's all true, presumably it will be returned to the true owner, the transaction reversed, and the cheated non-owner will have a solid civil case against the defrauder for the inconvenience and expense.
You're pissing into a hurricane. Complaining of victim blaming at the slightest opportunity will persist so long as it is rewarded with up-votes.
You get what you incentivize.
And they are correct.
We humans can and do try to fight against nature. But that's exactly what it is, a fight! And I doubt the Art of War said "Pay no attention to your enemies. They will leave you be."
If you miss your chance to challenge the patent before it issues, the cost to protest goes way up, even if your arguments would have been just as valid during the publication phase.
I get that the system is trying to reward vigilance, but it punishes people who put more time into sharing ideas than protecting them, especially considering the PTO does not search most modern repositories of open source for prior art.
Yes, and anybody convicted of fraudulently conveying a house should be convicted, and surely you will agree, be given a run-on sentence!
seriously though, you're absolutely right, the burden of this type of thing should not fall on the individual. So called "identity theft" shouldn't be on the victim at all.
The reality is we desperately need victims help to expose offenders for many types of antisocial behaviors and while we all want victims suffering to end, maybe as a society we could turn victimhood into an opportunity to be a hero? Of course this wouldn't/shouldn't shoulder the burden on victims but should they choose to take on the task, society would reward them with praise instead of sympathy.
I don't know that this is entirely viable, but wouldn't it be nice for the violated to get cheers instead of sympathy cards?
the point is, it should be the same here.
makes it a much less tempting target
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."
In Belgium the notary will always ask for your digital ID card.
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.
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.
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.
Somebody ordered satellite TV to be installed at my house. A few days later they went to a phone shop and walked out with an iPhone in my name, using (I assume) the invoice from the TV service as proof of identity. They then did the same with a few other phone companies. The only way I found out about these was when they sent me bills demanding payment a month or so later :-)
They also opened a bank account in my name, which I found out via a credit search, but the bank would not confirm or deny it as I was not the person who opened it.
This last bit is more interesting as I believe it had a different address, but was in my name. Technically that is not fraud, as in the UK names are freely changeable without needing any official registration. I could go into a bank tomorrow and ask to open an account, saying my name is "Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson" (the Prime Minister's full name) and that would be legal. The bank would probably send me away as I don't have any supporting evidence to prove that's my name, but there's ways around that.
You can easily see how you could use this to have enough evidence to back up the claim that you are the owner of the property - especially if the property was vacant and you broke in so you could get the post (I assume the buyer was shown around before they bought it?).
- 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.
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.
Here is a similar story: https://lemans.maville.com/actu/actudet_--nous-sommes-abando...
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.
Could someone actually sell a house without those?
[1]https://www.reddit.com/r/LegalAdviceUK/comments/qkew77/is_a_...
I assume there is a specific legal quirk with property ownership.
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.
Ownership is a legal abstraction/construct.
We've redefined what "taking good care of something" means for things you possess, and we made elaborate social/legal constructs to clearly define boundaries of possession.
But this is present even in the animal world, even when it comes to "property" (wolfs mark their territory, so do lions, bees go back to their own hives, etc).
This assertion immediately falls apart on consideration IMO. Even in simple, controlled circumstances like football, the meaning of "possession" is subject to mutual agreement (i.e. "rules").
You could take some particular definition of "possession" as "natural" or otherwise axiomatic. This is not unheard of, but I think it's a trick of misdirection to place it in the domain of the "physical/real" when it is plainly a political matter.
I wonder if we will ever have a future where cryogenic freezing works and allows people to own land after they are temporarily dead.
This is mostly how private property works in practice, everywhere.
Not just random clerk writing a line in a book when random stranger comes and tells they own a piece of land and are going to sell it.
That person is a random clerk
> possibly after appeals
I can 100% gaurantee that this case goes to court (if it is not settled to the now previous owners satisfaction).
I also suspect that the original owner will come out on top, by likely more than the 150k that their 'house' was worth.
The random clerk does not get to do write off your property belonging to someone else, unless your elected representative had a change voice an opinion in a proceedings where a clear public decision by the elected representatives to specifically take away someone's property was made.
Can you name a country that behaves differently?
It's more like you lease the land :)
It's why thieves try to steal and then turn over immediately.
Had my TV stolen, it ended up in a pawn shop. Luckily, I had receipt and serial number. There was some paperwork and court order but pawnshop had to return TV to me.
