Team Partners Telecommunications

Don't give scammers your keys

Posted on Oct 28, 2026

The likelihood is that most of you reading this will own a house. You may have done so for several years, but if you’re able, think back to the uncertainty and excitement of your first purchase.

For most of us, the financials were the hard part: scraping together funds to get over the minimum mortgage percentage threshold, and that was after you'd already got a mortgage offer you felt you should be able to afford…

Now imagine how you’d have felt if you’d paid your deposit and then found you hadn’t; that you’d been duped and that instead of transferring your precious pennies to your solicitor, you’d been had and the money stolen. It happens, and here’s a true story of how:

A friend, who, in the tradition of stories, shall remain nameless, bought a flat for £200k. She found herself a conveyancing solicitor and communicated by email. As things progressed, her solicitor emailed to say that they’d let her know the account to send her deposit to. Their email duly arrived, complete with an invoice and payment instructions, which stated that her money should be sent to a named accountant rather than to them. To keep things safe, the email said, she should send the funds in small tranches, starting with £10 to make sure all was well. She sent this, received confirmation of receipt and then tried to send a further £5k…which was when our friend made a serious mistake. Her bank got in touch to advise her to contact her solicitor directly to check the payment details, but she thought they were being unnecessarily cautious; after all, there had been no problem with the £10 transfer, so she sent the £5k to the accountant and received confirmation of receipt, as before.

Alas.

Our friend had been duped and scammed. Her solicitor hadn’t issued any payment instructions or received a bean of her money. The truth is, she was about to send another £5k when her bank stopped the payment, this time because of the frequency of high-value payments from her account. Both she and her solicitor had had their emails hacked. Our friend lost £5k and it could have been so much more.

So, what’s going on here? The first thing to say is that conveyancing fraud increased by nearly 30% last year. Secondly, the average amount stolen is a whopping £47k. Thirdly, it’s mostly from those under 39 years old, and, of these, the majority are first-time buyers.

Here’s our advice:

When it comes to money, either speak face-to-face or on the phone, don’t automatically assume that emails are safe.

Be very wary of any changes to the protocol and event sequence you’ve agreed on with your solicitor.

Secure your email with strong, unique passwords and two-factor authentication.

Don’t publicise your house buying on social media.

Don’t be pressurised into making quick payments; check first!

And…listen to your bank!