Man left shocked as his house is 'stolen'

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-59069662

by lbriner • 5 years ago

318 350 5 years ago

bbc.co.uk

freeqaz• 5 years ago

Is it roughly the same to "prove" your identity in the US as it is in the UK? In the US, at least for most credit checks, you just need your SSN, some public record data about where you've lived, and personal data (name, DOB, etc).

It's largely because there is no "National ID" system in the US (due to political reasons). That makes it hard for companies to track people, and the SSN is the only number that people consistently have.

Are there any examples of countries where their government is getting this right and eliminating stupid fraud?

lbriner11• 5 years ago

It sounds like the fraudster got a copy of the real person's driving licence, although he must have looked the real person presumably.

A Solicitor has to due the legal due-diligence to make sure they have the right to sell including usually ownership of the title deeds but if you don't have the title deeds and they are held by the Land Registry in name only, this is fairly easy to get around.

I smell an insurance claim against the Solicitor but it depends whether they did everything correctly or not, otherwise I don't know where he stands.

marcus_holmes• 5 years ago

though presumably in "these trying times" the entire transaction was done remotely and so the proof of ID was images/photos/scans rather than seeing the originals - a lot easier to forge and alter

AmericanBlarney3• 5 years ago

Seems pretty questionable as to whether due diligence was done given the first indicator neighbors had of the sale was after the transaction occurred. At least in the U.S. it's typically pretty tough to miss that a house is up for sale - signage, open houses, realtors showing up to give tours. Curious how this buyer even connected with the seller.

lbriner11• 5 years ago

Not sure whether they will ever find the link. Regarding signs etc. it sounds like the owner worked away so maybe the neighbours just assumed that he was selling?

In the UK, it is very much a paperwork exercise, I have never met any of the solicitors I have sold houses with, haven't even spoken to most of them (everything on email)

irrational3• 5 years ago

I live in the USA, this year we both sold our previous home and purchased our new home without the use of signage, open houses, tours, realtors, etc. We found the house we bought and found the buyers of our old house through our network of friends. We filled out all the paperwork from forms we printed off online. The title company took care of everything after that. It was all done completely online until the very last signing. At that signing the title company person told us that they are almost ready to have everything completely done online so that nobody ever has to meet in person. So, shortly it will be possible to completely buy and sell a house without ever meeting in person. At the time I was just thinking about how easy and convenient it all was (and how much money we saved by not having realtors), but now I’m wondering about the fraud aspects.

Johnny555• 5 years ago

Off market sales are not unheard of in the USA -- my neighbor's condo was sold off-market. They were talking to a realtor to prepare to sell, and the realtor put them into touch with a buyer that paid cash for higher than they planned to list it at. So it's completely possible for a home to sell without neighbors being aware of it.

michaelt• 5 years ago

In the UK there's no requirement that 'For Sale' signs be put up. Very few people look for a house to buy by driving around looking for such signs - online listings are what drive the traffic these days, and you can sell a house with nothing but online listings.

Of course, most buyers will want to see the house themselves before making an offer, as estate agents are famously creative in their property descriptions. If you're getting a mortgage to buy a house, the bank will generally insist on a 'survey' where an independent third party turns up and confirms that the building physically exists and suchlike.

79523• 5 years ago

Selling for below market rate would probably help things a lot.

cameronh90• 5 years ago

Currently buying a house in the UK and it involved rather a lot of ID verification. I had to provide, to the bank, estate agent, mortgage broker and lawyers, the following: passport, driving license, utility bills, payslips, source of funds, bank statements, app-based liveness verification and more.

However, in the event of an off-market cash transaction, a lot fewer parties are involved - potentially just a conveyancer/solicitor. I'm guessing it's them who hugely dropped the ball in identity verification.

spzb• 5 years ago

Same here. We completed over the summer and even had to provide our marriage certificate to the bank (no idea why, are single people not allowed mortgages?). Sounds very much like the conveyancers (lawyers) screwed up massively. There still some bits of this story I don't understand. Like, how did the fraudster get access to the house in the first place? Did he break in then fix the damage and replace the locks so he had a set of keys to give to the "buyer"?

MeinBlutIstBlau4• 5 years ago

Still need a purchase contract. But it's insane to me that UK law would allow for someone to forge documents in a civil matter and get away with it.

mcguire2• 5 years ago

"app-based liveness verification"

Ok, now you have me curious. Whazzat?

jaclaz• 5 years ago

I believe it depends, a house sale is no "ordinary" matter.

In other european countries like, say, Italy, Spain, France there are national ID's and - opposed to solicitors like in the UK - notaries which are a sort of public officials for the contract (and they will check and certify the identities of the people involved, besides the acts of property) and you won't likely be able to open an account or however cash a check (I mean large sums, like the sale of a house) with someone else's identity in any bank without proper ID.

Possibly, with at least two well forged pieces of ID[1], you can get around it in the bank, but I don't think it is easy.

[1] this is (or used to be) a common request, though I doubt it is Law, when you want to open a bank account in Italy, and you need to exhibit the actual documents, not a photo or similar.

handrous• 5 years ago

The situation with government data in the US is extremely frustrating. Between the government themselves and quasi-governmental private companies (the credit bureaus) they know practically everything about us—but we refuse to let them use that information in any kind of helpful way to make our lives easier and reduce our stress & workloads, because that would be "big brother" or a step toward ushering in the end times (for foreigners: yes, seriously, that's not a joke) or whatever.

anonymousisme2• 5 years ago

"It's largely because there is no "National ID" system in the US (due to political reasons). That makes it hard for companies to track people, and the SSN is the only number that people consistently have."

"Real ID" is now a thing. It's a "National ID". https://www.dhs.gov/real-id

2fast4you2• 5 years ago

REAL ID is a federal law, not an actual piece of ID. Congress passed the REAL ID Act in 2005. The act established minimum security standards for state-issued driver licenses and ID cards.

https://www.dol.wa.gov/about/real-id-overview.html

REAL ID doesn't sound like a federal ID system, it's just security standards for state issued ID cards.

outworlder• 5 years ago

No it isn't. This might be the case when SSNs stop being requested for non social-security purposes and 'real id' starts to get used in its place.

People don't necessarily have them either. Only those who have chosen to do so at a DMV.

