Email
September 23, 2016
Having recently sold my house I was shocked to find out in the eleventh hour that the contract price which I had singed had been rewritten for fifteen thousand euros less than the offer price made by the purchaser to the estate agent. This fraudulent action is carried out by the agent showing you are rewritten contract in Spanish showing you their own revised offer price and telling you that they are forwarding this agreed lesser contract price to the purchaser for their signature. Upon supposedly receiving back this signed contract 4 to5 days later you are lead to believe that this is the agreed purchase price and therefore you sign believing this to be the actual price that has been agreed by the vendor and purchaser.
On several occasions I asked the question as to who is making money out of this transaction and was told no one was. Having told the English agent that I didn’t believe her and I would not be signing the contract she then told me that the 3% Spanish estate agents charge was the only money being paid out. It was at this point I signed the document not knowing that it had been rewritten fraudulently and not been signed by the actual purchaser.
This information only came to light because the purchaser had applied for a mortgage and on completion day the final monies did not compute when my solicitor completed at the notary. There must be hundreds of transactions completed against people who don’t even know to this day how many thousands of euros have been stolen from them in this way.
This transaction in Britain would immediately be classed as fraudulent as it is the estate agents duty to pass on all offers between both parties and not just re write contracts to steal as much money as they believe they can get away with. These people are the scum of the earth with no morals and they are preying on the many people who leave Spain normally through ill health, bereavement or lack of money.
One worrying thought is if this is happening throughout Spain then what is happening to the stolen monies in regards to the Inland Revenue taxes not being declared along with the false Escritura values being submitted. There is a clear case here which requires an in depth investigation by the appropriate authorities and for the fraudsters to be held accountable along with a change of law to stop this fraud continuing.
Bernard Flynn
Ex Spanish Resident
