Payment diversion fraud: conveyancing

Criminals are actively targeting property purchases, with the aim of tricking you into transferring them your house deposit and/or the balance of purchase monies to them. This is known as Payment Diversion Fraud.

These schemes can be highly sophisticated, and almost always involve the criminals pretending to be your lawyer in order to con you into diverting your payment to an account they control.

Be extremely vigilant if there appears to be any change of payment details, and always double-check by calling your lawyer before you transfer your money, as emails can be intercepted or diverted.

You can test the account by sending a small sum to the account details provided and check that your lawyer has received this before transferring all of the money.

Victims can lose hundreds of thousands of pounds, and may never get their money back.

For further tips and a case study see the attached leaflet from the National Crime Agency.