SSNs are often assigned at birth, for people born in the US.

jonp8883• 5 years ago

The UK also has national ID system. It is almost unique in Europe in this respect.

iso163112• 5 years ago

The UK doesn't have a national ID system. It's not clear how such a system would help in this situation - if the fraudster managed to get a driving license, why would they have a problem getting an ID card.

mindslight• 5 years ago

There is no such thing as "getting this right" the way you're thinking. No matter what you choose, any possible source of truth will be imperfect. In this case, the UK Land Registry is used as a source of truth, but didn't thoroughly check IDs. Seemingly because the UK ID system is used as a source of truth, but then itself failed in some way.

With an ambient concept of ownership, one is inherently left with a tradeoff between trusting the system as defined and being able to override it. In fact, this is exactly what caused this failure of the victim being unable to get their house back - compared to the common law deed system still prevalent in the US, whereby the buyer would be left without any title and would have to fall back on title insurance to be made whole.

The only way to eliminate fraud is to define away right and wrong, creating a single source of truth ala Bitcoin [0]. In Bitcoin if you have the privkey to a pubkey, then you can transfer value to a new pubkey, period - there is no such thing as theft, as it has been defined away. But obviously this isn't the kind of harsh regime people have in mind when they say they want to eliminate fraud.

FWIW the political problem in the US preventing national ID is the complete lack of ability to reign in corporate behavior. The ongoing abuse of SSN and drivers license numbers by private surveillance companies needs to be stopped (by something akin to the GDPR) before it would make any sense to talk about creating even stronger identification.

[0] Actually this is going to fail for Bitcoin as well, because it lacks the key ecash property of untraceability. Since it lacks fungibility, it's only a matter of time until courts routinely override the computational system with their own version of truth.

WarOnPrivacy11• 5 years ago

I'm in the US. What I see is that stolen+sold property tends to belong to the original owner, not the purchaser. Is it different in the UK?

klyrs2• 5 years ago

I'm not sure the police would do anything different in the US. I'm guessing that proper owner, like most people, kept the deed in his house -- which was emptied of his belongings and sold. Without that, the police don't have much to act on.

quietbritishjim• 5 years ago

Paper deeds are no longer relevant to property ownership in the UK. The HM Land Registry records are authoritative (subject to legal challenges). See for example: https://hmlandregistry.blog.gov.uk/2018/02/19/title-deeds/

Edit: technically they are still relevant if the property has not been sold since the records were digitised in the 1990s

bogle• 5 years ago

In England the owner doesn't have the deeds, although they may obtain a copy. It's digital with the Land Registry. Scotland, incidentally, has the oldest land registry in the world (1617 CE), the Sasines.

WarOnPrivacy11• 5 years ago

In my state, original deeds are filed with the property appraiser's office. I suspect this is the case for all states but I do not know.

Our PAO gives a receipt at filing. Copies are available after the deed is processed. In my state, they're public record; in my county, they're available online.

source: worked for real estate attorney

op00to2• 5 years ago

Who keeps their deed in the house? When I bought my first house, my realtor basically steered us right into a bank to open a safe deposit box.

cortesoft• 5 years ago

I don’t think most people in the US hold a physical deed. I know I certainly don’t for my house.

staticman2• 5 years ago

You need a court case to determine if it was stolen is presumably the issue.

You don't want police running around "taking people's house back" without due process, presumbly.

lbriner11• 5 years ago

No, I think the issue is that police would have no power to "take the house back" because it was legally purchased. They could investigate the fraud committed by the seller against other organisations but specifically, the real owner is not the victim of criminal fraud.

I don't think he will have any ablity to forceably reobtain the house, although potentially, if he refunded the buyers money (after getting it from the accused), they might agree to give it to him back. On the other hand, if already cleared, it would probably be easier for the real owner to get his money back and buy somewhere else.

Very sad though.

chrisseaton5• 5 years ago

The key problem is that it is a civil matter. It's like a contract dispute - it's not a police matter. Obviously for the individual it's a major life-changing disaster... but in the eyes of the state it's equivalent to 'we ordered four cases of Coca-Cola but our vendor only delivered three'.

krisoft4• 5 years ago

The key problem is that it is a civil matter.

No. The criminal matter, as alleged, is that someone scammed the buyer, the solicitors and the Land Registry into believing that they are who they were not. That is not a civil matter, it is I believe fraud.

If a bloke sells their house, but then gets cold feet, or not happy with the compensation that is a civil matter. This is not what is alleged.

rkangel3• 5 years ago

Actually, in this case it should be both. It is a civil matter to get the house back, but obviously there was also some criminal fraud involved. The victim of the fraud though is presumably the land registry rather than the house owner.

so_throwaway5• 5 years ago

It is not different in the UK. This person will get their house back when the Land Registry has ticked all the boxes.

They were shocked by the reluctance of the police to enforce their property rights simply on their say-so. They were shocked by it because they hadn't really thought through how the system works. It is not the role of the police to evict someone who is the registered owner merely on the say-so of someone else who claims to have been defrauded. Clearly there are good reasons for this.

The article presents the facts as though they will never get their house back (with some creative ambiguity about what 'legal owner' means - does it mean the legally registered owner, regardless of any past fraud? or the actual rightful owner) because it makes a more interesting article than 'Man left annoyed after a painstaking legal process restores him his property rights'.

tzs• 5 years ago

But the house wasn't really stolen. It was fraudulently sold.

You might think that such quibbling cannot possibly matter, and maybe it doesn't in the UK, but in the US it can.

Here's a case from 2008 in Washington state [1].

Company X leased a car to Y.

Y forged documents to show X had released their interest in the car and then Y sold the car to innocent buyer Z.

X sued to recover the car from Z.

Washington law (RCW 10.79.050) states "All property obtained by larceny, robbery or burglary, shall be restored to the owner; and no sale, whether in good faith on the part of the purchaser or not, shall divest the owner of his rights to such property".

But there was no larceny, robbery, or burglary in this case so that did not apply.

Z got to keep the car.

[1] https://caselaw.findlaw.com/wa-court-of-appeals/1210407.html

superfamicom• 5 years ago

I live in the US and had my debit card (number only, one of the bigger data leaks) stolen years ago and ever since then my bank will check every purchase with me over $300. It was really frustrating for years until someone else took my card (from another data leak) and was easily stopped and new card issued. I cannot imagine someone selling my home without involving me, or at the very least without several other of my personal contact methods also compromised at the same time.

lbriner11• 5 years ago

The Solicitor has no existing relationship with the real owner of the house. A bloke turns up and says they want to sell their house and has the correct Land Registry details and some ID, the solicitor does other checks and makes it all happen.

