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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."
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.
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"
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)
http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/09/14/0144207/Criminals-Steal-House-Thanks-To-Hacked-Email
Wait, so he still has the original Title Deed? Then the house was never properly sold and the Title Insurance company should be stuck with the bill. Under what system can a fake title, after being identified as a fake, survive? That completely defeats the purpose of a Title and Title Insurance. Responsibility for verifying the authenticity of a transaction must always lie with the actual parties to the transaction, not uninvolved third parties, even when one of the parties to the transaction purports to be the third party. To do otherwise creates perverse insensitives for the only parties capable of identifying fraud, the uninvolved third part can't identify it, before the fact, on account of never having the opportunity.
Realities just a bunch of bits.
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.
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.
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
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.