Is this attempted fraud?

Professor_Z

JimmyTheWig wrote: »

Was any of this linked to why the purchase didn't go ahead?
What would have happened differently for you if you had been given the right form in the first place or if they called you back to sign the right form?

princeofpounds wrote: »

Actually the phrasing I used was sloppy, but this is what I meant:

There has to be some exploitation of value.

On my first reading (I believe the OP's account is somewhat confusing) I did not believe there had been any attempt to cause the OP a loss. Now I read it again, the involvement of this fee is confusing; if the purpose of changing the document is to charge a fee then there might be something to it. But I can work out if they were expected to pay it or not, it seems not as this was just a data request, the fee was never actually demanded.

Not sure. There have been communication issues which the developer, some caused by wrong details for us. However, although our address was wrong on the second/third reservation form it became more wrong (sorry for the bad English!) at a later date which meant some correspondence did not get to us. Also another detail was right on all the forms (and they were using the correct details) but later started using incorrect details. This is really hard as I do not want to give the game away! It is very complicated story which have the developer either deliberately or by incompetence not communicating information to us.

The thing is that the EA told the developer that they had got the address wrong, as when the EA called my wife they used the wrong address so she corrected them. We have a copy of the email from the EA to the developer advising that they have our address wrong and gave them the correct details. The sales advisor did use our correct address in some emails between herself and the EA but then went back to use the incorrect one. And why later did another part of our address change, which made it hit and miss as to whether we received letters?

There is also evidence in emails that they new details which we should have been told about and they just didn't say anything – I believe this effected the house sale, although this is a different subject to the reservation forms.

I am sorry if my account is confusing, I perhaps should have left our the incorrect address/phone number details. Although it is relevant to the rest of our story it is probably not relevant to any question of fraud.

The annual management fee is a fee which would have been payable every year once we had bought the house. So if the sale had gone through we would have been expected to pay £175 per year and possible more if the management company chose to raise it.

Professor_Z

@browneyedbazzi - We have a carbon copy of the 10:30 document, the sales office kept the inked version.

We were wondering if this is something that the police would deal with but we thought that maybe they wouldn't take it seriously. I think a trip to the police station is in order to see what they say.

carefullycautious

Have you read the small print on the sales brochure as on most new builds either flats or houses I have seen it written that any charges as in service/management fees are to be given at a later date.

I will try to find an example of this to show you. This could be why you were not told at time of signing.

Did you lose your home because of the above?

JimmyTheWig

I think, OP, you need to consider what you want to achieve with this.
I think there is a reasonable consensus here that what has happened "may be fraud". I don't think anyone is in a position to say that it is or it isn't for definite, but it may be.

So what next?
You could sue them. If you win, they will have to pay you compensation for what you have missed out on compared with if they hadn't been fraudulent. Which strikes me as nothing. So there is no point in you suing them.
You could report it to the police. Whether there is enough evidence, public interest and chance of being successful to make it worth the police prosecuting I don't know. What would you personally get out of this? Nothing.

If you are interested in gaining out of it then the best thing to do is to put it behind you. All you can gain is the experience of what has happened and the knowledge of what to look out for in the future.

If you are interested in causing trouble for the company who have clearly caused trouble for you then go ahead and report it.

ging84

jjlandlord wrote: »

It does not matter if it cost money to anyone for someone's actions to be fraud.



You have a strange definition of 'dishonesty'... :rotfl:

When i started writing my reply the OP had not clarified that the altered form did include adding the management fee, and that that fee had never been discussed either.
That pushes it well away from a trivial format change towards clear evidence of dishonesty.

kixxb

Regardless of the fact that the OP may not have lost out financially on this property, I still think it's important to raise this issue to the appropriate ombudsman - if only to perhaps prevent other purchasers having similar issues in the future - it does sound like they are very dishonest and you are probably better of away from them!

jjlandlord

ging84 wrote: »

When i started writing my reply the OP had not clarified that the altered form did include adding the management fee, and that that fee had never been discussed either.
That pushes it well away from a trivial format change towards clear evidence of dishonesty.

Well, the fact remains that "transferring" a signature, as you call it, is forgery.

Professor_Z

From a personal point of view I realise I will gain nothing. But, and I appreciate this might sound strange in this day and age, but we would like what happened to us to not happen to someone else. My wife suffered from stress and depression because of the complete nightmare the house builder put us through. I'm sure some of you will say that we could have walked but it wasn't that easy. The took advantage of our situation and made it impossible at the time to make a sensible decision. We now realise what they were trying to do by putting so much pressure on us but at the time it was all too much and we could not think straight.

We have tried complaining to the house builder and to the NHBC without any success. If being a complete pain in their backside to the point that they wish they had never crossed us then so be it if it is the only way to make them think twice about what they did. The police may not be interested but it is one avenue to try, even if all they do is have a chat with them and it goes no further then it may do the trick.

This is something I had forgotten about and it may add weight to the intention to forge the document opposed to an after thought. There should be 4 copies of the original form, according to the form itself and I remember there being multiply copies.

From the bottom of the form:

• White - Customer
• Green/Blue - Solicitors
• Yellow – Site
• Pink – Regional Office

I was given the green version which is a carbon copy of the original inked version, she kept the rest. If she planned to fake another reservation form it would be easier if she kept the white copy as it would photocopy/scan better and match the second reservation form which was also white.

They may not have known the annual management fee at the time of reservation but they did know it 45 mins later. Things could have changed in that time but I suspect she knew about the fee but for someone reason didn't mention it. I can't really get my head round why she didn't mention it, and can't see what she would have gained? It doesn't really make sense.

Thanks for everyone's thoughts on this so far.