John Barry of the Victorian Land Titles Office noted that in Victoria, the number of fraudulent applications were estimated to be of the order of 1 in 19,000.
In Victoria the witnessing requirement is only for an adult person. In other states where the witnessing requirement is for a qualified person the incidence of fraud was no less.
But with the introduction of the 100 point test and E-conveyancing, his
expectation was that the incidence of fraud would decrease.
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Hi Brett Hayton
This is a very interesting blog - especially for me, studying property law at the moment.
Can you explain why the introduction of e-conveyancing would decrease fraud?
Title Fraud
The quotation by John Barry of the Victorian Land Titles Office "the number of fraudulent applications were estimated to be of the order of 1 in 19,000" needs a lot further analysis -
1. there needs to be a historical perspective ie trend analysis
2. a breakdown of the categories and nature of the frauds committed
From a historical perspective is the incidence of fraud increasing? We can only speculate but my guess would be an unequivical Yes.
How do we categorise Fraud?
a. Document Fraud
b. Identity Fraud
Document Fraud
Under the Victorian Torrens System you have the Duplicate Certificate of Title being prima facie evidence of ownership. If unencumbered the registered proprietor holds the Duplicate CT as evidence of ownership. The owner cannot sell the property or mortgage the property without producing the Duplicate CT. The physical title is therefore of special importance.There are still many old duplicate titles is current circulation that by any measure would be difficult to make a fraudulent copy. They are produced on old parchment and have the endorsements front and back of historical dealings. These old parchment copies have been phased out for many years now replaced by the ubiquitous A4 computer generated duplicate on blue stock. By todays standards of document fraud they would not be that hard to reproduce with todays scanners, colour printers etc. Since the first batch of A4 duplicate titles they too have been phased out and replaced by blue titles with holograms and embedded security not unlike bank notes. My guess is the LTO would like to see the whole thing of duplicate titles abolished (ala Queensland) and that would therefore strike at the heart of many a fraud - document fraud.
Document Fraud has another stream and this the subject of the Application for Replacement of Lost Title. My guess this would be another avenue for the would be fraudster to apply for a new Certificate of Title which if sucessful puts into the hands of the Fraudster a genuine duplicate CT.
Identity Fraud
If you eliminate Document Fraud you have then have a system that relies on Identity. This will be the heart of the E-Conveyancing system.
Fraud - cannot ever be eliminated in its entirety. My guess is the bottom line for society is Insurance. Every Title could be backed by a Title Insurance policy. Do you make this compulsory. If you do, the cost of fraud would be shared by all.
Interesting, I have never heard about title insurance. But I guess if you place a "middle-man" between yourself and the property, like a real estate agent, then their processes should prevent fraud (or if not their insurance would pay for the loss). In the fraud story published here it was clear that the old man has rented out the property to fraudsters directly, accepted cash payment, and without checking their credentials. If he used an agent they would most likely be caught trying to sell from under him...
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