>>According to general receiving stolen property laws, it is a crime to accept or purchase any property which you believe or have actual knowledge that it was obtained through illegal means, such as theft. However, receiving stolen property is its own separate crime and thus should not be confused with the similar criminal acts of theft, robbery, or extortion.
[1] https://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/receiving-sto...
Cash is legally considered fungible. So, if someone steals a bunch of cash and buys something from you with it, even though that specific cash technically belonged to someone else before theft, it can't be reclaimed even if they can prove it.
Or just make it rain on so many people that it's effectively impossible to get it all back. The power of decentralization.
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.
I’m not condoning that choice but recognize the consequences are particularly low when you’re already at the bottom.
The issue is there are scenarios where the person writing the article may not actually be the legit owner - maybe they are delusional, or were squatting, or whatever. Maybe they are in league with the person who took off with the money, etc.
And the person who bought it is out real money on the meantime and is trying to make a home in good faith - it’s a pretty bad situation all around.
Original proprietor had a furnished house, and the end result should be that they still have the house at no expense and at least trouble: they did not partake in the "sale", so they shouldn't suffer consequences from someone's incompetence or negligence. House is not just a "financial" instrument: it might have large emotional value too (memories, tradition & history, community and neighbourhood...).
Unfortunately, the honest buyer hired a solicitor to act as their agent, and while the solicitor might lose their professional license, buyer should get their damages back from the said solicitor or licensing body, because buyer is a victim of their incompetence/negligence, yet competence and care were guaranteed with the professional license.
Solicitor relies on the Land Registry to be the ultimate arbiter, so they should expect their damages to come from them for the duties they failed to perform.
Regardless of what the law is anywhere, that's how it should work IMHO. Unfortunately, the practicalities of how long it takes courts to (dis)prove a fraud make some of these hard to effectively achieve in a timely manner.
Theoretically, courts could make the process more expedient in cases of inhabiting-properties by "pausing" the transfer and putting the property into government custody, giving temporary use rights to the more likely resulting owner from the preliminary hearing (hey, fake document was involved, sorry, original owner gets to live there for the time being: everyone, please keep all receipts for any work done on the property and about your legal representation so you can be fairly compensated).
But, of course what we've got here is apparently Fraud. Presumably the likely legal outcome is that the actual sale price or, if higher, fair market value, must go to the previous legitimate owner. Unless the new owner is shown to have committed fraud.
The Solicitors are required to be insured. And of course the Government owns the Land Registry and so is quite capable of standing any of its potential liabilities, though it seems most likely the Solicitors screwed up here in accepting bogus "proof" of identity.
I don't think that's true because for instance there are still properties unregistered (as mandatory registration was phased in until 1990). Certainly it seems possible to rectify the Register, not least in case of fraud [1]
Also, in English law, a valid sale of land must meet strict criteria, including being made by Deed. I am not a lawyer but I don't see how the Deed can valid in this case since it did not involve the legal owner at all!
Since solicitors must check identities (how could they have failed that?) and executing a Deed includes signing it in the presence of a witness I suspect a number of people have at the minimum massively screwed up, and the witness is likely an accomplice.
[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/rectification-and...
But, if the Registry says your property is registered, and that Jim owns it, the fact you say it isn't registered doesn't trump that. You would need to persuade a Court that the Registry is wrong, and then they'd need to tell the Registry to fix that. Until both those things happen, Jim owns it.
> I am not a lawyer but I don't see how the Deed can valid in this case since it did not involve the legal owner at all!
Prima Facie there's a Deed which says the legal owner sold it. Now we've got this chap, says he's the legal owner, says he never signed that paperwork. That's a contradiction, which is true? So that's the sort of problem we have Courts for.
My guess is, this chap is exactly who he says he is, there's a fraudster somewhere with £131000 of somebody else's money who won't show up to court.
But of course it's also possible this is a different fraud in progress. The chap who claims it was "stolen" has £131000 in an account in his friend's name, and now wants both the house and the money.
A judge gets to decide the truth of the matter. Often things are clear cut (e.g. the "driving license" proves to be a badly photocopied Photoshop image, a solicitor's clerk admits a "face to face" transaction actually took place on Zoom, the bank account is traced to a known crook who fled the country last week) but sometimes it's just very hard to decide, which is why we need smart, honest people to do that job and decide what's a fair outcome when it's unclear.
