Deception and refund: scammers have added problems when buying a home
Buying an apartment from a person who is under the influence of telephone scams is a terrible dream of Russians planning to purchase real estate. The number of people deceived continues to increase, despite warnings in the media and social networks. Indoctrinated people are pushed to sell real estate, and eventually those who manage to buy a home from a fraud victim turn out to be victims. Courts are increasingly returning apartments to former owners to the detriment of new ones. Izvestia worked with lawyers to understand the situation.
They sell, but they live
In Yakutia, criminals forced a 69-year-old local resident to sell his home.
"The attackers, posing as employees of Rosfinmonitoring and law enforcement agencies, informed the man that loans were being issued in his name, forced him to sell the apartment by deception and transfer the proceeds in the amount of 3.5 million rubles to unknown bank accounts," the republican prosecutor's office said in a statement. The question of the fate of housing is still open, and there are civil lawsuits over property ahead.
In September, according to a similar scheme, a resident of Krasnoyarsk sold her home to "protect" herself from theft.
At about the same time, it became known that a resident of Moscow (the mother of a member of the SVO) sold two apartments on Trade Union Street under the influence of telephone fraudsters and transferred money to criminals. The woman also took out three loans and sent them to the scammers.
Another dramatic story unfolded in Kislovodsk, where a local resident, according to the same scenario, first sold her apartment, transferring money to fraudsters, and then returned the housing through the court. Initially, the court was on the buyer's side, but the woman secured the appointment of a forensic medical examination. The experts concluded that at the time of signing the contract, she was suffering from mental problems in the form of an organic emotionally unstable asthenic disorder.
Judicial nuances
In practice, a home seller deceived by fraudsters may well return his property. The most high—profile case of this kind is the trial of embezzlement of funds from the People's Artist of Russia Larisa Dolina. In September, the Moscow City Court recognized as legitimate the decision of the Khamovnicheskiy district Court to satisfy the singer's claim to the buyer of her apartment, Polina Lurie, who bought a house in the Valley in the center of Moscow at a discount for 112 million rubles. Hypothetically, the Valley is obliged to compensate the buyer in the amount of the transferred funds. However, the buyer may lose money if his dishonesty is proven in court.
Singer Larisa Dolina
However, most often in cases of this kind, we are not talking about stars, but about ordinary Russians who are hardly able to return the money for the apartment to the buyer. Therefore, as a result of cancellation of a transaction made under pressure from third parties, losses often fall on buyers.
— Cancellation of such transactions involves restitution, that is, the seller must return what he received from the buyer, — says lawyer Ekaterina Krasnova. — But what can a person who has given everything he had to scammers return to the buyer?
Earlier, Izvestia covered related criminal and civil proceedings regarding the sale of an apartment in Moscow under pressure from fraudsters. Deceived by phone scammers, an elderly woman first transferred all her funds to criminals, and then sold her two-bedroom apartment. She gave the money she received from the buyer to the scammers' couriers. After that, the criminals forced her to set fire to the military enlistment office. The pensioner herself is being tried under the article on hooliganism, but in another case (on fraud) she is being treated as a victim. The buyer of the apartment initially proved the honesty of the transaction, but after the intervention of the prosecutor's office, the contract was canceled, the housing was returned to the former owner.
Curiously, in this case, the court did not take into account the fact that the female seller provided the necessary certificates from a psychiatrist and a narcologist before the transaction. Representatives of the bank, realtors, appraisers were involved in the transaction. Nevertheless, the court considered that the Muscovite had committed the actions under the influence of deception, and canceled the deal. No one returned the transferred funds to the buyer.
What to pay attention to
Anastasia Savchenko, lawyer at the Soglasie real estate agency, listed the main mistakes and key factors that should be considered when buying a home on the secondary market.
— The first is the price of the object, — says Savchenko. — The underestimated value of real estate should arouse suspicion. Usually, such a price may indicate the urgency of the sale for some problematic reasons. If the price indicated in the contract is lower than the market price, this may lead to the recognition of the transaction as fake and illegal, especially if there are receipts for the difference. The court, as a rule, takes into account only the amount specified in the contract, which creates the risk of financial losses for the buyer.
The second important factor is the documents for the apartment.
— It is definitely worth checking whether the apartment is being sold personally by the owner or by proxy, — says the lawyer. — Buying through an intermediary involves maximum risks: the power of attorney may be forged, revoked, the owner may be incapacitated or die. All this leads to the recognition of the transaction as invalid.
The third position that should be carefully studied when buying real estate is the mental and physiological state of the seller himself.
— When buying, it is advisable to get a certificate from a narcologist and a psychiatrist, especially if the seller is elderly, to make sure of his legal capacity and the ability to be aware of his actions, — says Anastasia.
Nevertheless, experts often get in the way of fraudsters, and not only from law enforcement agencies. So, in September, the Cherepovets police awarded a local realtor, who stopped an attempt to sell an apartment under the influence of fraudsters. Anastasia Trenicheva acted as an intermediary in a real estate deal and realized that the 60-year-old owner of the apartment that her client was going to buy was acting at the behest of criminals.
— Thanks to her actions, the Cherepovets woman managed to save an apartment worth about 3 million 520 thousand rubles, — reported on the official channel of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia in the Vologda region.
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