The illegal seller must have known that the owner was away for some time though because even if everything is ready, it usually takes at least 2 months to go through.

wongarsu• 5 years ago

But surely the land registry has an existing relationship with the real owner of the land? Isn't that the entire point of the land registry, to be able to contact and deal with the person who owns a particular piece of land?

iso163112• 5 years ago

Vast majority of house sales involve at least one of

* an estate agent

* a mortgage company (on the purchase or the sale)

* involve a sale at a market rate

* involve parties that know each other personally (family etc).

To not have any of those surely should raise a warning flag that "this requires a little more investigation" than a forged driving license. This wasn't an abandoned house being sold after being empty for several years.

Androider• 5 years ago

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."

sofixa3• 5 years ago

In France it's the notary's job ( who are the only ones who can validate a sale) to ensure that the seller is who they say they are, and that they do actually own the land/house/apartment. Wonder how that works across the Channel and whose responsibility it was.

lbriner11• 5 years ago

It is the same with a Solicitor but if they followed the correct process and the problem was actually with, say, the DVLA who issued a driving licence in the wrong name, I'm not sure who is liable for the error.

laurent92• 5 years ago

The Notary in France doesn’t necessarily fully do this job. They have an obligation of means, ie check the last 30 years of ownership and permits, but there are many cracks in that system:

- Double ownership for 30 years followed by a proof of ownership from the real, hidden one;

- Or simply it is the notary’s understanding that there is no record past 12 years for example, and yet there is. If they have checked “the normal books”, their duty is fulfilled.

ElFitz2• 5 years ago

Don’t we have actual, physical, titles, tied to the property?

Could someone actually sell a house without those?

aclelland• 5 years ago

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.

dtparr• 5 years ago

I believe the 'quirk' here is that the fraud was able to get property ownership updated with the Land Registry, so the new owner is the official owner of record.

kybernetyk2• 5 years ago

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.

iammisc2• 5 years ago

No. If you bought it, you own it. The thief now owes the original owner damages. This is true in the United States and I assume England since it's old common law stuff.

It's why thieves try to steal and then turn over immediately.

anonporridge6• 5 years ago

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.

dmoy• 5 years ago

It depends on how Title law works in the jurisdiction.

I don't know how it works in this part of the UK, but in many states in the US, the buyer would left holding the bag - the original homeowner would keep the property.

It's one reason in the US that most property sales include a purchase of title insurance.

lbriner11• 5 years ago

I'm not a lawyer but the article implies that once the title is transferred, the new owner owns it! There might be liability with the Solicitor or the Land Registry, otherwise it would appear to be incredibly unfair!

JumpCrisscross3• 5 years ago

I don't know how it works in this part of the UK, but in many states in the US, the buyer would left holding the bag - the original homeowner would keep the property

Different ways of dealing with the problem of fraudulent transfer and property records. In the U.S., the risk is the buyer's. If the property was fraudulently transferred, the transaction is mutable. This makes the sureness of ownership, as well as the record, less reliable, while making ownership per se more.

The U.K. flips that assessment. If the Land Registry says you own the property, you can rest assured you own it. No re-litigating whether that transfer two sales back was done correctly. In exchange, this shit.

If you consider each country's history with respect to property and power, it makes sense.

MeinBlutIstBlau4• 5 years ago

This and un-filed liens are typically why you should always pay for owners policies on title. Otherwise if something comes up, you're royally fucked.

_0ffh2• 5 years ago

Yeah, A gets scammed by B and C pays the price.

If you can't get a hold on B, then clearly A should be the one all outta luck, not C.

Absolutely insane!

so_throwaway5• 5 years ago

You are confusing who actually owned it, or who morally owned it, with who legally owned it.

The claim is not that, once the legal issues and the fraud get untangled, the buyer will be held to be the rightful owner. The claim is that AT THE MOMENT, while the 'new owner' is listed in the Land Registry as owning it, and the 'old owner' isn't, the 'new owner' temporarily legally owns it.

They have written this article as though to suggest that this is final and the original owner has no recourse. That isn't the case. What is the case is that the police don't have a remit to investigate the fraudulent sale. If person A is listed in the registry (they 'legally own' the property) and person B isn't, the police will follow person A's instructions to remove person B from the property, but not vice versa.

JumpCrisscross3• 5 years ago

AT THE MOMENT, while the 'new owner' is listed in the Land Registry as owning it, and the 'old owner' isn't, the 'new owner' temporarily legally owns it

Not an expert on British law, but I don't think this is the case. The new owner owns it.

Not temporarily. Fully, permanently and properly. The previous owner was fraudulently deprived of it, and can likely get damages from the parties who signed off on the conveyance. But I don't think they have the right to reverse the transaction against the new owner's will.

the_mitsuhiko• 5 years ago

temporarily

I don't understand by what logic this sale is temporary? What mechanism can undo the sale?

anonAndOn• 5 years ago

In the US, the buyer is often required to purchase title insurance which would likely cover fraudulent transfer.[0]

[0]https://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/title_insurance.asp

iammisc2• 5 years ago

The us doesn't have centralized land registries.

While the counties record titles as a matter of convenience, the true title is determined by the courts.

Other countries have centralized registries so that if the country's database says X piece of land is owned by Y, that's final. In the us it can be litigated and title insurance comes into play for the buyer who purchased it fraudulently.

anonporridge6• 5 years ago

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.

sdenton44• 5 years ago

Paid in bitcoin?

koonsolo4• 5 years ago

Banks offer very little protection for scams like this. Basically "the money seems to be gone".

blitzar5• 5 years ago

It was 150k, the word house in the title should be in quotation marks not the word stolen

mrep2• 5 years ago

I'm guessing he had a fraudulent bank account opened in the owners name with the address as the house and then stole the bank mail as the bank mail would have apparently worked as verification as the original person for the sale according to this [0]. This story is scant though and needs more details.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29074464

mihaaly4• 5 years ago

Since it was not sold by the owner it is difficult to argue for the legality of the transaction. Whoever claims bought something has nothing in fact, the person they've been in business with had nothing to sell. Selling nothing is nothing. The records are false!

