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Criminals Steal House Thanks To Hacked Email
mask.of.sanity writes with this quote from ZDNet:
"An international cybercrime investigation is underway into a sophisticated scam network that used email and fax to sell an Australian man's AU$500,000 property without his knowledge. The man was overseas when the Nigerian-based scammers stole his credentials and amazingly sold two houses through his real estate agent. He rushed home and prevented the sale of his second home from being finalized. Australian Federal Police and overseas law enforcement agencies will investigate the complex scam, which is considered the first of its kind in Australia. It is alleged scammers had stolen the man's email account and personal property documents to sell the houses and funnel cash into Chinese bank accounts. Investigating agencies admit the scammers hoodwinked both the selling agents and the government, and said they had enough information to satisfy regulatory requirements. The police did not rule out if the scammers had links to the man."
Don't leave him home without a restraining order against yours.
Because it's insanely complex and stealthy?
The fact that property of this value can be transferred without the owner's knowledge and he has to go to the australian government in the hopes of recovering full value for the home is shameful. You would think that a court of law would need to be consulted and signatures would have to be issued and compared, at least through the mail.
Does the man lose his home? He never sold the property and I don't see why he should be giving it up.
These kind of articles never include a followup on what hapenned.
Please point us to an article where someones house was sold by hacking their e-mail account.
I'm wondering what happens now - does he make a claim on his insurance for a stolen house (and land)? Do the new owners lose their money/house?
I'm sure the previously requested link will clarify all this because it's obviously something that happens all the time.
dnuof eruc rof aixelsid
Australia is known to have cleaned up its tax, banking and property sales with complex ID tracking at a points along every transaction.
Thats is what makes this so interesting.
Every small move in Australia is watched over many interconnected databases. Mostly for tax.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100_point_check
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
does he make a claim on his insurance for a stolen house (and land)?
I would be amazed if such a clause or coverage existed in a homeowner's policy.
At the same time, I think I hear insurance companies pounding away on their keyboards getting ready to introduce it as a $120/year extra...or whatever would be reasonable, never owned a home to know what the costs and whatnot are.
I don't post AC. I like my -1, Flamebaits. Trump/Sheen 2012 on the Batshit Insane ticket!
I doubt the real estate agent will be refunding their commission.
Do the new owners lose their money/house?
Australia has Torrens Title, so once the new owners are registered they have an indefeasible title to the property (i.e. the fact that it was sold by fraud does not render the assignment void). Whether they (or more likely their agents) own the previous registered proprietor any money depends on the facts of the case.
http://xkcd.com/792/
You can add house to that list.
Here in the US criminals stole not the House, but the whole Executive Branch thanks to hacked voting machines! (allegedly)
...chain myself to my water piping and keep the gun cocked. I'm not leaving MY house. It wasn't for sale so you couldn't have bought it not matter what some f'n pieces of paper say. You burn the f'n papers or I burn the f'n house.
This does, although I am still not sure how the scammers got hold of the original certificate of title. Here in WA this is still a piece of paper and the settlement agent must have it to complete the transaction.
It can be replaced although it is extremely difficult to do so (trust me, I lost one).
"Do you think we could wipe out world hunger forever if scientists figured out how to make AOL's Free CD's edible?"-
http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/09/14/0144207/Criminals-Steal-House-Thanks-To-Hacked-Email
Everyone knows that Nigerian scammers can't spell and use English grammar correctly
That should have been the first clue
You keep using that word.
I do not think it means what you think it means.
It's the only way to be sure.
get it? its a play on words.
they say it is often more relevant then the comment above, all we know is its called the Sig!
Horsehockey, This sort of thing has happened many times before in this country. The problem happens because once it hits the registry the registry cannot legally be altered. So if the buyer acted in good faith it is up to the (accidental) seller to recover the funds from the crook. It doesn't happen often because most people are aware of it.
You don't need to hack an email account to do this. There is a flaw in the laws handling property registry.
My kingdom for a mod point. +1 funny... and redundant :)
Whenever in an argument, remember this.
Ya wot? Nothing to see here. Nothing with much accuracy anyway. We do have a system used for resolving identification but it is not particularly onerous. It does mean you cannot have phone, credit card or bank account without having a real name or identity attached to it. That is all it means.
I mean Carmen Sandiego and her gang have been known to steal whole monuments, I'm sure a house is a pretty easy job for them.
Monstar L
If you buy a DVD player from the back of a pub and it turns out to be stolen, then you have to give it back and would be lucky not to be charged with being in reciept of stolen goods.
If you buy a DVD player from the back of a pub, you have to give back your remaining brain cell, because it turns out that your brain is faulty. You can buy a damn DVD player from K-Mart for $35 (Aussie Dollars). I'm sure there's even cheaper out there.
I do understand the point you're making but your example's a bit dated.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
and have issued email warnings to all licensees in the state...
