How to Check a Seller's Solicitor's Bank Details Before Completion

The most expensive mistake in conveyancing takes seconds: completion money sent to an account that belongs to a fraudster. It usually starts with an intercepted or spoofed email that changes the seller's solicitor's bank details, timed for the afternoon of completion, when funds move and everyone is in a hurry.

This guide sets out the checks to make before you send completion funds to the seller's solicitor, and what to record.

How the fraud works

Criminals gain access to an email account, at a firm, a client or an agent, or spoof one convincingly. They watch the transaction, and just before completion send new bank details, often with a plausible reason: the firm has changed banks, or the usual account is being audited. Funds sent to the new account are moved on within minutes and are rarely recovered.

Because it is often timed for a Friday, it is known as Friday afternoon fraud.

Step 1: verify the firm

Before you rely on anything the seller's solicitor sends you, confirm the firm:

• It exists and is regulated. Check the Solicitors Regulation Authority's register for a solicitors' firm, or the Council for Licensed Conveyancers' register for a licensed conveyancer.
• It practises from the address you have, and the person you are dealing with works there.
• There are no warnings. Regulators publish warnings about firms and people being impersonated.

Use sources you find yourself. A website address or phone number in an email can be part of the fraud.

Step 2: verify the bank account

Then confirm the account belongs to that firm:

• Get the details from the right place. Bank details normally come with the completion information in the transaction's standard forms, not in a stray email.
• Call the firm to confirm them, on a number you sourced independently, and speak to someone you know is handling the matter.
• Run an independent bank account verification check, which confirms the account details belong to the firm, rather than relying on what the firm told you.
• Use Confirmation of Payee when you set up the payment. It checks the account name matches, but not that the account belongs to the firm you mean to pay, so it is a final check, not the only one.

Step 3: treat changes as fraud until proven otherwise

Genuine firms rarely change their client account in the middle of a transaction. If the details change:

• Do not send funds to details given by email.
• Call the firm on the number you sourced independently, not one in the email.
• Verify the new account with the same checks as the original.
• Tell your client never to act on bank details sent by email either, and to call you before sending money.

Step 4: check on the day, and record it

Run the checks on the day you send the money: details that were correct last week can have changed since. Then record what you checked, when, and the result, so the file shows the due diligence was done before funds moved.

Protect your own side too

The same fraud targets your clients. Tell buyers at the start that your bank details will never change by email, and that they should call you on a number they already have before sending any money. See what proof of funds does a solicitor need? for a guide you can share with buyers about the rest of the money checks.

How Casera can help

Lawyer Checker, ordered through Casera, verifies a law firm's identity, practising address, regulatory membership and actual bank account details in one check, in seconds. A match result is indemnified up to £250,000 for funds sent on the day of the search, and every check is stored on your Casera case. If completion slips, you re-run it on the new day at no extra cost. See Lawyer Checker.