If the authorities assume things are in order here they should also be prosecuted for negligence or being accomplice and at least revert the FALSE transfer of ownership. (are we sure here that the 'buyer' is an unsuspecting party theyself?...)

pc862• 5 years ago

This sounds entirely like how you want things to work, or how you feel they "should" work in a just, fair world. It doesn't sound like you have any legal education or training to base this on.

But I greatly prefer your version of events to what happened in the article so please prove me wrong!

pjdemers• 5 years ago

In the US, there is title insurance. If the seller didn't have the legal right to sell the house, the house reverts to the legal owner, and the buyer is paid back by the insurance. It's not possible to get a mortgage without title insurance, and a cash buyer would be nuts to not demand it from the seller. In some states (example, California) it can get more complicated, though, because the right to sell a house isn't the same thing as the right to live in it. They buyer may own the house, but not have the right to force the current occupants to leave. That's why it's important to state in the contract that the house must be completely empty before the seller gets paid, and every month that it is not completely empty, a few thousand dollars is subtracted from the purchase price.

merpnderp• 5 years ago

In some states you can buy a house without title insurance. I assume this is so that people who enjoy Russian roulette and jumping out of planes without parachutes can enjoy the same adrenaline rush when buying a home.

tantalor• 5 years ago

It's common to buy real estate from someone you already trust, such as a family member. You know the title was good when they bought it, so you can bet the title insurance fee (several thousand dollars) against that trust nothing fishy happened since then.

bluGill• 5 years ago

Some states protect their titles better than others. In Iowa (possibly other states) land transfers are done by the state who verifies the seller really has right to sell the property, so title insurance isn't something you need to buy. (title insurance does cover other things as well, so banks make your buy it for those things, but once the sale is closed it is your property)

hn_throwaway_99• 5 years ago

Perhaps, but in some places (aka Texas) title insurance is unnecessarily and outrageously expensive:

https://www.texasobserver.org/entitled-to-profit-in-texas-ti...

horsawlarway3• 5 years ago

Eh - depends on why you're buying the house.

There are a lot of rental properties for sale with "tenants in place" in my area.

If you want to live in it, then yes - Ensure seller is responsible for removal.

If you want to continue renting the property then a lot of times it's easier for both parties to complete the sale and then let the current rental contract conclude before doing reno/construction.

WarOnPrivacy11• 5 years ago

If there's a lease in place, that lease continues unabated.

If the new owner wants the tenants out, the tenants have to agree to break the lease. Otherwise the tenants can continue to live there until their lease runs out.

It doesn't matter whether these are the best options for the owner(s). They're the only options.

closeparen4• 5 years ago

This seems backwards. To evict someone you have to swear up and down that you're going to occupy the place yourself. People get prosecuted for e.g. doing an owner-move-in eviction and then selling to a developer. The old owner doesn't have a legal basis to get rid of the tenant, but the new owner does.

xyzzyz• 5 years ago

From the perspective of the buyer, I don’t care how exactly the owner removes the tenant. It is immaterial to me. What I care about is that no tenant occupies the property I am purchasing. If the owner cannot guarantee that, eg. they cannot legally evict a tenant, that’s fine, I simply wont buy the property, it is the owner’s problem, not mine.

WarOnPrivacy11• 5 years ago

To evict someone you have to swear up and down that you're going to occupy the place yourself.

Where do you get this from? It's not like any US law I've ever heard of.

For the evictions I've worked on, the homeowner simply wanted the tenants out (non-payment, etc) so they could re-rent or sell the property. They didn't ever have to live there.

ballenf• 5 years ago

While people decry the inability for crypto transactions to be adjudicated in court, what we don't talk about as much is that this is also the direction of non-crypto transactions. As the article stated, the police initially refused to even consider the theft of the man's house a crime.

We used to say possession is 9/10ths of the law. Now it seems the algorithm is 9/10ths of the law.

You have maybe 10% chance to reverse a transaction that was approved by the computers. Or at least we're headed that way.

lbriner11• 5 years ago

That's not what they said. They said it was not criminal but civil, which a lot of contract and tort law falls under, it means the police won't do the investigation for you.

I don't know why they considered that this was not fraud, which is criminal but maybe they couldn't point to a detail that showed where the fraud took place.

They might also have been wrong to say that!

dragonwriter2• 5 years ago

the police won't do the investigation for you

Even in criminal matters, they don't do the investigation for you, they do it for public prosecutors, which may or may not have incidental utility to you.

tonyedgecombe2• 5 years ago

The article says "Police initially told him it was not fraud but are now investigating." My guess is the police couldn't be bothered.

A friend of mine had a problem with squatters moving into his house (which wasn't empty). Initially the police refused to get involved until he got his solicitor to point out it was a criminal issue.

implements• 5 years ago

Any UK reader can avoid this by signing up to:

https://propertyalert.landregistry.gov.uk/

It’s the Land Registry itself, it’s free, and: “Once you have signed up to the service, you will receive email alerts when certain activity occurs on your monitored properties, allowing you to take action if necessary.”

op00to2• 5 years ago

This is the same bs we have to deal with in the US with financial credit and social security numbers. Because there’s no actual security, the individual must monitor their own credit for abuses, or prevent anyone from accessing it via a freeze.

m4tthumphrey• 5 years ago

Just signed up to this. Only alpha numeric passwords allowed. Always worries me.

_0ffh2• 5 years ago

I guess you'll just have to hope that they don't truncate the password after the first eight characters or so...

cstross• 5 years ago

Only covers England and Wales -- not Scotland and Northern Ireland. So not actually UK wide.

tialaramex4• 5 years ago

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 would get recorded as activity, some time before they can file paperwork to claim it was sold, and so that gives you considerable time to say "Hey, I'm not selling this, why is there a Search by Honest But Incompetent Solicitors LLC?" and phone up to yell at somebody.

rectang2• 5 years ago

That's messed up — it pushes the blame onto the victims for not monitoring.

_jal2• 5 years ago

Rather similar to "identity theft", the strange name for a particular form of (usually bank) fraud.

kelnos• 5 years ago

Please don't throw around accusations of victim-blaming like this.

No one is claiming that the victim is at fault. But I do think it's useful information to pass along that it's possible to get notified of things like this before they become big problems.

