Radio 4’s You and Yours programme on Friday 13th September focussed on the growing area of vendor conveyancing fraud.
The programme focussed on the case of a homebuyer who has lost £100,000 after being defrauded by criminals pretending to be from a branch of Acorn Solicitors.
The same fraudsters were the focus of a report featured on BBC Radio 4’s Moneybox back in April.
Moneybox highlighted a case where a homebuyer lost £735,000 to the criminals who had managed to register themselves on the Find a Solicitor list.
David Robinson, a solicitor representing these fraud victims said: “The SRA should accept responsibility for the information it makes available about individuals and whether they are or are not solicitors.
“It is unacceptable, in my view, that either a solicitor or a member of the public cannot phone up or email or write to the SRA and get reliable confirmation that X or Y is or is not a solicitor, since it is the SRA who set the criteria and requirements for getting onto the Law Society website.
“They are the ones who designed the system. They are the architects of it. They should, if the system isn’t fool-proof, accept responsibility for the fact that it isn’t fool-proof.”
To listen to the programme in full, please click here. Chris Harris, Managing Director of Lawyer Checker says: “We are aware of many cases of vendor conveyancer fraud that are not in the public domain and as new cases continue to emerge media and public interest follows."
Over 350 conveyancing firms are now using Lawyer Checker in order to make checks against the recipient account.
