A huge 40% increase in the value of rental fraud in September
Homeppl have spent the Summer warning its clients and letting agents around the country that all types of fraud, including tenancy fraud, spike during times of economic hardship.
The Autumn, so far, has been no different. Despite the Summer boom in the rental market, we've flagged £1m worth of fraud in September, a 40% increase on last month.
As the leading authority on fraud detection in the rental industry, we've been compiling key data points and providing Letting agents with a 'common fraudster profile'.
In September, we saw 71% of total fraud caught in the capital. The hottest area in London for tenancy fraud this month was the North West... so watch out North London based letting agents!
Over half of all of the chancers we flagged had British passports and they were split between female and male pretty evenly.
The average claimed income was around £54,000. We emphasise the word 'claimed' as false proof of income was the leading factor of fraud this month!
Over half of all flagged fraud was found via detecting fake and modified bank statements. Other fake documents we identified: fake tax returns, a fake investment portfolio, passports and income references... oh! and a fake NHS letter of employment!
Other frauds failed our extensive data enrichment and stress tests.
Fraud spotlight
For the fraud spotlight this month we have a simple demonstration of how such a small change can put your landlords at risk.
This fraudster has attempted to conceal their true affordability by changing all the dates on their bank statement to 2022. This is clearly an old bank statement that has been modified to show an up-to-date balance. So what is their true financial situation? This is something the landlord deserves to know.
Almost undetectable by the human eye, this modification was no match for our cutting-edge font detection technology.
Click this link to read our latest Fraud Round Up Report for October.
Test our technology for yourself
You can now test our document analysis technology yourself through a secure portal for the first time ever.
We are exposing our industry-leading fraud technology to real estate risk managers, those who conduct mortgage risk assessment and anybody who assesses documents for an application.
Check a bank statement, check 10.. try it for free now...
