Fraudsters operate both in real offices and on the Internet
Notary offices are seemingly the most honest and responsible organizations in the state. However, it also happens that their employees abuse their powers, despite high official incomes. True, isolated, very egregious cases are given wide publicity. About unscrupulous representatives of the profession — in the material «MK».
It is quite difficult to accuse notaries of illegal activities without having concrete evidence in hand. It is also difficult to blame en masse law enforcement officers and realtors who are in conjunction with notaries. But our sources claim: a scheme of “cooperation” exists. The longer a notary works, the more dubious businessmen hover around him. And not everyone can resist temptation.
The most notorious case is the theft of property from the family of the late Alexei Batalov. Let me remind you that Natalya Drozhzhina and Mikhail Tsivin fraudulently took possession of his multimillion-dollar inheritance, which was to be received by Batalov’s widow Gitana Leontenko and his daughter Maria. The notary Dmitry Bublii helped the criminals to appropriate property, who certified the illegal contracts of lifelong maintenance with dependents. He and Tsivin received five years in prison each.
Here's another example. In the fall of 2023, information once again spread across the networks that the capital’s notary Alexander Fedorchenko was deceiving clients. Several Muscovites turned to lawyers at once, claiming that the notary took money from them for fictitious services, and simply fooled some, taking away real estate in favor of black realtors.
Correspondents from TV channels to whom he gave interviews came to see Fedorchenko. It is curious that the notary behaved calmly and said that “there is deception all around, do not believe them, but believe only me.”
“Alexander, well, here’s your signature on the document, according to which after my death the apartment goes to a black realtor,” an elderly Muscovite turns to Fedorchenko (the filming was conducted by the TV group “Vesti. Duty Unit”). – And my son was kidnapped and killed because of this housing.
Another city woman in an interview with the program says that six strong men signed an agreement with Fedorchenko to receive an apartment. And they didn’t just sign, but began to visit regularly. They destroyed furniture, opened their hands towards a woman and her daughter.
“There was nothing like that, these people came up with everything,” the notary says to the camera.
Elena Maksimova’s three-room apartment, in which her grandmother lived, was taken away by “professional neighbors” “thanks” to Fedorchenko. Half of the living space was sold to someone unknown. Due to bullying from neighbors, the grandmother soon died. Notary Fedorchenko, when meeting with relatives, pretends that he does not know either them or the history of the sale of part of the home. “I don’t remember this story,” the notary states matter-of-factly.
Oksana Filacheva, a member of the Moscow City Duma working group on combating apartment scammers and raiders, comments that, despite repeated requests from hundreds of citizens, the notary continues to work. “Two criminal cases were opened, but the proceedings went nowhere further. Fedorchenko was questioned as a witness, that’s all,” says the lawyer.
Experts are sure: Fedorchenko is involved in a group of black realtors. And every year there are more and more such gangs, says criminologist Vladimir Postanyuk.
There is such a thing: escheat property. A lonely person dies, he is left with an inheritance — an apartment, money, jewelry. At best, he is buried by friends, neighbors or acquaintances who are not his heirs. Information about such people goes primarily to law enforcement agencies. Not the most honest employees leak data to businessmen who screw up their business.
— These businessmen have their own notaries or recruit people who work in notary offices. The scheme has been working for decades and has been put into production. Unscrupulous notaries receive very good benefits for cooperation; their fortune can reach hundreds of millions of rubles, says lawyer Evgeny Antonov.
According to stories and rumors, there are many such groups in Russia.
As you know, if no one accepts the inheritance within six months, it must go to the state. What are these people doing? They are looking for heirs of the fifth, sixth, seventh and even eighth orders who did not communicate with the deceased. As soon as the six-month period expires, the businessmen contact these distant relatives and offer them to accept the inheritance, but, of course, under certain conditions. Most often, they demand that after registration of rights they sell the apartment and give them half of the proceeds.
Businessmen put extreme psychological pressure on the heirs. They call constantly and can come to their home. In general, it is almost impossible to refuse their “services.”
“One way is for the district police officer to give them the keys to the deceased’s apartment, and they go into it, rummage through notebooks, documents, photographs,” answers Evgeniy Antonov. — They call relatives and friends, most often introduce themselves as employees of the social security service or the property department, and declare that they want to help. As soon as the heir is found, the lured notary opens an inheritance case, skipping the deadline for accepting the inheritance and bypassing the court. According to the Civil Code, an inheritance can be accepted in different ways — either by contacting a notary within the first six months after the death of a person, or actually.
