It’s important to beware of scams and to take the necessary precautions to protect your money. In the past two weeks, we have heard of two incidents where parties in a conveyancing transaction have paid money to criminals posing as a firm of conveyancers. One payment was R100 000,00 and the other was R500 000,00. Hopefully, the banks will assist the victims to get their money back but this may be difficult if the criminals have withdrawn the money.
These issues are becoming more common and usually work like this:
- The conveyancers and the purchaser exchange a few emails regarding the property transaction. Often the purchaser has a Gmail or Hotmail account.
- Criminals infiltrate the Gmail or Hotmail “network” and use highly sophisticated software to search through all email accounts to locate words such as “deposit”, “trust account” or “property transfer”. Once the software finds these phrases, the criminals access the linked emails and catch up on the history of the matter.
- The criminals then create an email address that looks similar to the one used by the conveyancers and send the purchaser an email asking for the deposit or costs to be paid into a different account controlled by the criminals.
- The purchasers accept the email because it contains just enough detail to be plausible, and don’t scrutinize the email address properly or phone the conveyancers to confirm the change in banking details.
- The purchaser then makes the payment and sends proof to the incorrect email address.
- The incorrect payment is usually picked up a few days later when the conveyancers contact the purchaser to ask why the payment hasn’t been made into their trust account. By that time the criminals have withdrawn the money from the incorrect account.
- Banks find it difficult to assist in this situation because the problem had nothing to do with the banking system – the purchaser simply paid the money into the wrong account.
Most attorneys are careful to include words in their letters or emails stating that they will not change their banking details, and attorneys need to continue to try to educate their clients in this regard.
If you are ever required to pay money to a conveyancer (or any other party for that matter), please remember that criminals are out there and you need to do at least the following to avoid becoming another crime statistic:
- Check the sender’s email address. For example, johnsmith@lawyer.co.za is not the same as johnsm1th@lawyer.co.za (the “i” has been changed to a “1”).
- Look out for any factual errors in the email itself.
- Always be suspicious of PDF attachments to emails – they can be doctored.
- Phone the conveyancers to confirm the banking details. Don’t use the phone number in the email – it could also be fake. Verify the phone number from the conveyancer’s website.
Please beware of scams and stay say by taking the proper precautions with our money.