Sounds like a court needs to dig in and figure out what is going on for sure.
As for whether fraudulent sales should be reverted or not, I've been pondering the question since I read the story yesterday and come to the conclusion that it would be good to apply some common sense:
* Someone buys a house without looking at it, before or after the sale, as an investment because the price seems really attractive. It is then discovered that the owner, who is living in the house, was not involved in the "sale". Obviously they should revert the transfer of ownership and compensate the purchaser.
* Someone buys a field, gets planning permission, builds a house on it, and moves in. Ten years later it is discovered that the real owner of the field, a company in Dubai, was not involved in the "sale". Obviously the transfer should not be reverted and the involuntary seller should be compensated.
Otherwise it sets an absurd precedent. If it was not some man's house but a critical piece of infrastructure, the courts are not going to stand idly by and let some random person take possession of Sellafield, or for that matter, Harrods.
But the existing owner will probably settle for compensation instead of fight a lengthy court battle.
Nobody is going to end up as the accidental innocent purchaser of a stolen Sellafield, so that's not a concern. If the government really needs to reverse a transaction under these circumstances it could use a compulsory purchase order or a private act of Parliament.
The bottom line is that there are two innocent victims and one or both are getting screwed. I prefer your rule too, overall, but there are circumstances where one or the other is going to be more unjust in a particular case.
Nonetheless, here's how the Land Registry handles matters of fraud: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/rectification-and...
3.2 Suspected fraud or forgery
If someone suspects that a fraud has taken place or is
about to take place in relation to their property, they
should contact us immediately. In many cases, we will
be able, on application, to enter a standard form
restriction LL in the register, that requires a
certificate to be given by a conveyancer that they are
satisfied that the person who executed a document
lodged for registration as disponor is the same person
as the proprietor.
It will also be advisable to take legal or other
professional advice to try to minimise any loss.Different ways of dealing with the problem of fraudulent transfer and property records. In the U.S., the risk is the buyer's. If the property was fraudulently transferred, the transaction is mutable. This makes the sureness of ownership, as well as the record, less reliable, while making ownership per se more.
The U.K. flips that assessment. If the Land Registry says you own the property, you can rest assured you own it. No re-litigating whether that transfer two sales back was done correctly. In exchange, this shit.
If you consider each country's history with respect to property and power, it makes sense.
Sounds to me like you can only rest assured at the moment the Land Registry tells you. After that, it’s only a matter of time before some scammer sells your house out from under you. Not a great system.
Ironically you're describing the original English legal system centered around deeds.
But a few US States, some of the UK Commonwealth, and England, as it sounds from this article, use the Torrens system[1].
The difference is whether the deeds are primary and the registry a mere copy (or even optional); or the registry primary and any papers reflecting registration a mere copy.
But generally with a Torrens system there is some statutory compensation for fraud cases.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torrens_title
(IANAL so this may be incorrect)
Could you elaborate on that, please? I don't know which historical aspects you're referring to.
One example is Ayn Rand who said that Natives weren't using land productively and therefore weren't really owners of it.
Now, the contemporary English system isn’t strictly speaking Torrens, it actually is somewhat of a hybrid between a pure Torrens system (as used in Australia and many other places), and the original English system (which slowly evolved out of mediaeval English law) and which is still mostly retained in the US. But still, to the extent that the records of the Land Registry take priority over the actual title documents, it is closer to the Torrens system than most US systems.
I think the main reasons for the lesser adoption of Torrens in the US have little to do with the reasons you suggest. Trying to link the US non-adoption of it to the dispossession of indigenous people is dubious given that Australia, where it was invented, has a similar history. It is basically due to the greater number and greater conservatism of US state jurisdictions (here I mean “conservatism” primarily in the “slow-to-embrace-change” sense, rather than conservatism as a political ideology, this is the kind of technocratic legal issue about which neither progressives nor conservatives, in the ideological sense, care much), and also due to the lobbying power of the US title services/insurance industry, which sees the greater simplicity of the Torrens system (most of the time, ignoring occasional problems and frauds like this, which can and have happened under pre-Torrens systems too) as a threat to their established business models
Torrens essentially tries to optimise for the most common case, in which title is clear and no fraud is going on, and make that common case as simple and cheap as possible, even if by doing so the outcome in those rare cases of disputes and frauds may not always be completely optimal
If you can't get a hold on B, then clearly A should be the one all outta luck, not C.
