Published on 29/02/2016
The Safe Buyer Scheme has today announced that the revolutionary Safe Buyer product is to be free to use throughout March 2016 to celebrate the successful fraud prevention case earlier this month.
Ed Powell, Director of BE Consultancy the providers of the Safe Buyer Scheme, commented “We are marking the first buyer deposit redirection fraud prevention by offering Safe Buyer free to every buyer that selects the product before the end of March. Mr Tamang, a property buyer that used the Safe Buyer Scheme, didn’t send his money to a criminal’s bank account after Safe Buyer detected that he had been given an unverified bank account to transfer his deposit to. The Safe Buyer Scheme sent alerts to the conveyancing firm in real time and filed an Action Fraud report to the police. This is a landmark fraud prevention that has generated significant interest from conveyancers, lenders and other property market stakeholders.”
Mr Tamang commented “In November 2015 I began the process of purchasing a property and instructed RG Solicitors to act on my behalf. RG Solicitors forewarned me of the risk of buyer deposit fraud and recommended the Safe Buyer Scheme to me. I am grateful to RG for this advice as, in February when I was about to exchange contracts, I received email instructions that appeared to be from RG Solicitors asking me to transfer my £10,000 deposit to a bank account that stated it belonged to my solicitors. The email I received looked exactly the same as previous emails from my solicitor. Prior to transferring the funds however, I logged into the Safe Buyer Scheme which immediately alerted me and showed me that the account didn't match my solicitor's account. I therefore did not send the funds, to what was in fact a bogus email with bank accounts details controlled by criminals. The Safe Buyer Scheme has identified that my emails were hacked and that is how the criminals received my personal data. In my opinion all buyers should use the Safe Buyer Scheme as Safe Buyer is proven to prevent this kind of fraud."
