Published on 08/02/2016
The Safe Buyer Scheme, a product developed by BE Consultancy to prevent property buyers having their deposits fraudulently redirected into the hands of criminals is pleased to report its first prevention.
RG Solicitors are a member of The Safe Buyer Scheme, and one of their clients who had received appropriate professional advice opted to use the Safe Buyer Scheme as “best practice” in their property purchase.
The client received email instructions to transfer their deposit to RG Solicitors. The instructions appeared to be genuine. Prior to transferring the funds, the client submitted the banking details from the conveyancers apparent instructions to The Safe Buyer Scheme, in order to verify their authenticity. The Safe Buyer Scheme advised to decline these instructions as the details did not match those of RG Solicitors.
The Safe Buyer Scheme provides a live alert system so that all the parties concerned, from the purchaser right through to the lender are aware that a fraudulent attempt to divert funds has been made.
Matt Gillies, the managing partner of RG Solicitors, said “Whilst we provide every possible level of security, we know that hackers attack our client’s emails and devices rather than our systems. We are extremely proud to have prevented one of these crimes occurring using Safe Buyer and we will continue to recommend it to all of our clients as the proven benchmark for preventing this type of crime”.
The Safe Buyer Scheme has reported this attempted fraud to Action Fraud.