It's like... it's not my fault if I get mugged at 3am in a part of the city known for being full of violent crime, but I also should have known better than to be walking around in a part of the city known for violent crime at 3 in the morning. Just because I am the victim, it doesn't mean I couldn't have avoided an incident if I'd used common sense.

It's about outcomes and reality: sometimes we have to take on a little extra responsibility in order to make it less likely a bad thing will happen. That's not fair or just, but it's the way the world works.

dahfizz• 5 years ago

This is a pathetic and harmful attitude. You should not encourage victims (or would be victims) to be helpless.

sdenton44• 5 years ago

Truth. A much better system would be for the titles office to proactively get in touch with owners through a second channel to inform them of any activity/changes, including change of communication details.

hypertele-Xii• 5 years ago

Security and freedom are both active pursuits. Anything unattended will be repurposed and recycled by law of nature, in one way or another.

We humans can and do try to fight against nature. But that's exactly what it is, a fight! And I doubt the Art of War said "Pay no attention to your enemies. They will leave you be."

mihaaly4• 5 years ago

It is always nice being vigilant for all and every possible scam and fraud out there coming our ways, being ready and prepared for whatever comes from whatever direction and for whatever target of ours, going after every suspicious matters we encounter or believe we encounter, being suspitious against as much as possible preparing ourselves for all kinds that could happen out there, but shouldn't be required. If it is required then the sytem does not work, need to be fixed! Not the victims.

bunnie• 5 years ago

I have to agree with this. A little O/T, but reminds me a bit of how US patents are handled. If you're able to constantly monitor patent publications (the stage where patents are disclosed but still in review), it is cheap and easy to challenge applications. But good luck trying to get any work done while trying to to keep up with the deluge of patent publications!

If you miss your chance to challenge the patent before it issues, the cost to protest goes way up, even if your arguments would have been just as valid during the publication phase.

I get that the system is trying to reward vigilance, but it punishes people who put more time into sharing ideas than protecting them, especially considering the PTO does not search most modern repositories of open source for prior art.

macksd• 5 years ago

This is how I feel. I'm all for encouraging potential victims to take reasonable precautions, but especially when the system could be fixed if a few people tried, it eventually gets tiresome. I've been given free "credit monitoring" a few times because of data breaches at places that should have done a better job of protecting my data. But there is so much noise impacting my credit score that I just don't even bother looking at it anymore. I would hope this property system does better, at least. The annual "no activity" email would at least be nice occasional dose of peace-of-mind.

psd1• 5 years ago

At what point in human evolution did we flip from hunter-vs-hunted on the savannah to sublime docility because we now have _the system_ to _ensure safety?_

fsckboy2• 5 years ago

It is always nice being vigilant for all and every possible scam and fraud out there coming our ways, being ready and prepared for whatever comes from whatever direction and for whatever target of ours, going after every suspicious matters we encounter or believe we encounter, being suspitious against as much as possible preparing ourselves for all kinds that could happen out there, but shouldn't be required.

Yes, and anybody convicted of fraudulently conveying a house should be convicted, and surely you will agree, be given a run-on sentence!

seriously though, you're absolutely right, the burden of this type of thing should not fall on the individual. So called "identity theft" shouldn't be on the victim at all.

sdenton44• 5 years ago

This sort of scam is really common in Kenya. Walking around you'll see plenty of houses with large spray-painted letters stating 'THIS HOUSE IS NOT FOR SALE.'

milliams• 5 years ago

Ah, I wondered why those signs were so prevalent when I visited. Thanks for the explanation.

blibble• 5 years ago

if you're really paranoid you could put a charge on it too (like a bank or a building society would have)

makes it a much less tempting target

brightball• 5 years ago

In the US I’ve always been told it’s in the best interest of a home owner to always have some type of bank loan on the property. Mortgage, even a zero balance HELOC. Supposedly, this allows the bank to ensure there’s no title fraud because they maintain a claim to it.

vmception4• 5 years ago

Another reason to use an anonymous LLC/entity. The owning entity gets a new state identification number which won't have appeared in as many leaks to be impersonated. While the individual owner of the LLC isn't known to impersonate.

lbriner11• 5 years ago

Not a reason for the UK. We don't have anonymous companies like the US e.g. by assigning your attorney as a director so they can hide behind privilege.

The Directors of your limited company would be available for all to see with their address!

vmception4• 5 years ago

The company that buys the house doesn't need to be formed in the UK.

gruez• 5 years ago

1. doesn't that shift the problem to impersonating the LLC? If anything that seems easier than impersonating a person?

2. does this work with financing? how do mortgages work?

vmception4• 5 years ago

Social engineering is always a threat to anyone. What occurred in this article would not have been available if the entity was the owner.

filoleg• 5 years ago

doesn't that shift the problem to impersonating the LLC?

Correct, but as the grandparent comment says, the likelihood of identifying info of your LLC (that could be fraudulently used) to appear in as many data leaks is way less than that of your personal info.

Plus, even if this type of fraud is still technically possible with LLC (albeit with much more difficult steps), just the fact that it is more difficult should discourage the criminals (unless they have some personal vendetta against you). Similar to all the nigerian prince emails, why would they go for a target that is more protected, as opposed to going for any much less secured targets? Hence why they intentionally make their scam emails as obvious as possible, so that they know if the person took the bait, then they are super likely to follow through with the scam until the very end. No reason for fraudsters to make their own lives more difficult.

rkangel3• 5 years ago

I have a friend who was almost the buyer of a house in the UK in a very similar situation. Fundamentally, it relied on the seller buying counterfeit identity documents (passport and driving licence) off the internet. That way, in theory, the identity checks were all conducted.

There was the suggestion that the seller's solicitor was in on it, but no firm evidence. The seller has been arrested at least.

lbriner11• 5 years ago

It's a shame that the systems that are really important, like passports, id cards, property registers etc. are all still so far behind in basic security. They could easily require certain info up-front on the title like mobile, photo etc. and then if you need to update it, you have to do it via a solicitor or equivalent, it's not like most people change their photo or mobile number every week.

79523• 5 years ago

But the phone number system isn't perfectly secure. A fraudster could transfer your account or even have physical access to the phone line. And it still relies on a solicitor to authenticate changes which could then be fraudulent.