Absolutely insane!
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.
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.
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-propert...
I don't understand by what logic this sale is temporary? What mechanism can undo the sale?
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.
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-... 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.It almost makes me wonder if this is a semi common scam wealthy folks use to take poor people's desirable homes.
Could more easily disappear if paid in cash.
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_a...
Criminals don't use bitcoin anymore.
They use cash and monero.
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?...)
But I greatly prefer your version of events to what happened in the article so please prove me wrong!
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.
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
> Property/casualty lines of business typically experience pure loss ratios well above 10%, approaching 70% or higher at times. Title insurers historically have loss ratios in the 5% to 10% range.
https://www.naic.org/documents/topics_title_insurance_brief....
Also, 2017 in Texas 6% loss ratio. Other states are better in that they don't charge as much for the policy. However, loss ratios are still very low.
https://www.texasobserver.org/entitled-to-profit-in-texas-ti...
That's not how it works (at least where I live, US state of Texas). I, having bought from you, would be responsible to have my own title insurance policy. Your policy would have essentially ended when you sold the home. It protects you during your ownership. ANd my policy would protect me during my ownership. Once sold, and title transfers (whether legit or not), you as the seller have no liability (mostly, I'm sure if you committed fraud or something you could be on the hook along with other criminal issues, but my insurance is still going to pay me if I experience a loss of my purchase). So...
> "No, be that as it may, once you 'sold' the house we're off the hook; tell the guy who 'bought' it from you to contact their title insurance company"
Yes, that's exactly what they would say. It's also why it's customary for the seller to purchase the title policy for the buyer during the transaction. Although, it's a hot market the seller could have the power to deny and the buyer would have to buy their own policy.
While you owned the property at some point in time, you never experienced a loss from the title issue because you sold before the title issue was known. Your liability also ended the moment you sold the property. It's always the CURRENT owner that needs protection.
That's when you ask for the re-issue rate.
http://www.insuranceqna.com/title-and-mortgage-insurance/wha...
Let's say your mom lives in a house, and she sells it to you without a title. No big deal, because it was family property she got from her parents and she's lived there her entire life. Right?
Maybe not, when your grandparents children and grandchildren show up and claim their fraction of ownership of the grandparents' estate.
https://www.texasobserver.org/entitled-to-profit-in-texas-ti...
There are a lot of rental properties for sale with "tenants in place" in my area.
If you want to live in it, then yes - Ensure seller is responsible for removal.
If you want to continue renting the property then a lot of times it's easier for both parties to complete the sale and then let the current rental contract conclude before doing reno/construction.
If the new owner wants the tenants out, the tenants have to agree to break the lease. Otherwise the tenants can continue to live there until their lease runs out.
It doesn't matter whether these are the best options for the owner(s). They're the only options.
That's why I say make it the current owners responsibility if you don't want tenants there: They must either invoke their termination clause (and usually pay a fee), or offer to buy the tenants out, or pay you some penalty fee for every day the house remains occupied after sale.
Alternatively - if you plan on gutting the place anyways, and their lease is due to expire in less than 6 months: Leave them in place and keep the property bringing in some income while you schedule contractors and line up work.
I can't say there has never been a home seller that would agree to that. I can say I never ran into it at our office, nor have I heard of it. Commercial real estate does all kinds of build-to-suit but residential property is generally sold as-is, with any improvements done before listing.
In this market tho, sellers don't listen to buyer conditions. They just go to the next all-cash buyer who's probably offering over list price.
> if you don't want tenants there: They must either invoke their termination clause (and usually pay a fee)
Again here, I've never heard of a residential lease with a fee-based termination clause, nor prepared one or had one as a tenant. One possibility is that it's not legal in areas I've lived but I don't know. I'm visiting the attorney (now ret) this week so I'll ask.
> if you plan on gutting the place anyways, and their lease is due to expire in less than 6 months: Leave them in place and keep the property bringing in some income while you schedule contractors and line up work.
This is generally how it goes. That and the keys for cash thing you alluded to earlier. However tenants are less likely to take the latter because moving costs are typically equal to 2mos-6mos rent - and because renters have nowhere to go. Rent cost skyrocketed (15-120% here) and what few rentals there are have 40-400 applicants each.
notes: I was offered a cash-for-keys recently when our previous rental was sold. Unsurprisingly, that seller stiffed us so it's small claims.
