“Intimidation and hypnosis”: the expert revealed the main fraudulent schemes in the housing market

Becoming a victim of a fraudulent scheme is a fairly common fear of real estate sellers and buyers, and these fears are completely justified. There are no official accurate statistics on such crimes: the guilt of attackers can rarely be proven. However, as the personal experience of buyers and owners shows, the number of meetings with real estate scammers has increased sharply since 2014, after the annexation of Crimea.

Elena Mishchenko, head of the city real estate department at NDV Supermarket Real Estate, told MK about how to recognize intruders and what schemes the criminals use.

One of the fraudulent schemes is carried out by salesmen-actors hired by the owners-swindlers. The actors, by agreement with the real owners, impersonate the real owner of the property, who, we recall, acts as an accomplice.

The scheme works as follows: the actor looks for a buyer, shows the apartment and negotiates a deal. You can easily check all the documents from the actor: request USRN information (since January 1, 2017, the Unified State Register of Real Estate contains all databases), an extract from the house register, a single housing document, a certificate of major repairs or absence, a copy of a financial personal account .

As a result, the buyer finds out that the seller is conscientious, and the apartment has no encumbrances or legal defects. The only problem: the buyer does not know that the seller is not the real owner, but only a fraudster who looks like the real owner with a similar photo in his passport. As a result, the deal is completed.

The buyer becomes the new owner, moves into the apartment, but an unpleasant surprise awaits him: the real owner suddenly appears, who sincerely does not understand why his apartment is registered to a stranger. The deal is disputed, and trials begin, during which it turns out that a fraudulent scheme is taking place. As a result, the former owner gets the apartment back. The buyer in such a situation is left with nothing.

“Unfortunately, in our country, independent purchase of real estate is often associated with risks,” comments the MK expert. – These can be either undetected encumbrances or more serious problems, so it is always recommended to purchase a secondary apartment together with a realtor. No matter how thoroughly the buyer conducts his own inspection, he does not have the resources that a specialist has: knowledge, experience and time. In particular, in the case of a fraudulent seller, the realtor would check the identity of the owner not only using the required documents, but would also interview neighbors, study the social networks of the lot owner, request additional certificates and documents, ask additional questions and carefully study the behavior.

The owners themselves are not immune from fraud. In this case, we are talking mainly about telephone scammers from a neighboring country scamming Russians. Their activities expanded widely in 2014, after the annexation of Crimea.

“Scammers working with apartment owners resort to subtle psychological influence on the victim, manipulation, and sometimes even hypnosis. Basically, we are talking about scammers from Ukraine who make phone calls, but “offices” are already appearing on the territory of our country,” says Elena Mishchenko.

First, the attackers call the potential victim and introduce themselves as employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Investigative Committee or the bank security service. For subsequent confidential communication, they send photos of fake IDs and can even name the personal data of the interlocutor (passport series and number, registration and residence address, bank card number, etc., which are in the pre-purchased database). They can answer any question and have specific, truthful information, alternating it with deception and manipulation.

The task of swindlers is to intimidate and at the same time inspire complete trust. They convince the victim that some scammers are trying to steal a large amount of money from the account, and a criminal case has already been opened in which they need to take part. If the interlocutor believes, the attackers move on to the next step: they carefully offer to transfer money to a supposedly safe account, in fact, appropriating it for themselves.

Having received what they want, the scammers do not stop, but move on and continue to ruin the victim: in particular, they insist on the need to take out a loan secured by property. At this moment, fraudulent realtors get involved and quickly sell the apartment, leaving the victim with nothing.

– Such fraud schemes in the real estate market, of course, do not occur every day – primarily because of its complexity and multi-stage nature. Often, owners still realize that they are dealing with intruders and turn to loved ones, the police for help, or immediately end the conversation and block the number, suspecting fraud, the specialist continues.

How to avoid becoming a victim of such a scheme? It is important not to answer unfamiliar calls in instant messengers, because they are usually used by scammers. Employees of banks and government agencies never call to resolve important issues, especially through mobile applications. If a conversation does happen, you need to inform your loved ones about it, consult with friends in order to objectively assess the situation, look at it from a different angle.

– Usually, attackers try to put pressure on the victim in a short time, with the need to keep everything secret, try to maintain a conversation for as long as possible, ask not to hang up and always be in touch. This is an important red flag, which already makes it possible to recognize the fact of fraud,” summarizes Elena Mishchenko.