The recent thought-provoking ITV drama ‘Our House’ starring Martin Compston and Tuppence Middleton highlighted the nightmare scenario of going away for a few days and coming back to find strangers moving into your house after a successful scam.
Featuring a cleverly-orchestrated fraud (if a little too simplistic in my view) it saw a London home sold fraudulently, demonstrating real challenges that exist in our system if quite simple precautions are not taken.
Had either the estate agent or conveyancer insisted upon electronic ID/AML checks then the scam would have been spotted, even with the perpetrator being in possession of the real client’s passport, facial recognition would have spotted the imposter immediately.
MD of Property Searches Direct, Daniel Hamilton-Charlton asks why some estate agents still risk everything by not using tech to keep the fraudsters out of the property market. Read the full article in The Negotiator here.
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