The ACT government has been ordered to pay more than $540,000 damages to a woman whose identity was stolen by overseas scammers who then secretly sold her Canberra house and pocketed the money.
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International fraudsters profited by $430,000 when they sold the woman's four-bedroom Macgregor house in 2014 in a sophisticated hoax that took months and spanned South Africa, Australia and Indonesia.
Fresh details of the crime were revealed by Fairfax Media this week, as court documents tendered in the ACT Supreme Court showed the thieves, who haven't been caught, conned real estate agents, lawyers and a bank in their elaborate lengths to steal the home.
The scam began in September 2013 when the fraudster impersonated the woman using a bogus email address, believed to have originated in South Africa, and asked her property manager to change her contact details.
Less than a week later the scammer asked for a valuation of the house and later authorised the agent to sell the home at auction for $430,000, engaging lawyers in Canberra to act for them.
The fraud only came to light several months after the sale when the home's original owner, who lived in South Africa at the time, contacted her agent about maintenance on the property because she hadn't received statements for nearly nine months.
The agent reported the crime to police within 24 hours of talking to the owner. The house was sold earlier this year for more than $510,000.
The fraud stripped the victim of any right to the property, which was legally transferred to the couple who bought the house.
The woman launched action against the government in the Supreme Court in an attempt to recover damages for the property value, stamp duty, legal costs and lost rental income.
Her lawyer Michael Orlov argued his client should be compensated under the ACT Land Titles Act.
"The facts establish that a fraud has been committed and that the plaintiff has been deprived of land as a result, but not the identity of the fraudster," he said in a submission to the court.
Lawyers for the government accepted the woman was an innocent victim of fraud but disagreed that she was entitled to recover damages from the government.
Associate Justice David Mossop on Monday found the woman could sue the government because the fraudster was unlikely to be identified or found. He ordered the government pay her $546,268 compensation.
"The evidence of the plaintiff in the present case was that she intended to keep the property and ultimately leave it to her children," he said in his decision.
"As a consequence, but for the fraud, she would still have been in possession of the property.
"Therefore putting her in the position she would have been in but for the fraud means that she should be awarded the elements of damages for which her counsel contended."
The government was also ordered to pay the woman's court costs.
Associate Justice Mossop noted in his judgment neither the real estate agent nor the solicitor carried out sufficient checks to identify their instructions were being provided by a fraudster rather than by the property owner.
He cited a federal police report into the fraud investigation, written by the investigating officer, which said the woman had been "an innocent victim" of an overseas-based criminal syndicate.
"Due to the time frame prior to this matter coming to notice and the international aspects of the matter, no offenders have been identified. I do not believe that any offenders will be identified.
"At this stage, I am only able to confirm that the funds from the sale of the property were transferred to an Indonesian bank account but I am unsure as to the current status of those funds."
ACT Policing has closed its investigation.
It is believed to be only the third time an Australian property has been sold fraudulently. There were two successful sales and six attempted property frauds in Western Australia, triggering a major overhaul of the state's property industry.
