Selling Land

MartinW6

xylophone wrote: »

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Have you proof that your father bought this land?

Yep. I managed to find the land registry deeds for the property.

colsten

Ask a local estate agent and/or the council for an estimate of the value of the land. Also ask the council whether there are any plans to build on the land.

Under no circumstances should you sell to the OCBC, and most certainly don't pay any prospective buyer any money. Asking for money from someone before they can benefit from something is one of the oldest tricks in a scammer's toolkit.

I would also ask the local Trading Standards for some advice.

It doesn't matter if they call themselves a bank and if they have some sort of listing by the BoE (though I cannot actually see them on the latest BoE list of banks). They can still be fraudsters.

xylophone

What did your father's will say about the land? Was it valued for probate?

princeofpounds

Personally I'd be checking out the physical security of the land as well... this sort of scam is not uncommon but it is weird that they are linking it to a specific asset she owns.

antrobus

princeofpounds wrote: »

Personally I'd be checking out the physical security of the land as well... this sort of scam is not uncommon but it is weird that they are linking it to a specific asset she owns.

Good point.

Land Registry scams are possible...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7971995.stm

... and there a various things you can do to protect yourself.
https://www.gov.uk/protect-land-property-from-fraud

antrobus

colsten wrote: »

....It doesn't matter if they call themselves a bank and if they have some sort of listing by the BoE (though I cannot actually see them on the latest BoE list of banks). They can still be fraudsters.

They are there; OCBC = Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation Limited. It's ranked by Bloombergs as the 4th strongest bank in the world. The OCBS Group has a market cap of about £20 billion.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-15/hang-seng-bank-tops-list-of-strongest-lenders.html

I doubt that this actual scam has anything to do with the real OCBC; it's just some crooks somewhere using that name to give their scam a venneer of authenticity.

ChesterDog

This is what the Daily Mail's 'This is Money' would describe as a highly sophisticated scam. But probably in capital letters.

Which means somebody rang someone up and pretended to be someone else while asking for money.

paddyrg

My hunch - there's just enough plausible to make this a good scam, and one that isn't by total chancers but someone a bit more together and hence a lot more dangerous. It's plausible that someone in Asia is looking to buy chunks of land surrounding London.

At no point give them money - that's just plain backwards.

The bank is, in this case, either uninvolved, or acting on behalf of overseas 'customers'. The customers seem reluctant to reveal their identity (maybe they're on a bit of a land-grab with unpaid taxes, or assembling small packages of land to build a tower block in 20 years), but the approach would make it smart to investigate the land and make sure it's all registered securely and that you bide your time.

If the land has genuine value, they'll be back with a better offer, less veiled, and will offer to pay your legal costs (use your own lawyers, not theirs, obviously), if it's a scam they may well vanish if you're not an easy touch. Either way, *they* may put money into your choice of escrow, you putting money into theirs is just balderdash.