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Man left shocked as his house is 'stolen'

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Man left shocked as his house is 'stolen'

#141

Post by irrational »

yupper32 wrote: post #67
irrational wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in the USA, this year we both sold our previous home and purchased our new home without the use of signage, open houses, tours, realtors, etc. We found the house we bought and found the buyers of our old house through our network of friends. We filled out all the paperwork from forms we printed off online. The title company took care of everything after that. It was all done completely online until the very la…

> I live in the USA, this year we both sold our previous home and purchased our new home without the use of signage, open houses, tours, realtors, etc. We found the house we bought and found the buyers of our old house through our network of friends. We filled out all the paperwork from forms we printed off online. Surely you left a massive amount of money on the table then, right?

In what way? We sat down and decided how much we wanted for our house and told the potential buyers how much. They thought about it for a day and then told us they would give us that much money for the house. Maybe we could have made more on the open market, but we were happy and they were happy.

Re: Man left shocked as his house is 'stolen'

#142

Post by ska »

thereddaikon wrote: post #128
dtparr wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the 'quirk' here is that the fraud was able to get property ownership updated with the Land Registry, so the new owner is the official owner of record.

Sounds to me like in the UK you cant truly own land if the government can just decide it belongs to someone else.

> cant truly own land if the government can just

This is mostly how private property works in practice, everywhere.

Re: Man left shocked as his house is 'stolen'

#143

Post by gifnamething »

vmception wrote: post #73
lbriner wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a reason for the UK. We don't have anonymous companies like the US e.g. by assigning your attorney as a director so they can hide behind privilege. The Directors of your limited company would be available for all to see with their address!

The company that buys the house doesn't need to be formed in the UK.

Now you're paying extra SDLT

Re: Man left shocked as his house is 'stolen'

#144

Post by ska »

yupper32 wrote: post #67
irrational wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in the USA, this year we both sold our previous home and purchased our new home without the use of signage, open houses, tours, realtors, etc. We found the house we bought and found the buyers of our old house through our network of friends. We filled out all the paperwork from forms we printed off online. The title company took care of everything after that. It was all done completely online until the very la…

> I live in the USA, this year we both sold our previous home and purchased our new home without the use of signage, open houses, tours, realtors, etc. We found the house we bought and found the buyers of our old house through our network of friends. We filled out all the paperwork from forms we printed off online. Surely you left a massive amount of money on the table then, right?

> Surely you left a massive amount of money on the table then, right?

s/surely/potentially/

They may have been better off also. At least the agent commissions are saved, and maybe other costs. If the buyer is motivated to buy, who knows if they weren't already over market?

Re: Man left shocked as his house is 'stolen'

#145

Post by pmyteh »

zarzavat wrote: post #108
mytailorisrich wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Land Registry is the final arbitor of who owns what in England and Wales. I don't think that's true because for instance there are still properties unregistered (as mandatory registration was phased in until 1990). Certainly it seems possible to rectify the Register, not least in case of fraud [1] Also, in English law, a valid sale of land must meet strict criteria, including being made by Deed. I am not a lawy…

Yes I expect that, if pressed, the courts would void the entire transaction and restore the property. The land registry may be the arbiter of who currently owns what, but the courts are the arbiter of what "happened" according to the law. Otherwise it sets an absurd precedent. If it was not some man's house but a critical piece of infrastructure, the courts are not going to stand idly by and let some random person ta…

No, the courts wouldn't. A genuine innocent purchaser, properly registered at the Land Registry, has good title. (Note: not the fraudster - their downstream victim). The original victim's options for recompense are the scammer, the solicitors who did the conveyance for the fraudster (if negligent), or the Land Registry itself.

Nobody is going to end up as the accidental innocent purchaser of a stolen Sellafield, so that's not a concern. If the government really needs to reverse a transaction under these circumstances it could use a compulsory purchase order or a private act of Parliament.

