30/03/2017

During the course of most property transactions, you will be required to transfer money to your solicitor. The amounts transferred can often be significant and, as such, scammers are now targeting property transactions, aiming to trick both solicitors and their clients into sending monies to alternative bank accounts.

It is important that upon each request for payment you call your solicitor’s office directly to check that the request is legitimate and also to verify that the account details supplied are correct, to ensure that a legitimate request for funds has not been intercepted and amended by fraudsters.

In addition to this, when you call your solicitor to verify this information, it is important that you call your solicitor’s normal office telephone number, rather than any telephone numbers stated on the correspondence received. The telephone numbers too could have been tampered with and you could be calling the fraudsters directly, who would, of course, confirm that the account details specified are correct.

It is, of course, important to be vigilant throughout the entire property transaction and should any correspondence or telephone calls that you receive throughout the transaction seem suspicious, we suggest that you contact your solicitor directly, by calling their usual office telephone number, before disclosing any information or discussing the transfer of money.

If you need more information or require our assistance, please contact  01782 205000 or email enquiry@beswicks.com.