The advantage of the current system system is that it is fairly explicit and public. It can be checked without any secret codes or processes using the information on the title itself.

iso163112• 5 years ago

How did they find the house? Was it advertised through an estate agent?

Aulig• 5 years ago

Something similar happened in Germany recently. A house worth millions was fraudulently sold like this. The original owners got it back luckily.

German video about it: https://youtu.be/TolvzYzk64c

bellyfullofbac• 5 years ago

At least here the thieves were known (or even well-known). What if the buyer transferred money to some Nigerian prince who showed up with fake ID and disappeared after the sale? Would the buyer end up with no money and no house?

kfprt• 5 years ago

These things always happen when a low trust society comes into contact with a high trust society.

kybernetyk2• 5 years ago

Police: “not my problem, lol”.

The joy of paying taxes.

philpem• 5 years ago

It is pretty much how policing works in the UK. Declare it a civil matter, get it off the books as soon as possible... and that's not mentioning the mountain of police misconduct court cases that have popped up recently.

Sadly the only chance of getting anything out of them is if the media get involved and hold their feet in the fire a bit.

so_throwaway5• 5 years ago

Why do you expect the police to investigate this?

If A says that B is trespassing on their property, and A not B is listed as the legal owner of the property according to the single source of truth, isn't it normal that the police should evict B and defend A's property rights?

Imagine if the police took the attitude "we have to give equal weight to B's hard luck story about how he's the technical owner". Harassment and vexatious claims of fraud would be absolutely rampant.

mhh__2• 5 years ago

This is what fiscal responsibility looks like. The police and local councils have been cut to the bone by the Tories.

ineedasername3• 5 years ago

It seems this is becoming somewhat common in the UK: https://www.step.org/industry-news/uk-solicitors-warned-grow...

janandonly• 5 years ago

I am baffled by the fact that a complete house can be had for the little sum of £131,000.

That's about €150.000 in real money... I guess where I live that would get me a garage, maybe.

MeinBlutIstBlau4• 5 years ago

Ahem...you're missing a $ :)

nickkell• 5 years ago

It’s an absolute steal

iso163112• 5 years ago

Luton isn't exactly the nicest of places, but £131k is way below the asking price for even the cheapest houses there

fortran77• 5 years ago

It’s odd that in the UK a person who buys stolen property legally owns it.

funshed2• 5 years ago

Every story I have read about this before is the transaction(s) are reversed. I presume the owner opted for cash instead of the property back.

so_throwaway5• 5 years ago

They legally own it in the sense that they are the legally registered owners, currently.

They do not legally own it in the sense that the original owner will not be able to eventually recover it after the fraud is unravelled.

Your instinct that this is odd is correct. It is odd because it isn't actually true. The statement of a police officer made while standing on the street outside someone's house deciding whose story to believe is not the final legal verdict on this case.

ensignavenger• 5 years ago

My grandfather was rather fond of telling a story about a neighbor when he was younger who came home from vacation to find that their house had been stolen... like someone had brought a wagon and team of horses in, jacked up the house, and pulled it away. Being in a rather rural area, no one apparently noticed the heist!

stretchwithme2• 5 years ago

Talk about something that needs multifactor authentication.

funshed2• 5 years ago

UK does require you to prove your identity but the solicitor seems to have failed here with stolen identity. As the original owner did not update there details to another address.

stretchwithme2• 5 years ago

Getting something in the mail is only imaginarily secure.

iptrans• 5 years ago

Sounds like the Land Registry is missing a NoTransfers bit in their settings for properties.

ElFitz2• 5 years ago

It’s wild to think that DNS registries might be better protected than real estate ownership.

MeinBlutIstBlau4• 5 years ago

This exact reason is why in the US you physically need to be in person to sign loan documents to purchase property. You need 2 forms of ID, verified by the parties, copies of it taken, and notarized.

iso163112• 5 years ago

It was likely a cash purchase, certainly was a cash sale, and the ID was verified by the solicitors.

anonu• 5 years ago

This is somewhat the point of "title insurance" in the US. In this case the buyer would be protected since technically the real owner never actually sold the property.

cletus• 5 years ago

Having gone through the purchase and sale of houses I'm honestly confused at how this happens. It involves a ton of paperwork, phone calls and in-person appointments, generally.

If there is a mortgage on the property, the bank holds the title. The bank has a relationship with the owner. How did the bank sign off on the transfer of funds and title? They'd have to verify the identity of the seller.

If there was no mortgage, at least in the US some bank normally holds onto the title on behalf of the owner so the same applies.

There would need to be a settlement process where the sale proceeds (minus mortgage repayment) needs to be paid to the seller. What happened here?

Being aware of the possibility of fraud, banks can and do make simple checks in my experience. A simple phone call with the contact details on record would've probably prevented this.

In addition the Land Registry authorizing title transfer, the bank would have to be on the hook here too. It's a colossal screw up and a huge nightmare for the owner to deal with but I imagine restitution will be made.

It sounds like he probably won't get his house back. I assume the buyer acted in good faith. It sure does suck though.

whartung• 5 years ago

Having gone through the purchase and sale of houses I'm honestly confused at how this happens. It involves a ton of paperwork, phone calls and in-person appointments, generally.

It seems that this was sophisticated identity theft.

If someone managed to get a DL with your name on it, but their picture, and your SSN, then it's pretty much carte blanche at that point.

Go into a bank and say "I need to close my accounts". "What are the account numbers?" "Oh, golly, I forget -- here's my DL, my BDay is XX-YY-ZZZZ and my Social is 123-45-6789. I recently moved from 1234 Main St. to 4567 First Ave." "Of course sir, one moment." Next thing you know you're walking out with a check.

And..that's it, it all comes from that. Buy a house, sell a house, request some documentation. Especially, since they're SELLING the house, they don't have to go through the rigors of a background check for the loan. The BUYERS are placed under a microscope. The sellers? "So, you got the key?" "Yea." "We're good, sign here."

