Search Results for: fraud
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Latest property news
Exeter estate agent rented out homes FOR SALE in £10k lettings fraud
An Exeter estate agent who fraudulently rented out homes on Gumtree that were for sale and who also stole over £1,000 in cash from his employer has been released on bail. Andrew Boyne, who in court admitted theft and 13 counts of fraud totalling £10,000, conducted the brazen lettings scam by advertising properties to let on Gumtree that were really properties for sale in Exeter listed with both his own agency and others. The 34-year-old then asked potential tenants for £200 holding fees and in some cases rent in advance. During the case at Exeter Crown Court, Devon Live reports that Gareth Evans, prosecuting, told the court that “on more than one occasion, people would actually move in, only to be told later that they had no right to be there”. Financial dificulties Boyne, who appears to have had a good reputation as an agent prior to the offences including several glowing reviews online for his sales progression and negotiating skills, got into financial difficulties and then turned to gambling to solve them but making his situation worse, Lee Brembridge, defending, told the court. The alarm was raised when Boyne entered his branch office during the weekend and stole £1,025…
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Latest property news
Fraudulent Essex lettings agency duo narrowly miss going to jail
Two directors of an Essex lettings agency have narrowly escaped going to jail after the couple failed to lodge deposits totalling £42,794 for 73 rental properties with the approved government schemes. George and Kim Overill, who ran two companies in the county – Oakpark Properties (UK) Ltd and Oakpark Asset Management Limited in Harwich – appeared in court yesterday where they pleaded guilty to two counts each of contravening professional diligence as directors and a further two counts of fraudulent trading. In October last year the couple, who previously ran a roofing company before getting into lettings, faced 38 counts of fraud, engaging in unfair commercial practices and fraudulent trading.They originally denied all the charges. The court heard from a former employee that money at the business was “tight” and that one member of staff had injected £6,000 of her own cash into the businesses to keep them afloat while Mrs Overill went on exotic holidays and extended the couple’s home in Thorpe-le-Stoken. Essex lettings agency In mitigation, defence lawyer Stephen Dyble said the couple had not intended to commit fraud when they set the businesses up and that money owed to tenants had been paid back. Alison Lambert, prosecuting,…
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Latest property news
Leading solicitor warns of property fraud epidemic
One of London’s leading mid-tier law firms Mackrell Turner Garrett is warning property investors to step up their efforts to protect themselves against fraud.
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Latest property news
‘An end to lettings fraud’, says fast-expanding rental payments platform
Rental payments platform PayProp says its technology will help eliminate fraud in the sector once and for all, as the company passes the 200-agent milestone in the UK. PayProp’s platform enables agents, tenants and landlords to see when rental payments are due and when they have been paid and moreover track each payment through the system until it arrives in the landlord’s account via the agent’s client account. “Our system enables it to be immediately obvious and transparent who has done what and when, during a payment,” says Chief Operating Officer Neil Cobbold (pictured, below). “It’s a fully ‘track and trace’ process that enables agents and landlords to reconcile payment right down to zero – so everyone knows exactly how every rental payment or deposit has been applied.” PayProp handles rental payments from 15,000 properties in the UK at the moment, and since launching two years ago PayProp has handled payments worth £200 million. “We want to raise the transparency levels regarding the whole rental payment transaction; the way agents and banks have interacted until now has been a bit smoke and mirrors, and that’s allowed problems to develop,” he says. Larger portfolios PayProp, which originally launched in 2004 in…
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Latest property news
Estate agents must do more to stop mortgage fraud, warns senior legal expert
Estate agents need to do more to prevent mortgage fraud by being more aware of the riskiest properties and transactions, and having a better understanding of the anti-money laundering (AML) regulations, leading property lawyer Peter Rodd has told The Negotiator. Peter, who is a Council member of The Law Society and works for Kent legal firm Boys & Maughan, says too few agents fully understand their anti-money laundering (AML) obligations and that if they did, being one of the best-placed stakeholders in the conveyancing process, this in turn would help reduced the number of mortgage fraud cases. “If estate agents were more aware of what signifies a high-risk transaction – i.e. high value, unencumbered, empty or tenanted properties particularly where the seller is looking for a quick sale and prepared to accept a discounted price for the property, then we might be in a better place,” says Peter. “Good knowledge of the AML regulations plays a part in preventing fraud, so estate agencies ought to be trying to do their basic AML checks properly, or some extra ones, and although it’s not going to be a foolproof solution, if the various stakeholders work together better to share information then it…
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Latest property news
Letting agent sentenced to 26 months in prison following £92,000 fraud
