The police caught up with her and she’s been convicted of six offences of fraud and 11 counts of converting criminal property.
But the boys in blue don’t always get their man – or, in this case, woman.
Even when they do, it’s often too late. For instance, by the time she was caught, Shah had already managed to obtain £1.25m, but 80% of that – £1m – is still outstanding.
Who’s to blame? Shah, of course. And the Law Society? Maybe – is the legal profession’s self-regulation working? The conveyancer had already been struck off as a legal executive in 2009.
But I’m going to stick my neck out here, and say the lender in question should also shoulder some of the responsibility.
You can’t rely on the Law Society to stamp out fraud and you can’t guarantee the police are going to find your cash once it’s been transferred out of the country (Liberia in this case).
No, if lenders don’t want to rely on the public sector to sort things out in a timely manner, they need to take things into their own hands.
As the judge said when he was sentencing Shah: “The structure of buying properties on mortgage depends on the honesty and integrity of conveyancers.” You can’t necessarily rely on that.
As the market becomes fraught with fraud, many lenders are now reviewing their policy on their third parties suppliers, like conveyancers and valuers.
More than ever, lenders need to bring the selection of these firms and the quality management of the processes they are involved with under their direct control. By creating a panel of conveyancers, lenders can track the solicitors’ work and bring third-party oversight to the conveyancing process.
There are also tools available that enable lenders and panel managers to investigate valuation activity by instruction, comparing new valuation instructions against previous instructions, crosschecking a range of information (such as the applicant’s name, their contact number, and the property postcode) to confirm whether there are any matches.
Systems like these take the control of fraud detection away from regulators and police and put it in the hands of lenders, where it belongs.
Mark Blackwell is managing director of xit2