Didn't they learn anything? So they still fell back to e-mail as the official line of communication? With people like that running regulatory agencies, it's no wonder our world is so screwed up.
According to the wikipedia article fraud nullifies that at least in the state of Victoria. They used a forged title dead (abait unknowinglly though it matters not) to get the transfer registered. Hence they fraudulantly transfered the title, and in Victoria it would be null and void. I am going to assume that it is similar in Western Austriala, but I have not evidence that it is.
Here in the UK for as long as it's been, you used to get the deeds to a house when you bought it / paid off the mortgage. It is basically a printed piece of paper which tells you the details of the house, like boundary rights or restrictions, and who is the owner of the house. When under a mortgage, you can see that the mortgage company's details are used as the owner. This document gets updated whenever the property is sold or a mortgage is obtained against it.
Now a few years ago, these documents which you HAD as the ultimate proof you own your home became a museum piece, and now the only proof that you own the property is an electronic record in the Land Registry.
Unfortunately these electronic records have already been tampered with, and people have lost their homes because the government decided to trust a computer, rather than have the backup of who has the deeds to the property.
There was an article in the BBC TV news about the scam, and just how easy it is. This is what you get when you have easily bought politicians who think the answer to everything is a bloody computer system.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
more appropriate than redundant would be recursive.... though somehow doubt such a mod would make it into slashdot.
Here in the US, it's normal for a home buyer to buy title insurance (and for mortgage companies to require it if they're lending money) which insures that the buyer doesn't lose (much) money if the title is bad. There are all sorts of reasons this can happen - deliberate forgery isn't the only one, though it's not unpopular, as are "selling the same house to multiple buyers", etc.
The Wikipedia article on Torrens Title looks like the state provides the title insurance in case they've allowed fraudulent transactions to occur.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
How have there been over 100 comments and not a single one pointing that out?
The guy was on TV here in Australia. He claimed the authorization signature looked nothing like his , and he said it looked like a 5 year old child wrote it ....
I work with what I've got, man.
Whenever in an argument, remember this.
The owner can't protect himself against fraudulent sales because he doesn't know a transaction is taking place. The buyer, on the other hand, knows that a transaction is taking place and that there is a certain risk that it's fraudulent. The buyer has all the power and information necessary to make sure it's not a fraudulent transaction and to insure against it. That's why the buyer should lose the house and it should go back to its original owner. The buyer should have title insurance (either privately purchased or through the state).
If you don't place the responsibility on the buyer, no party who knows about the transaction has any interest in preventing fraud: the real estate agent gets his cut, the buyer gets a cheap house, and the con men get their money. In that situation, they can all ignore signs of fraud to the maximum degree that they can plausibly get away with.
"The thieves, believed to be Nigerian" and Soulskill's "The man was overseas when the Nigerian-based scammers stole his credentials"....lost in copying?
Australia is known to have cleaned up its tax, banking and property sales with complex ID tracking at a points along every transaction.
Thats is what makes this so interesting.
Not really. If you'd read the article, you'd have seen the sentence "It is understood the real estate agency did not request a 100-point identity check and was not required to do so." They didn't bypass the 100-point ID check.
Australia doesn't require someone to show up and sign a bunch of crap, I guess. It seems I signed about 5,000 documents both times I purchased a house.
FAQs are evil.
Not so sure you appreciate what the 100 point check means (or maybe I missed the sarcasm). Various types of ID are given points that's all it means. Nothing more.
A Photoshopped Birth Cert is worth 70 points, and a license, which can be obtained with a photoshopped Birth Cert and a driving test, is worth 40 points. With just this (and maybe a couple of photoshopped utility bills) you can open bank accounts, register company and pretty much anything you like.
There is no 'interconnected databases' at least none you would feel comforted by, and no-one is watching, unless they've been given a huge tip off before the fact. I used to work for the Tax dept and most of it is hit and miss stuff, exactly the type you would expect from a massive govt bureaucracy
When you see porn in Australia!
Australia is known to have cleaned up its tax, banking and property sales with complex ID tracking at a points along every transaction. Thats is what makes this so interesting. Every small move in Australia is watched over many interconnected databases. Mostly for tax. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100_point_check
You make it sound like a super secure big brother system. An expired passport and a student card gets you over the 100 point threshold.
Some insight from a UK perspective anyway. I work for a fairly large firm of solicitors in the UK who specialize in property/real estate. Here's a few worrying bits of information:
We are required to have ID on the file by law, we are not required to check it in any way whatsoever.
If the vendor/purchaser is long distance from our offices we will accept emailed/faxed copies of all paperwork (INCLUDING ID) within certain easily restrictions such as certified copies, see next point.
