Woman dupes lawyers over $540,000

The lawyer who unwittingly helped a mystery woman steal $180,000 in a mortgage fraud has discovered he was not her only target: she has duped three lawyers for a total of $540,000.

Don Thomas, of West Auckland law firm Thomas & Co, said that after he revealed how the woman stole an identity to get $180,000 from ASB Bank using his firm, two other Auckland lawyers told him they had suffered the same fate. "Each time she got $180,000," Mr Thomas said.

More than 20,000 real estate agents, mortgage brokers and solicitors have been warned by the Real Estate Institute, Mortgage Brokers Association and Auckland District Law Society to beware of the scams, which first came to light around Christmas.

A cottage industry in mortgage fraud has stung banks for sums which could total millions of dollars. A senior police fraud squad investigator is examining the issue.

Mr Thomas said the other lawyers described how they had unknowingly collaborated with the woman, who had pulled the same scam with a major trading bank and a South Island-based building society with an Auckland branch.

Each time she tricked the lawyers into thinking she owned a house and got them to act for her in raising money against the mortgage-free property. Mr Thomas said the only variation she used - and part of the key to her success - was that she had used three different properties.

He described her as a presentable Pakeha woman, in her early 30s, who had a New Zealand accent.

She produced extensive identity proof which later proved to be fake: a New Zealand passport, Westpac credit card, ASB bank accounts, Inland Revenue Department taxpayer number and the house title. That house turned out to be owned by a woman of the same name whose identity the fraudster had assumed.

Each time she walked into the three lawyers' offices, she used the real name of a property's owner and each time she tricked the lawyers into believing she was that person, Mr Thomas said.

Mr Thomas was particularly disappointed about a lack of assistance from Internal Affairs in checking the validity of the woman's passport. He called for a register to be established to enable banks and solicitors to check documents.