Re: Man left shocked as his house is 'stolen'

#146

Post by 2fast4you »

anonymousisme wrote: post #118
freeqaz wrote: post #2

Is it roughly the same to "prove" your identity in the US as it is in the UK? In the US, at least for most credit checks, you just need your SSN, some public record data about where you've lived, and personal data (name, DOB, etc). It's largely because there is no "National ID" system in the US (due to political reasons). That makes it hard for companies to track people, and the SSN is the only number that people con…

"It's largely because there is no "National ID" system in the US (due to political reasons). That makes it hard for companies to track people, and the SSN is the only number that people consistently have." "Real ID" is now a thing. It's a "National ID". https://www.dhs.gov/real-id

> REAL ID is a federal law, not an actual piece of ID. Congress passed the REAL ID Act in 2005. The act established minimum security standards for state-issued driver licenses and ID cards.

https://www.dol.wa.gov/about/real-id-overview.html

REAL ID doesn't sound like a federal ID system, it's just security standards for state issued ID cards.

Re: Man left shocked as his house is 'stolen'

#147

Post by pmyteh »

pdmccormick wrote: post #88
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article says "The Land Registry paid out a total of £3.5m in compensation for fraud last year." which tends to imply they have some liability.

I wonder if that means they don't pay all that much compensation on a case by case basis, or if there isn't that much fraud occurring to begin with.

I suspect they'd rather you claimed against the fraudster or a solicitor, with the compensation fund as a backstop. If that is the case, it could be neither: just that most people get recompensed elsewhere.

Re: Man left shocked as his house is 'stolen'

#148

Post by anonporridge »

aclelland wrote: post #21
Androider wrote: post #15

> Once the house was sold to the new owner for £131,000 by the person impersonating Mr Hall, they legally owned it. That's nuts. Why isn't it the case that the person who failed to properly vet the seller is out of £131,000 and the house? So I can "buy" a local mansion and then say "oops, I didn't know this random guy didn't own it. Oh well."

Yeah, that part confused me to. I'm pretty sure that if I bought a stolen xbox from some guy on a street corner and the Police find me with it, they'd not throw up their hands and say "oh well, I guess you own it now, on your way". I assume there is a specific legal quirk with property ownership.

Interesting side note. That's true for property, but not for cash.

Cash is legally considered fungible. So, if someone steals a bunch of cash and buys something from you with it, even though that specific cash technically belonged to someone else before theft, it can't be reclaimed even if they can prove it.

Re: Man left shocked as his house is 'stolen'

#149

Post by _jal »

rectang wrote: post #138
tialaramex wrote: post #39

For what it's worth. If you own Real Property in England, even if only a Leasehold (Long Lease e.g. 99 years) you can get the Land Registry to email you about activity or, once per year, the lack of activity for your property records. https://propertyalert.landregistry.gov.uk/ Land Registry records have a sort of poor man's locking. The buyers (or in practice their solicitor) need to first perform a "Search" which wo…

That's messed up — it pushes the blame onto the victims for not monitoring.

Rather similar to "identity theft", the strange name for a particular form of (usually bank) fraud.

Re: Man left shocked as his house is 'stolen'

#150

Post by filoleg »

gruez wrote: post #80
vmception wrote: post #43

Another reason to use an anonymous LLC/entity. The owning entity gets a new state identification number which won't have appeared in as many leaks to be impersonated. While the individual owner of the LLC isn't known to impersonate.

1. doesn't that shift the problem to impersonating the LLC? If anything that seems easier than impersonating a person? 2. does this work with financing? how do mortgages work?

> doesn't that shift the problem to impersonating the LLC?

Correct, but as the grandparent comment says, the likelihood of identifying info of your LLC (that could be fraudulently used) to appear in as many data leaks is way less than that of your personal info.

Plus, even if this type of fraud is still technically possible with LLC (albeit with much more difficult steps), just the fact that it is more difficult should discourage the criminals (unless they have some personal vendetta against you). Similar to all the nigerian prince emails, why would they go for a target that is more protected, as opposed to going for any much less secured targets? Hence why they intentionally make their scam emails as obvious as possible, so that they know if the person took the bait, then they are super likely to follow through with the scam until the very end. No reason for fraudsters to make their own lives more difficult.

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