My ex and her bf have been squatting in a foreclosure for the past few years. They generally kept it up. The buyer is letting them stay for another month until the remodel begins.
I've literally never had a residential lease that hasn't included a termination clause. Generally speaking, both parties agree up front that the other party may request termination in exchange for compensation (in my experience, 3 months rent is typical, although I've seen fixed payments as well).
Commercial is a different beast, since generally subletting is approved, and space customization is expected (the business will adjust the space as needed for commercial use, like changing walls, installing shelves/chairs/tables, adding or removing kitchen space, etc.)
Landlords can't legally evict a leased tenant who hasn't violated their lease.
That there are tenants in the home would be part of the MLS listing, along with bed/bath. If you've gotten as far as inquiring about the property, you would know you're buying tenants (at least until their lease is up or they accept your offer to break it).
Where do you get this from? It's not like any US law I've ever heard of.
For the evictions I've worked on, the homeowner simply wanted the tenants out (non-payment, etc) so they could re-rent or sell the property. They didn't ever have to live there.
The listed causes for eviction all seem fairly typical - like non-payment.
I expect that SF's non-rent controlled property is evictable like any other.
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.
* an estate agent
* a mortgage company (on the purchase or the sale)
* involve a sale at a market rate
* involve parties that know each other personally (family etc).
To not have any of those surely should raise a warning flag that "this requires a little more investigation" than a forged driving license. This wasn't an abandoned house being sold after being empty for several years.
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.”
There was the suggestion that the seller's solicitor was in on it, but no firm evidence. The seller has been arrested at least.
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.
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?
A Solicitor has to due the legal due-diligence to make sure they have the right to sell including usually ownership of the title deeds but if you don't have the title deeds and they are held by the Land Registry in name only, this is fairly easy to get around.
I smell an insurance claim against the Solicitor but it depends whether they did everything correctly or not, otherwise I don't know where he stands.
Thinking about it, it does seem very open to abuse!
In the UK, it is very much a paperwork exercise, I have never met any of the solicitors I have sold houses with, haven't even spoken to most of them (everything on email)
Surely you left a massive amount of money on the table then, right?
Big saving all round.
That's my point. You could potentially have made a lot more money on the open market. Especially if the buyers didn't even try to negotiate. That usually means they would pay more (let alone what other buyers might pay).
The value of your house is what people are willing to pay for it, not what you think it's worth or what you want for it.
s/surely/potentially/
They may have been better off also. At least the agent commissions are saved, and maybe other costs. If the buyer is motivated to buy, who knows if they weren't already over market?
I bought my house right after it was listed on my realtors MLS system -- I had already made an offer before it ever hit Zillow or before there was a For Sale sign in the yard.
Of course, most buyers will want to see the house themselves before making an offer, as estate agents are famously creative in their property descriptions. If you're getting a mortgage to buy a house, the bank will generally insist on a 'survey' where an independent third party turns up and confirms that the building physically exists and suchlike.
However, in the event of an off-market cash transaction, a lot fewer parties are involved - potentially just a conveyancer/solicitor. I'm guessing it's them who hugely dropped the ball in identity verification.
If you've got the ID to sell the house, you certainly have enough ID to convince anyone else.
The bank needs to know the status of the relationship because in the terrible event of it breaking up, your partner would have equity in the asset.
There is zero difference if you are married, best friends, siblings, co habitating, two people who had never met before etc. In all likelyhood a divorce would change the equity, not keep it 50-50.
Single people are allowed mortgages. Certain property ownership forms are only available to married couples, and anything recorded in that form incorrectly will revert to a different form with different consequences if the owners were not qualified; there are also different provisions that might affect other interests in the property that apply based on the presence of absence of a marital relationship among the owners.
So, a lienholder is going to want to be as certain as possible about the actual relation of the parties.
Ok, now you have me curious. Whazzat?
In real life this is a simple task. You look at the photo on the ID, then you look at the person and check that they match. You also would immediately notice if something is weird, like they are wearing a lifelike mask, or they are a plastic doll.
Why does this not work for businesses then? There can be two reason: either they want to check the customers ID remotely through the internet, or the customer is present in their office but the business does not trust their own employees to check them.
