Leeds house buyer conned out of £26,000 in email fraud

Maggie Senior has since had £22,000 of the money recovered by police

A house buyer was conned out of £26,000 after fraudsters intercepted emails between her and her solicitor.

Maggie Senior, 27, from Leeds, thought she was paying the deposit to her solicitor but was duped into paying it into another bank account.

Police said it appeared the fraudsters gained access to the firm's emails and sent a message asking for payment.

North Yorkshire Police recovered £22,000 of the money but Ms Senior was left £4,000 out of pocket.

A first time buyer, Ms Senior has since moved into the house in Farsley.

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"I got my solicitor sorted and we were emailing back and forth for a few weeks," she said.

"I was due to submit my deposit, so I asked what the next steps would be.

"At that point I got an email saying: 'Hi Maggie, the next steps are to get your deposit paid into a secure bank account and here are the details'."

She said she submitted the money on 19 April and "everything seemed fine".

However, she said: "Later that evening I got another email saying the next amount of money needs to go to these bank account details."

Police said her case was part of a wider scam

After speaking to her father she called the solicitor to clarify the situation.

"I got in touch with her and she said she hadn't asked for any money, and the email had been intercepted by a hacker," she said.

The following day, after contacting Action Fraud, the police organisation which deals with fraud and cyber crime, Ms Senior discovered it was part of a wider scam that had been happening in Yorkshire.

Det Insp Jonathan Hodgeon, head of economic crime at North Yorkshire Police, said: "In this case, some details appear to have been hacked, therefore the fraudsters will have access to the firm's emails so they can use exactly the same wording as the solicitor's firm.

"If they have taken over the account they can send exactly the same email from the original email account, so in this case it would be very, very difficult to spot if there is a problem."