A letting agent who ran a franchised branch closed down in 2015 after police were called in to investigate financial irregularities at the business has been jailed for 26 months for theft and fraud. He has also been disqualified from being a company director for five years. Thirty-six-year-old Peter Bell (pictured, left) was jailed at Northampton Crown Court earlier this week after pleading guilty to 11 counts of theft and four counts of fraud while running his branch of Enfields in Northampton on Mercer’s Row. His letting agent branch of the franchise network was closed overnight in August 2015 after Enfields directors were informed of a complaint against the business to police in Northampton. It subsequently transpired that there was a £92,000 gap in the branch’s finances which he had defrauded from an “untold” number of tenants and landlords across the city. During the investigation it also transpired that Bell and his former partner Rebecca Kirton had used tenant deposits and landlords’ rent to finance a luxurious lifestyle including an expensive rental property, leased luxury cars and holidays, including a trip to watch the Monaco Grand Prix. Kirton was also sentenced by the judge after she pleaded guilty to five…
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Latest property news
Former Ascot property developer jailed for £640k fraud
A former Ascot property developer, who hijacked details of an offshore company in the British Virgin Islands and forged documents to commit fraud and evade VAT, has been jailed for three years and seven months. He was also trading while disqualified as a company director. HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) investigators discovered that in June 2011 Keith Conner, 55, hijacked the details of the British Virgin Islands registered company, Pruton Investment Holding Ltd, to buy and sell a residential property in Thurloe Square, Kensington, London. Conner then forged a Power of Attorney document, in the name of a Malaysian businessman, to transfer the £309,000 profit from the London sale into a company bank account he controlled. A similar property deal in October 2011 involved the purchase and immediate sale of a business property in Earls Court Road, Kensington. Conner again hijacked the details of a company to commit the fraud, this time a UK based company, Bishopsgate Homes Ltd. Investigations showed that signatures had been forged on the contracts, leading to £331,000 in profit from the sale being paid into another bank account Conner controlled. The directors of the UK business had no involvement with their company being used for…
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Latest property news
Mother and daughter property fraud pair jailed
A mother and daughter team who helped a Dubai-based gang make a false £1.2 million application for a bridging loan by taking the identity of a deceased Kensington landlady have been jailed for property fraud. 31-year-old Laylah De Cruz (pictured) is to serve a five-year sentence and 62-year-old mother Dianne Moorcroft a three year term following a trial at Southwark Crown Court, during which the pair denied the fraud. The two were part of a gang, the rest of whom are still being sought, who identified a rental property belonging to a deceased landlady and then rented it using false papers. After this, with the help of her daughter, Moorcroft changed her name by Deed Poll to the landlady’s name. She later put the property on Eagle Place in Kensington on the market and, posing as the millionaire but actually deceased owner of the property, subsequently applied for a bridging loan of £1.2 million, which she was granted. The funds were then transferred to Dubai and have since not been traced. Moorcroft was arrested at her Blackpool home in February 2015 while De Cruz was arrested on her return from Dubai, where she lived as an expat, in May 2016. Suspicious…
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Latest property news
Court hears of model’s £1.2m property fraud case
The dangers of property fraud for home buyers, vendors, agents and conveyancers have been highlighted vividly by a case currently going through the courts in London. Model Laylah De Cruz (pictured) and her mother Dianne Moorcroft are standing trial after several professionals were duped into enabling the fraudulent application for a £1.2 million bridging loan on a four-bedroom terraced house on Eagle Place in Kensington, London (pictured). De Cruz denies persuading her mother to change her name by Deed Poll and, by later impersonating the real owner of the property, persuading both a local high-profile estate agent and a conveyancer that she had the right to sell the £3.15m property, and later gain a bridging loan for it. The money was transferred to a Dubai bank account and withdrawn as cash before suspicious Land Registry personnel could do anything to stop the fraud. Whatever the outcome of the trial, the legal and property industries face a huge problem when faced with persistent and sophisticated property fraud and identify theft attempts, as this case highlights. Julian Blake of law firm Wiseman Lee, which carries out conveyancing work and undertakes property fraud cases, says there is little either solicitors or agents can do…
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Agencies & People
Online rental fraud: scams create landlord nightmares
Rental fraud is on the rise, fuelled by a highly competitive rental market and low cost, or free-to-list platforms for advertising property. Research conducted by YouGov in 2013 estimated that over 1 million people had fallen victim to rental fraud, with at least a further 315,000 new victims each year, showing just how widespread the problem has become. Reported incidents increased by 44 per cent from 2014 to 2015, from 2216 reported incidents in the year ending March 2014, to 3193 in the year ending March 2015. However, it is likely that these figures underestimate the real scale of the problem – the Local Government Association claims that only 5 per cent of fraud incidents are reported. Classified advertising sites have become breeding grounds for scammers to post fake or misleading adverts at little cost and with few security measures. It is estimated that bogus landlords are making £775 million per year through rental scams, with an average cost per victim of roughly £2400. Now, the property classifieds site TheHouseShop.com has implemented a unique ownership verification process, using Land Registry databases, which, they say, combined with their numerous other security and safety checks, sets a new standard for security in…
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