Why would a business not trust their own employees? Because the company employees are in the best position to perpetuate some fraud on the business. Very often clerks receive some direct compensation or bonus based on how many new customers they subscribe for example, and if not properly checked this can incentivise the employees invent fake customers for you for example.
So you want to check the ID of a person in some way you can conduct remotely without trusting anyone physically present. Simple! You ask for an image of the ID and a photo of the customer, then a remote employee or machine learning model can decide if they match up.
But there is a problem with that! Anyone who is sophisticated enough to scam you with a fake ID will also be able to give you a matching photo. Ugh oh.
How do you solve this? You ask for the ID as previously, but instead of asking for a photo you ask for a video of the customer. Maybe you even flash the phone’s screen while recording the video with random colours and ask the customer to read up randomly selected digits. This way you can be sure that the video is not just some previous stock footage, or plastic doll or who knows. This is what is being refered to as “app-based liveness verification”
Now of course you might notice that this is an arms race. You make a better verification tool, and the scammers make a better scam. I bet that there is already someone out there training a neural network to create an animated deep fake which is convincing and can reflect the flashing colours appropriately and can read up the digits too. Likewise there is someone who is working on detecting that. What matters is that the business is trying to keep the cost of deception high enough so it is not worth doing at scale.
In other european countries like, say, Italy, Spain, France there are national ID's and - opposed to solicitors like in the UK - notaries which are a sort of public officials for the contract (and they will check and certify the identities of the people involved, besides the acts of property) and you won't likely be able to open an account or however cash a check (I mean large sums, like the sale of a house) with someone else's identity in any bank without proper ID.
Possibly, with at least two well forged pieces of ID[1], you can get around it in the bank, but I don't think it is easy.
[1] this is (or used to be) a common request, though I doubt it is Law, when you want to open a bank account in Italy, and you need to exhibit the actual documents, not a photo or similar.
"Real ID" is now a thing. It's a "National ID". https://www.dhs.gov/real-id
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.
People don't necessarily have them either. Only those who have chosen to do so at a DMV.
SSNs are often assigned at birth, for people born in the US.
They are not perfect, but it raises the bar.
Or is the 2FA not worth the paper it isn't printed on when it comes to replacements, and you're back to the same level of proof you need for a driving license or passport.
(B) You have to compromise both password and 2FA.
(C) Walking into a government office certainly raises the barrier to stealing ID.
With an ambient concept of ownership, one is inherently left with a tradeoff between trusting the system as defined and being able to override it. In fact, this is exactly what caused this failure of the victim being unable to get their house back - compared to the common law deed system still prevalent in the US, whereby the buyer would be left without any title and would have to fall back on title insurance to be made whole.
The only way to eliminate fraud is to define away right and wrong, creating a single source of truth ala Bitcoin [0]. In Bitcoin if you have the privkey to a pubkey, then you can transfer value to a new pubkey, period - there is no such thing as theft, as it has been defined away. But obviously this isn't the kind of harsh regime people have in mind when they say they want to eliminate fraud.
FWIW the political problem in the US preventing national ID is the complete lack of ability to reign in corporate behavior. The ongoing abuse of SSN and drivers license numbers by private surveillance companies needs to be stopped (by something akin to the GDPR) before it would make any sense to talk about creating even stronger identification.
[0] Actually this is going to fail for Bitcoin as well, because it lacks the key ecash property of untraceability. Since it lacks fungibility, it's only a matter of time until courts routinely override the computational system with their own version of truth.
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.
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.
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?
Edit: technically they are still relevant if the property has not been sold since the records were digitised in the 1990s
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.
Our PAO gives a receipt at filing. Copies are available after the deed is processed. In my state, they're public record; in my county, they're available online.
source: worked for real estate attorney
You don't want police running around "taking people's house back" without due process, presumbly.
I don't think he will have any ablity to forceably reobtain the house, although potentially, if he refunded the buyers money (after getting it from the accused), they might agree to give it to him back. On the other hand, if already cleared, it would probably be easier for the real owner to get his money back and buy somewhere else.
Very sad though.
No. The criminal matter, as alleged, is that someone scammed the buyer, the solicitors and the Land Registry into believing that they are who they were not. That is not a civil matter, it is I believe fraud.
If a bloke sells their house, but then gets cold feet, or not happy with the compensation that is a civil matter. This is not what is alleged.