We will create a certified copy of ID from anyone that walks in from the street which is basically a legal way of saying we've had sight of the original. If someone was worried about sending their passport to us by post they could get a copy and take it to a local firm of solicitors/lawyers/attorneys and have them stamp it, we would then accept that by fax or email as if it were the original document. This process is usually done by whoever the office assistant/intern happens to be and they will certainly not know how to check the document to make sure it is an original. In my experience they tend to be more worried about whether or not they will be able to make the photocopier work.
We are never required to speak to our client by phone or in person, some simply prefer to do business by email for whatever reason. (sometimes language/accent barriers - communicating via google translate is an experience for sure)
We are not required to check signatures beyond a casual glance to make sure they look similar to the one shown on the ID and this is usually not done. If the document is signed that's good enough for most of the solicitors I've worked for.
Posting ac for obvious reasons.
I guess thats the mystery, where did the cash exit Australia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Transaction_Reports_and_Analysis_Centre may help.
In theory a bank at both ends should have seen something???
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
And how did you get a passport? An Australian passport is usually documented to some extent ~ expired for a short time or not.
Nobody wants this in their backyard again.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Israel_–_New_Zealand_spy_scandal
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
.. in Australia? That is essentially what happened. They stole his house and sold it. What if it were a car or a computer? If thieves can steal things and "sell" them to someone else who gets to keep it, something is very seriously wrong with the legal system, there.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I don't know about Australia, but in the USA, there is this concept of title insurance. A "sale" like that in the story is invalid because the title was stolen by fraudulent means. So the title is effectively no good. The title insurance (which is there to protecy the buyer with respect to defects in title) needs to pay out to the buyer for their loss and the owner keeps his home. There are already existing cases in the USA where home sales were voided due to improper or fraudulent title. In one of them, the "sale" was reversed 8 years after it was finalized, all because the seller's title was fraudulently obtained. And this was 30+ years ago, before email. The fact that email was involved should make it easier to void the sale.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Real estate agents in Australia are a cowboys compared to the agents I dealt with in the US and yes, I have experience with both.
From the Ottawa Sun
http://www.ottawasun.com/news/world/2010/09/11/15317471.html/
Hey I know the Chicoms are involved with building African infrastructures but this is going too far.
Seriously, are there significance with this? Are the Chinese banks easy to deal with or something?
I live in Western Australia... not that that is relevant to my comment... but I feel sorry for the poor bastard that just bought the house and lost money through this scam. Unles the banks cover the loss that is... .BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
I sort of think he should have kept a better eye on his properties, but that's neither here nor there.
Fundamentally, I think this is why we need some form of authentication that "only you know," but everyone can verify/authenticate against. Most places -foolishly- usually social security numbers here in the 'states. I think that's a terrible idea as the protections surrounding them are incredibly weak. I was going to suggest this fellow have some sort of PGP/GPG setup, but if the criminals got into his email, they'd probably have his passphrase(s) and key(s), too.
Sigh...
Lennie Briscoe was working on this care in 2003:
http://www.nbc.com/Law_and_Order/episode_guide/305.shtml
Elderly man owns his Harlem brownstone free and clear. Some scammer steals his identity on line, takes out a second mortgage on the house, hides the money, loan goes into default, bank forecloses, real owner is out on the street.
Then he finds scammer and kills him. Which is kind of interesting, since the victim is 79 years old in the story.
So, if they're doing it on prime time TV in 2003, it's not a story today. No matter where it happened.
Joe Dougherty, Florida, USA
The words I thought I brought, I left behind. So, never mind.
After all of this time we have finally found her!!! She's in Nigeria!
$ unzip, strip, touch, finger, grep, mount, fsck, more, yes,fsck,fsck,fsck,umount, sleep
So... if your Australian you have a number of hoops and checkpoints that verify who you are and record precisely what you are doing, but if your from Nigeria you're probably not going to be bothered much by the same series of checks.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
Can someone really sell a property in AU without the owner's signature? Hmmm.
A more likely scenario includes the real estate agent as scam leader, and looking forward to the commissions.
If you can convince someone that they don't have to do the check, I would posit that's an effective bypass technique.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
Don't be discussing MY Australian like that! Or did you mean "you're"...I know, it's an easy mistake to make if you didn't make it past third grade.
Except hoops and checkpoints is a bit of an exaggeration. And it shouldn't be harder (or easier) if you are from Nigeria. It isn't that onerous and it isn't that bad.
No, she stole the Nigerian's identity as well.
Some idiot in that story posted the exact same question! These fools are everywhere.
No need to be a dick. Its interesting that I make a non-disparaging remark about a country (presumably "yours") yet you act like I've slapped you in the face. Your best bet for success in life would probably be to grow up.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
This is why in certain countries you can not complete the transaction without being in person (or a representative) with a notary to finalize a deal...therefor nigerian scammer not being there would have sent up some flags!
I am surprised more countries do NOT share their info at how to avoid criminal activity...here in Canad, this is impossible to accomplish.