Notarial transfer fraud: the one irreversible risk of a purchase

Of all the risks in buying property in France, only one cannot be repaired. A badly set condition precedent is renegotiated, a missing survey opens a claim, a wrong floor area gives a right to a price reduction. A transfer sent to the wrong account does not come back.

Why this scenario targets foreign buyers

Because it rests on one thing, and one only: you have never met your contact. Everything happens by email, in a language that is not always yours, with names of practices you had never heard of three months ago. Nothing in that context lets you tell a legitimate message from one imitating it.

A buyer who visits the practice, shakes hands and recognises a voice is not exposed in the same way. It is distance that creates the vulnerability, not naivety.

How it works

Always in the same way. A few days before the deed date, you receive a message that appears to come from the practice. It repeats your file’s name, the scheduled date, sometimes the name of the property. It announces a change of bank details, for a plausible technical reason, and invites you to transfer to the new account.

The message is polished. There is no crude error, no extravagant promise, nothing resembling ordinary scams. It asks for nothing abnormal: you were going to transfer anyway, on that day, that sum.

That is exactly what makes it effective.

The six signals

None is proof on its own; together, they outline the scenario.

A change of bank details announced mid-file, whatever the reason. A new urgency, pushing you to transfer before a deadline. A sender address differing by one character from that of previous exchanges. An account in another country than the practice’s. An unknown contact on the file, introducing themselves as a colleague. And a request for discretion, however politely worded.

The single reflex

It fits in one sentence, and it neutralises the whole scenario: never take bank details from an email without confirming them by phone, on a number you dialled.

That number comes from an older document, predating the message, or from the official notaries’ directory. Never from the email itself, whose sender may have been imitated, and whose stated number leads to the same person as the address.

Two minutes are enough. The fraud rests entirely on your not calling.

If it has already gone

Act within the hour. Alert your bank, expressly requesting a recall of funds, alert the practice by phone, and file a complaint. The useful window is counted in hours: sums received are dispersed to other accounts very quickly, and a transfer executed on your own valid instruction cannot be recalled as of right.

That is why everything, on this subject, is played out before and not after.

What remains true otherwise

The notary’s account is, in normal times, the foreign buyer’s main protection: the price never passes directly between the parties, and funds stay there until registration. It is a safe system, and the fraud does not attack the system, it attacks the channel through which you receive its details.

The rest of the file is prepared the same way, upstream: source-of-funds evidence is gathered from the preliminary contract, and the choice of provider who will execute the conversion is verified on the supervisor’s public register, not on a website.