And it's noone's fault except the original perpetrator. Everyone else did "due diligence". If the questions were answered properly, showed appropriate ID, what more can they do?

iso163112• 5 years ago

It sucks that the bank has its money stolen in your scenario, but at least the person who the bank owes the money to (the real holder) doesn't lose anything.

meltedcapacitor• 5 years ago

The fraudster probably picked a property with both an absentee owner and no mortgage for that reason.

david-cako• 5 years ago

isn't there a Steve Martin movie about that

bsanr• 5 years ago

A reminder, once again, that "identity theft" does not exist. It is fraud, plain and simple, and the responsibility of the businesses which aren't performing due diligence in confirming your identity. 6-figure sums shouldn't be exchanging hands without multiple layers of confirmation. This could easily have been avoided with a search for any other numbers associated with the man and a call to them to confirm.

scosman• 5 years ago

Imagine if we really did tokenization of assets? This type of fraud would be much easier (steal password vs months long identity theft), and impossible to reverse.

nootropicat3• 5 years ago

Easier? It would become borderline impossible. How exactly do you steal the seed for a hardware wallet? How do you even know where it's stored?

iso163112• 5 years ago

You steal the wallet, you own the house. You lose the wallet, you no longer own the house.

Animats• 5 years ago

This is apparently enough of a problem in the UK that the land registry has procedures for locking a title and for reporting frauds.[1]

[1] https://www.gov.uk/protect-land-property-from-fraud

vanilla-almond• 5 years ago

A bit long, but here is a summary from the BBC Radio programme You and Yours which has more detail than the BBC News report:

Background

Mike Hall (owner of the property) moves around a lot due to his work. He rents out his home, but due to COVID the property has been empty for some time.

Returning to his property

When Mr Hall returned to his house he could tell clearly the house has been broken into. The front door window pane had been smashed and partially replaced, and the locks had been replaced.

Reporting to the police

Police told Mr Hall it was a civil matter and Mr Hall had to leave the house and contact his solicitors.

Mr Hall put in an online application to Bedfordshire Police Service to notify them of a crime. Every time he got an automated replying stating this was not a criminal offence but a civil matter.

He also contacted Action Fraud (UK’s national reporting centre for fraud and cybercrime, run by the City of London Police). They also said it was a civil offence and they could not help him.

Mr Hall: "So everywhere I turned, it was a closed door"

Contacting the BBC

Mr Hall contacted the BBC Radio programme You and Yours (consumer affairs programme) and they confirmed this was a criminal offence, not a civil offence. (Comment from me: speaks a lot about the police that the owner ends going to a BBC Radio programme due to inactivity and incorrect information from police sources.)

The BBC put Mr Hall in touch with the Bedford Fraud Squad who agree Mr Hall is a victim of fraud and is now investigating.

How did it happen?

The criminal contacts the solicitor and pretends to be Mr Hall. But how did the criminal convince the solicitor he was Mr Hall?

Solicitors require identity documents e.g. Passport, Driving Licence (both include owner photo). The criminal applied for and got a genuine duplicate driver licence from the DVLA (Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency) in Mr Hall's name ("genuine document fraudulently obtained").

Mike Hall's driving licence is in Welsh and contains the title 'Reverend', his address, his photo and signature. The criminal's licence is in English, with the title 'Mr', a different address, signature and photo. This is the fraudulent driving licence the solicitor saw.

It gets worse...

In April 2021, the DVLA contacted Mike Hall to confirm if he had applied for a duplicate driving licence as they has a suspicion the request they had received could be fraudulent. Mike Hall confirmed to the DVLA he didn't apply for a duplicate licence. The DVLA said they would cancel the fraudulent request.

Unfortunately, they failed to cancel the duplicate licence even though they promised they would.

The criminal gets the genuine duplicate driving licence and changes the picture in the driving licence. The DVLA would not comment on how the criminal altered the driving licence details. However, they say they are taking this matter very seriously (they described what happened to Mike Hall as "awful") and are working with Bedfordshire Police.

Fraudulent bank account

In April, a new TSB bank account is fraudulently created in Mike Hall's name. In July, over two days, £131,000 is deposited into the bank account - and then withdrawn. The BBC reporter contacted TSB to ask them: why did they not flag this as suspicious activity? TSB said the activity didn't trigger any suspicions and they are working with the police on the case.

Will Mike Hall get his house back?

Reporter: "Very possibly not"

Reporter: "If your name is on the Land Register for a property, that property is yours and it doesn't matter if you bought that property from a fraudster."

"The Land Registery is the only record of property ownership we have in the UK [England and Wales]. It is state guaranteed and that means if there is fraudlent change of title, which has happened in this case, victims of fraud and mistakes can be compensated."

This type of fraud ("vendor fraud") is on the rise. Compensation has risen from £2m to £3.5m in just twelve months - a 40% rise.

The Land Registry say they rely on solicitors to make checks to spot fraudulent attempts to impersonate property owners. Empty, rental and properties with no mortgages are particularly vulnerable to this type of fraud.

And what about Mike?

The BBC showed Mike the fake driving licence used to impersonate him: "I felt sick actually - seeing someone else's face on my driving licence...I felt an emptiness in my stomach and it make it all very real to me."

design-of-homes• 5 years ago

Thanks for the summary. Everyone looks bad in this story: the police, the solictors, the DVLA, the bank, and finally the law itself which probably hasn't changed for decades if not longer.

A law that says a home can be fraudlently sold to an (innocent) purchaser and thus confers ownership on the purchaser, while the original owner loses ownership is simply not fit for modern times. Even if Mike Hall receives compensation, he's still lost his home and the contents in the home.

Will the compensation match the purchase price of the house and the contents in the home? And what of the innocent house buyer who bought the property? Surely it would make more sense to return the house to the original owner, and for compensation be paid to the house buyer.

ChrisMarshallNY• 5 years ago

I remember reading about a "sovereign citizen" outfit, doing something similar, in the US.

In that case, the "sovereign citizen" would get bounced out on their ear, but they can still make the homeowner's life a nightmare.

https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/sovereign-citizens-sentence...

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/26/nyregion/moors-newark.htm...

jokoon• 5 years ago

It became much funnier when I remember the old saying "property is theft". Quite fitting to this news.

koonsolo4• 5 years ago

It's weird that people get identified by their driver's license. Don't they have digital ID cards that are better suited for veryfying who is who?

karatinversion• 5 years ago

The UK is funnily backwards about some things. In particular, they have neither national ID cards, nor a population registry. You end up sending utility bills to the government as proof of address.

mhh__2• 5 years ago

It can be an absolute farce. I signed up for a GP, still living with my parents, they needed proof of address which I obviously don't have because I didn't pay for the water bill, so instead they accepted a written note from my father who provided no ID, and wasn't registered at the GP.

