There have been stories lately where people's houses have been fraudulently sold by scammers to a third party without the real estate agent realising. More recently, an Applecross real estate agent thwarted an attempt by scammers to sell an owner's house. The real estate agent was contacted by a supposed owner of an investment home to sell a house in Applecross. The agent contacted the owner and found out that it was a scam.
In another case in Belmont, the owner's computer was hacked via a trojan horse (software sent to the owner which, when executed, enabled the hacker to gain access to the computer). They used details of the investment property found on the computer to request rent money be sent to an overseas account.
Recently, the industry has embraced changes that require a more strict approach to identity verification to make it harder for these scammers to succeed in these scams but it seems that it still CAN happen to you.
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