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from the put-it-in-the-cloud-what-could-go-wrong dept.
For a long time in Australia when you purchased property you had to visit the local Land Titles office or local equivalent to pay your stamp duty and get paperwork done. Recently several state governments decided to outsource this critical function to a private company, the Property Exchange Australia - PEXA. It was seen as a win-win with a private company taking over storing and maintaining land titles and the State Governments getting a kick back for it. Until it all went wrong recently when $250,000 was stolen from a PEXA conveyancer's account.
The victim of the hack was Dani Venn, who is well known for being on the local version of Masterchef. PEXA has claimed no responsibility for the loss and with the PEXA system soon to be made mandatory in NSW, Victoria and Western Australia, many people are concerned that the system is not secure and should not be used for title or money transfers. While the Commonwealth Bank was able to freeze and recover 138K of the funds, 110K is still missing leaving Ms Venn in the lurch. PEXA has claimed to be taking action to secure the service.
While PEXA has claimed that their online system will be of benefit to lawyers, sellers, buyers and real estate agents, the reality of moving data out of offline systems to internet based servers may very well have just created the sweetest honeypot ever seen online in Australia.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Thursday July 05 2018, @04:49AM (2 children)
Agreed, 100%. The first line I keyed on was "when $250,000 was stolen from a PEXA conveyancer's account."
If I put money into your hands, then you lose that money, it is YOUR LOSS, not mine. If I put money into your account, and you lose that money, it is YOUR LOSS, not mine. Had the money been stolen from the Venn's at gunpoint, it would be THEIR LOSS. Had the money been stolen from a Venn account - then it would probably be their loss, up to a certain amount, depending on what insurance the bank carries. (In the US, most banks are covered by the FDIC, limiting losses to the customer when something really crazy happens.)
Any and all losses in this case should be losses to PEXA and/or their insurance company, not the Venn family.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Whoever on Thursday July 05 2018, @05:11AM (1 child)
Years ago, I was involved in a case where a Delaware based escrow company had to be sued twice before it would accept responsibility and eat all the costs incurred because it had sent some money that it was holding before the conditions to disburse the money had occurred. The company incurred costs by suing the entity it had sent the money to, but, since that entity had no connection to the USA, all the suit did was incur legal bills to get an unenforceable default judgment. The escrow company tried to get the other beneficiaries to eat its costs in suing the off-shore entity that received the money, and to eat the costs of defending (and losing) the case that one of the beneficiaries initiated and won against the escrow company.
I would not trust a Delaware based escrow company.
(Score: 2) by etherscythe on Thursday July 05 2018, @05:21PM
Citation needed? I'm not seeing the Delaware connection here. Maybe the lesson is, check the BBB ratings of companies you do significant business with?
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