House scam victims receive timely lifeline

Can claim from attorneys’ fund

UNSUSPECTING property buyers who have been crooked into parting with thousands of rands in a housing scam have been advised by the Attorneys Fidelity Fund to submit claims directly to the fund after reporting the law firm involved to the Cape Law Society.

Weekend Argus exposed the property scam three weeks ago after a Bellville teacher who thought she was buying a house for cash realised she had been defrauded when the owner of the property she was buying disappeared and the lawyers involved in the transaction blocked her calls and failed to transfer the property into her name.

Pamela Tsengiwe and Kwezi Canca of Tsengiwe Mbeleni Attorneys, who oversaw the transaction and many others as revealed in our investigation, have denied any wrongdoing.

However more people have meanwhile come forward claiming to have been similarly scammed.

This week a Delft woman said she last month paid R90 000 into an account which she believed belonged to the owner of the house she was buying.

She said she’d met Canca at a coffee shop in the CBD where the lawyer had drafted the sale agreement and paid him R5 300 on the spot.

A woman known, as Noxolo or Nolutho, was with Canca, and purported to be a relative of the owner of the house supposed to be on sale. But it later transpired that the house neither belonged to her family, nor was it on the market.

The law firm moved its offices from Long Street where buyers had previously been taken by “estate agents” but unsuspecting would-be buyers are now being met at a coffee shop in the CBD.

The fund management executive at the Attorneys Fidelity Fund, Andrew Stansfield, said those who had been defrauded by attorneys could approach the fund and make claims.

“The process for lodging such a claim is explained in detail on the AFF website, www.fidfund.co.za,” he said.

“As part of such process, the Cape Law Society as the regulatory authority would be involved,” Stansfield said.

People are advised to report being defrauded to the police.

noloyiso.mtembu@inl.co.za

Picture: SUPPLIED Candidate attorney at Tsengiwe Mbeleni Attorneys, Khwezi Canca, right, drafts an apparent deed of sale along with a woman who identified herself as Noxolo or Nolutho, the supposed daughter of the owner of a property.