Man left shocked as his house is 'stolen'

Post by sdenton4 » Mon, Nov 01, 2021, 7:37 PM UTC

anonporridge wrote: post #151

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."

Also, how does the seller disappear with that much money without being able to be IDed? That seems like a severe failure of the state. It almost makes me wonder if this is a semi common scam wealthy folks use to take poor people's desirable homes.

Post by BoxOfRain » Mon, Nov 01, 2021, 7:40 PM UTC

kybernetyk wrote: post #84

aclelland wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The quirk is that in the UK you’re not a free man but only a subject and in the end the crown owns everything and now fuck off, filthy peasant, before the king sends his men.

Post by sdenton4 » Mon, Nov 01, 2021, 7:41 PM UTC

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.

Post by anonporridge » Mon, Nov 01, 2021, 7:43 PM UTC

jakeinspace wrote: post #165

anonporridge wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm aware of this, but I do wonder what happens if, rather than using the stolen cash to purchase goods, the thief gave away the money? Either to friends, a random homeless person on the street, or to registered charities. Would that be still considered unreclaimable?

Post by anonporridge » Mon, Nov 01, 2021, 7:46 PM UTC

sdenton4 wrote: post #176

anonporridge wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin is pretty easy to trace. Could more easily disappear if paid in cash.

Seems to work well enough for ransomware...