Total Property Completion Failure: NatWest ‘misplaces’ our house payment money

sooz

Are you certain your solicitor sent it by CHAPS?
If he mistakenly BACS-ed it, it would take 3 working days to appear in the Natwest account. Which may be today or tomorrow, depending on what time it was sent on Friday.

Troubled2012

UPDATE: Now been told that the money has appeared – 5 days after being sent. We can pick up the keys.

The story is that NatWest were doing a fraud investigation on someone with the same surname as the vendor.

Immediate questions:

1) Why didn’t they bother to inform anyone involved? I guess a fraud investigation has to be confidential, but surely one of the bank-approved solicitors on the buyer and/or seller’s side should have been informed? You don’t just make £250k of someone else’s money disappear for a five days.

2) Is having the same surname (and it was a very common surname) as a fraud suspect really reason enough to hold money without permission?

Anyway, I really wanted to get this experience online as I really couldn’t find any precedent when I Googled it (thanks for letting me know that it has been discussed at least once before on MSE).

I hope our experience helps anyone who goes through this in future. It was very hard to write impassively about what happened – you can imagine the stress.

Thanks for everyone who has pitched in with advice and commiserations. Our next battle will be getting some kind of compensation or full explanation of what happened.

Cheers

Mrs_Z

Well, I am SOOO glad they found your money! 'Fraud investigation' sounds like a lame excuse to me that covers a multitude of sins (incompetenence in solving this being one of them!). Still, that's not your problem as such. The next thing is, as you rightly say, to get some kind of compensation for the lost interest, your time and effort spent on trying to resolve the issue and/or chasing appropriate parties, whichever way you want to think it. Not to mention the HUGE stress.

I have to say that I was also starting to think that the solicitor was thinking of doing a runner....

All the best in your new home - the whole episode will make a tale to tell in years to come, but I know it's not excatly funny right now!

Doozergirl

We very nearly had a similar problem buying this house - the mortgage company screwed up in our case.

By 2pm our solicitor came out all guns blazing and used the phrase "If we don't complete tonight, I am going to blow them to high heaven".I think you need a solicitor like that. Someone is responsible for paying your interest charges and it isn't you.

(We did get things sorted at 4.50pm, ended up spending the whole day sat outside "our" house and the night in a hotel.)

agrinnall

A fraud investigation had crossed my mind. NatWest would not have been able to tell anyone that's what they were doing in case it was a fraud and the perpetrator disappeared. I would imagine if it's a common surname that there would have been other factors taken into account to trigger an investigation. I doubt if you will ever get any more explanation, and you may have difficulty with compensation given that the banks have a legal duty to undertake investigations of this type, but they may make an ex gratia payment so it's worth trying.

Good luck in your new home!

WestonDave

Re the fraud investigation point - this would fall into a Proceeds of Crime area and therefore potentially come under the money laundering regulations. Unfortunately when the government, drafted these regs left a massive minefield for banks and others that get caught up in it, in that if you have a suspicion, you have to report it and then stop work until it is cleared by the relevant authorities. You are not permitted to pass on this information to anyone (even unconnected) in case it tips off the guilty party - which then leaves you with a problem - you have an innocent party, in this case the OP who just knows their money seems to have disappeared, and after some delay reappeared. You won't ever get a proper explanation because by law they can't tell you!

If you want to look into this some more google Money Laundering Regulations, and get some strong coffee!

MickMack

Troubled2012 wrote: »

UPDATE: Now been told that the money has appeared – 5 days after being sent. We can pick up the keys.

The story is that NatWest were doing a fraud investigation on someone with the same surname as the vendor.

Immediate questions:

1) Why didn’t they bother to inform anyone involved? I guess a fraud investigation has to be confidential, but surely one of the bank-approved solicitors on the buyer and/or seller’s side should have been informed? You don’t just make £250k of someone else’s money disappear for a five days.

2) Is having the same surname (and it was a very common surname) as a fraud suspect really reason enough to hold money without permission?

Anyway, I really wanted to get this experience online as I really couldn’t find any precedent when I Googled it (thanks for letting me know that it has been discussed at least once before on MSE).

I hope our experience helps anyone who goes through this in future. It was very hard to write impassively about what happened – you can imagine the stress.

Thanks for everyone who has pitched in with advice and commiserations. Our next battle will be getting some kind of compensation or full explanation of what happened.

Cheers

But doesn't the NatWest bank account belong to the vendors solicitor?

Wasn't the funds being transferred from your Sol's Bank to the Vendors Sol's Bank?

Sounds like an excuse to me........

dodger1

Troubled2012 wrote: »

Our solicitor transferred our money from his company's Barclays account into the seller's solicitor's NatWest account via the CHAPS (Clearing House Automated Payment System) - the system that (supposedly) enables money to be transferred from one bank account to another on the same day

I don't see what the vendors name has got to do with this process. The money was transferred from one solicitor to another and not to the vendor. This whole thing just stinks.

Richard_Webster

If things are investigated by SOCA all involved have to be very careful not to tell anyone in case a fraudster finds out about the investigation.

However I am surprised that Nat West weren't able to ask for consent to check with the solicitors concerned as to more details about the transaction and thereby prove that the person involved in the conveyancing transaction was nothing to do with the person being investigated.

Maybe they did have the information because the seller's solicitor presumably phoned them with it asking what was going on and they could have passed this on to SOCA. Maybe it just took SOCA a long time to give the all clear.

Troubled2012

dodger1 wrote: »

I don't see what the vendors name has got to do with this process. The money was transferred from one solicitor to another and not to the vendor. This whole thing just stinks.

I couldn't agree more. Feel we will never have this explained to us, especially without another gruelling fight