House sold by scammers while australian man was overseas

WHO'S WATCHING YOUR HOUSE?

The scammers are getting smarter and smarter. the most recent scam to hit Perth has hit ridiculous proportions with a Perth man getting his house sold by scammers somewhere in Africa. The scammers managed to sell the mans house using email and telephone and conning a local real estate agent for a sum of $485,000.

Obviously this is gong to put a fear in many “home owners†who might just be heading out on a holiday or then work overseas as it happened in this case and come back to find their house sold and money disappeared overseas somewhere as it happened in this case.

Snr Sgt Heise who was handling the case said “real estate agents and banks should always deal with original documents rather than copiesâ€, which indicates that there was possibly not enough care and checks done in the whole process of the sale.
Scammed using Email and Phone from overseas

Roger Milden hall who was the victim of such a scam , was working overseas in south Africa, when these scammers struck. He owned 2 properties here in Perth and they managed to sell one house and was on the verge of settling the second “house sale†when he came to know about it by a chance call ( from overseas) to one of his neighbors who chatted to him about his house sale happening.

Reports from online news websites indicates that “absentee landlords†are quite common nationally and this was the first scam of this sort , indicating that this was probably how the scam was worked

what is a Absentee landlord ?

Property owner who does not occupy his or her property and either rents it out or leaves it vacant, but does not abandon it. Also called absentee owner

The home owner said not enough due diligence was carried out on the authorization of the sale, since his alleged signature was "like that of a five-year-old", written out in un-joined lower-case letters. It also had a witness signature, with a stamp purporting to be from the High Commissioner of Lagos, Nigerian justice system. He said it was just too simple to get all his records, with details of his mortgage obtained for $35 from the Real Estate Institute of Australia. They also accessed his first wife’s death certificate to help authorize the sale and were able to source a copy of the title deed from Land gate.

ref : watoday.com.au

Major crime squad detective Senior Sergeant Don Heise said the real estate agent was duped because scammers convincingly used email and phone calls to lead her to believe they were the owners. An investigation involving the Real Estate and Business Agents Supervisory Board (REBA) and the Settlement Agents Supervisory Board (SASB) is underway.