Maybe the argument is that without proof that the fraudulent seller made a gain, it is merely a Tort and not Fraud?
It's just typical first level support. Police didn't see any obvious simple solution and wanted the issue out of their hair so they said the thing which usually gets the issue out of their hair. The person persisted and escalated the issue higher. (for example to the news papers.) And now "The BBC put Mr Hall in touch with Bedfordshire Police's fraud squad, which has begun an investigation."
Did you notice who you didn't list there?
The home owner.
The criminal issue doesn't involve him!
Of course it does. If it is as alleged, then the home owner and the new "owner" is equally victims of the crime.
1) Has the person committed an offence (probably yes: fraud by false representation, contrary to s.2 Fraud Act 2006);
2) Is there a reasonable prospect of conviction? (Who knows: will depend on the evidence); and
3) Is it in the public interest to prosecute? (Almost certainly yes).
'Who has been defrauded' doesn't even matter for establishing (1), only that the fraudster intended to make a gain for himself or a loss for someone else by making a false representation (in this case that he was the owner of the house). So in this case it really is a bit crappy from the police: if a fraud has been committed it doesn't in principle matter who complains about it, they should investigate (or at least register the crime) anyway.
Well that's what he cares about.
They were shocked by the reluctance of the police to enforce their property rights simply on their say-so. They were shocked by it because they hadn't really thought through how the system works. It is not the role of the police to evict someone who is the registered owner merely on the say-so of someone else who claims to have been defrauded. Clearly there are good reasons for this.
The article presents the facts as though they will never get their house back (with some creative ambiguity about what 'legal owner' means - does it mean the legally registered owner, regardless of any past fraud? or the actual rightful owner) because it makes a more interesting article than 'Man left annoyed after a painstaking legal process restores him his property rights'.
You might think that such quibbling cannot possibly matter, and maybe it doesn't in the UK, but in the US it can.
Here's a case from 2008 in Washington state [1].
Company X leased a car to Y.
Y forged documents to show X had released their interest in the car and then Y sold the car to innocent buyer Z.
X sued to recover the car from Z.
Washington law (RCW 10.79.050) states "All property obtained by larceny, robbery or burglary, shall be restored to the owner; and no sale, whether in good faith on the part of the purchaser or not, shall divest the owner of his rights to such property".
But there was no larceny, robbery, or burglary in this case so that did not apply.
Z got to keep the car.
[1] https://caselaw.findlaw.com/wa-court-of-appeals/1210407.html
German video about it: https://youtu.be/TolvzYzk64c
That's about €150.000 in real money... I guess where I live that would get me a garage, maybe.
The joy of paying taxes.
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.
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.
It would be a great improvement in security.
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.
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)
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 !
https://whoownsengland.org/2019/01/11/the-holes-in-the-map-e...
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/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
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.
- Dracula, 1897.
The Directors of your limited company would be available for all to see with their address!
2. does this work with financing? how do mortgages work?
Correct, but as the grandparent comment says, the likelihood of identifying info of your LLC (that could be fraudulently used) to appear in as many data leaks is way less than that of your personal info.
Plus, even if this type of fraud is still technically possible with LLC (albeit with much more difficult steps), just the fact that it is more difficult should discourage the criminals (unless they have some personal vendetta against you). Similar to all the nigerian prince emails, why would they go for a target that is more protected, as opposed to going for any much less secured targets? Hence why they intentionally make their scam emails as obvious as possible, so that they know if the person took the bait, then they are super likely to follow through with the scam until the very end. No reason for fraudsters to make their own lives more difficult.
[1] (in German) https://www.spiegel.de/panorama/justiz/berlin-wie-ein-rentne...
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-sentence...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/26/nyregion/moors-newark.htm...
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?
PS later it mentions that Land Registry pays out $3.5m/year compensating fraud victims, so my estimate wasn't too far off)
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?
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."
A law that says a home can be fraudlently sold to an (innocent) purchaser and thus confers ownership on the purchaser, while the original owner loses ownership is simply not fit for modern times. Even if Mike Hall receives compensation, he's still lost his home and the contents in the home.
Will the compensation match the purchase price of the house and the contents in the home? And what of the innocent house buyer who bought the property? Surely it would make more sense to return the house to the original owner, and for compensation be paid to the house buyer.
How in the hell can an illegal, fraudulent transaction lead to legal ownership?
I wonder if thats what happened here too?
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.