That may sound relatively minor but if I were doing some ID fraud it's all I would've needed to get started i.e. you need the first level of trust to exploit.

The British state is carefully designed to have the nationalized and privatized parts in the wrong places.

blunte2• 5 years ago

"You and Yours obtained the driving licence used to impersonate Mr Hall" ... what? who?

And then, "Once the house was sold to the new owner for £131,000 by the person impersonating Mr Hall, they legally owned it."

The people who sold the house did not have the right to sell the house because they did not own it. The person who bought it does not own it since it was not legally sold.

jonp8883• 5 years ago

You and Yours is a long running consumer affairs show on BBC Radio.

blunte2• 5 years ago

Hah! Thank you. I would have never guessed this.

lifeisstillgood2• 5 years ago

UK house owner - just signed up to the Land Registry alert system. Which has to be a record from not knowing something existed to signing up in four minutes.

1. The registry seriously refuses passwords that do not have alphanumeric characters only. Did not try Unicode.

2. Most of the UK is not in the land registry - it only is compulsory for land sold IIRR since the 1990s and generally has records going back to early 1900s. If someone owns land from before then, no-one publically knows who they are or who owns it. As most land in the UK is held by government or aristocracy and they have not needed to sell it for centuries we don't know who owns what.

3. This simply cannot be the first time - something this sophisticated, the original fraudster did not so this the first time now. How common is this? I mean see above - the land registry has a monitoring service for this ?

4. Thinking about it, I just added a monitoring account with just an email. If I create a new account and try to add $TargetAddress I find out if it is monitored - and I suspect that that is not going to count as a monitoring event !

iso163112• 5 years ago

About 85% of land in the UK is registered - including the vast majority of domestic dwellings.

lifeisstillgood2• 5 years ago

My apologies - bad memory

https://whoownsengland.org/2019/01/11/the-holes-in-the-map-e...

jchook• 5 years ago

Reminded of Victor Lustig, who sold someone the Eiffel Tower.

He impersonated a government official and told a group of scrap metal dealers it was too costly to maintain and that it was set to be demolished and sold as scrap.

The man who purchased it was too embarrassed to go to authorities, lest it ruin his reputation.

theonlybutlet• 5 years ago

"it's a civil matter" seems to be the go to excuse for British police. There's a whole TV series following property owners in the UK who have experienced issues and this response comes up way too often in the series.

zeristor• 5 years ago

Seemingly the gem Earth of the issue is the proof of identity.

Mention is made of a driving licence being obtained to open a bank account, was this the actual Driving licence? If it had been faked then the bank should have raised a flag.

There is a fair amount about having a government account to log in for taxes etc, is this robust enough to be used in property transaction like this? I not why?

Will this example highlight a number of other similar cases? Will it prompt others to try it?

gumby• 5 years ago

Seems like the point of the conveyancer is to prevent this sort of thing.

In California it seems that a title transfer company is in practice the only way to transfer property, and for their exorbitant fee they do at least insure the buyer against this risk in perpetuity.

(Last time I bought a house in California I read the seller’s insurance policy and discovered its perpetual nature. I realized that if I ever had a problem I could sue the seller and their policy would cover me (and them). Unfortunately the title company refused to do the transfer until I bought my own title insurance. What a ripoff)

desktopninja• 5 years ago

When signing/transferring over the title deed, aren't all parties involved supposed to be physically present in front of a lawyer/notary?

Me thinks due diligence by all members involved in this transaction was severely lacking and they should be held accountable. I.e. Real Estate agent, bank, brokers, what have you. One could even say they all conspired in this property theft.

Alternatively, perhaps the victim was lacking some sort of documentation that allowed the illicit procurement to occur?

pintxo• 5 years ago

Really interesting, a very similar case has recently been reported in Berlin, Germany [1]. Here the fraudsters tried to get legal ownership of a whole apartment building in Berlin. It seems they nearly made it, but then some insurance company sent a letter to the actual owners who could successfully blocked the transaction from committing.

[1] (in German) https://www.spiegel.de/panorama/justiz/berlin-wie-ein-rentne...

shric• 5 years ago

Really close to https://youtu.be/CS9ptA3Ya9E (satire from Mitchell and Webb)

apricot13• 5 years ago

I remember reading about something similar a few years ago. A lady had paid off her mortgage turned out that made her property vulnerable because without the mortgage company being involved there were less checks. Someone stole her post, impersonated her and sold her property without her knowledge obtaining the deed as well I think. Its always stuck in my brain!

I wonder if thats what happened here too?

fennecfoxy• 5 years ago

Lol how does this sort of shit even happen in 2021. It's meant to be "the future".

lal• 5 years ago

Ironically it being "the future" is at least part of the reason why it happened. In the UK, all the land records are digitized nowadays, so the scammer didn't need to steal the physical deed to the property to pull off the scam. All they me had to dk was present their fraudulent identification to the office holding those digitized records and it was over without the owner even having to know.

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK• 5 years ago

System doesn't seem very secure, but it relies on thiefs being lazy. If this happens 10 times a year, it's couple million pounds - much less than the cost of setting up a more secure (and thus more inconvenient) system. Just like credit card payments are very insecure, but they just charge some extra % in transaction fees to cover the losses.

PS later it mentions that Land Registry pays out $3.5m/year compensating fraud victims, so my estimate wasn't too far off)

sonicanatidae• 5 years ago

I love that everyone's take on it is, "welp, it's legally theirs now".

How in the hell can an illegal, fraudulent transaction lead to legal ownership?

samueldamon• 5 years ago

"I have read of a gentleman who owned a so fine house in London, and when he went for months of summer to Switzerland and lock up his house, some burglar came and broke window at back and got in. Then he went and made open the shutters in front and walk out and in through the door, before the very eyes of the police. Then he have an auction in that house, and advertise it, and put up big notice; and when the day come he sell off by a great auctioneer all the goods of that other man who own them. Then he go to a builder, and he sell him that house, making an agreement that he pull it down and take all away within a certain time. And your police and other authority help him all they can. And when that owner come back from his holiday in Switzerland he find only an empty hole where his house had been."

- Dracula, 1897.

Man left shocked as his house is 'stolen'

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