The ACT real estate industry has been warned to be on high alert for property scams after it emerged a Macgregor property had been sold without the owner's knowledge.
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The ACT Office of Regulatory Services had begun talking with the industry to investigate what additional anti-fraud measures might be needed after the territory's first suspected property scam.
When asked whether the ACT government was considering initiatives to tackle property fraud, Mr Corbell said the ORS had included information about property fraud and ways to reduce the risk in e-news material in March last year.
He also said the ORS had "commenced engagement" with the real estate industry about whether additional measures were merited.
Real Estate Institute ACT chief executive Ron Bell said Mr Corbell's alert to the industry was timely.
"It's one we will actively support and bring our members and the rest of the industry up to speed with and more aware of what's happening," he said.
"I think ourselves, through the real estate industry, have to ensure our members and, through them, their clients understand that these people are out there and these people don't really care about personalities or anything else. They just want the money."
He said people also needed to be conscious of protecting themselves from scams, especially those potentially targeting major assets such as property.
The warning came after it emerged there had been a suspected fraudulent sale of a Macgregor property without the owner's knowledge while she was living overseas.
There had been two fraudulent property sales in Western Australia and six attempts.
The West Australian cases prompted one of the largest ever overhaul's of the state's property industry and led West Australian police to work closely with the industry and Western Australia's land titles department Landgate to design a system to verify the identity of property sellers.
Detective Senior Sergeant Dom Blackshaw from Western Australia Police's Major Fraud Squad said the strategy had the aim of ensuring agents properly identified who they were dealing with, which included a face-to-face meeting where possible. In cases where an owner might be overseas and trying to sell the property, they would need to see a local consular official and prove their identity, he said.
He said where there had been a change of address, either email or physical, agents were required to send anything to both the new and the old address.
Consumer Protection in Western Australia also recommended owners regularly checked their property manager or agent had their current and correct contact details on file, set up a password or secret question to confirm their identity when dealing with the agent and ensured their agent had the owner's correct signature on file and checked signed documents to confirm they matched.
It also recommended people used secure mailboxes and shredded or burnt letters before disposing of them, regularly changed passwords to email and banking accounts, never clicked on links in emails from unknown sources and installed anti-virus software on computers.