— Practice knows cases where fictitious documents were prepared, allegedly confirming the fact that the heir incurred expenses for the maintenance and repair of inherited property during a six-month period after the death of a distant relative. This is quite enough for “your” notary to open an inheritance case, recognizing the evidence as significant. (Of course, an honest notary, to whom the heir comes with such a receipt after six months, will send the case to court.) Since the inheritance case is open, regional authorities can no longer claim either the apartment or the study of the inheritance case. Next is a matter of technology. True, you can’t sell your home for good money, since buyers don’t like to deal with a “fresh” inheritance. It happens that “black” realtors again involve a well-fed notary: they bring buyers to him, and he convinces him that the apartment is clean and needs to be taken.
— Risks. Illegal activities can be stopped at any moment; accomplices will give confessions. It will become known that there were no real repairs in the apartment, the receipts were fake, etc. In this case, the regional authorities will go to court with a demand to invalidate the right to inheritance, and therefore the sale and purchase agreement. The court terminates the right of ownership. Such cases are real.
— There is a relationship. But failure to accept an inheritance within the prescribed period is equated by law to a refusal of an inheritance. Evidence of acceptance must be reliable.
— Of course. We collect documents confirming that the heir, within six months after the death of his relative, either made repairs in the apartment, or paid for housing and communal services, or took out insurance, and we take it to court. As a rule, witnesses confirm that the heir took care of the apartment.
In Soviet times, law school graduates who lacked stars from the sky became notaries. The profession was considered low-prestige, clerical: check the text and sign.
But with the advent of the market economy, the situation changed. Notary offices have changed from public to private, with all profits going into the notary's pocket. Large offices receive hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of rubles a day.
How do notaries make money? Tariffs are established by tax legislation, as well as by the norms of the legislation on notaries. Notaries cannot influence them and are obliged to charge clients exactly the amount specified by the state.
Unscrupulous notaries do not explain to privileged categories of citizens their right to incomplete payment for services, and also impose additional legal and technical actions nature, the commission of which may not be required to perform notarial acts.
The Constitutional Court of Russia directly explained that the actions of notaries to comply with the rules of their own office work, maintaining registers and inheritance affairs, legal assistance to citizens, and clarification of rights are the public duties of notaries, which cannot be considered as the provision of services by them and are not subject to payment.
There are situations when even honest and law-abiding notaries can create problems for their clients. Sometimes notary office specialists, lacking sufficient experience or knowledge, may make mistakes when preparing documents. This can lead to delays, additional costs, or even refusal to recognize the document.
In some cases, notaries may misinterpret the law, unclearly explain procedures and requirements to clients, be overly cautious, and refuse to issue documents for any reason. and send the person to court.
At the end of 2019, Tver resident Victoria’s mother died. The girl went to the notary to formalize the inheritance. In January 2020, my father also died. Victoria collected an additional package of documents and took them to the specialist.
“As luck would have it, I didn’t find the marriage certificate, but the notary demanded it,” says Victoria. – Several weeks passed, the document disappeared. At my next visit to the notary, I admitted that I had never found the certificate and asked to explain why it was needed. In response, she gave me 30 addresses where women with my father's last name lived, and hinted that he could have married any of them and made a will.
Victoria said that the family arrived in the city several years ago , because my father was invited to a good job, there are no relatives here, this is the only marriage for my parents. But the notary continued to insist: I won’t register an inheritance without a certificate.
Victoria turned to a law firm, where they helped her. True, I had to pay 40 thousand rubles; lawyers acted through the court. Finally, the woman became the legal owner of the home.
“This is the first time I’ve come across such a case where they are looking for heirs by namesakes,” says lawyer Evgeny Antonov. – The notary should not care about namesakes; the relationship is confirmed by a birth certificate. There are extracts from the house register, which indicate who lived in the apartment. I don't understand the notary's doubts. Perhaps she played it safe.
Sergei Chuzhakov, deputy head of the legal department of the federal company Etazhi, says that first of all it is necessary to check the data on the register of notaries, this will confirm the legitimate provision of services. But no one is immune from mistakes: “Recently, a notary was held liable for certifying a transaction using a fake passport. No malice was found, but the victim was paid out by insurance. In our practice, there was a case when a notary issued a power of attorney for a period of 10 years to a woman aged 90 years. Naturally, during the transaction we had to additionally verify our identity via video link.”
And finally, we cannot help but mention the fraudulent schemes on the Internet that we were told about at the Federal Notary Chamber.
Separate A block of scammers operates on social networks, for example on Telegram. Here, for example, they actively offer to buy either supposedly real notary forms or ready-made documents with a notary’s seal
Scammers can impersonate notaries using phishing sites. For example, scammers created a fake website for the Moscow City Notary Chamber. To make it look realistic, the site included a list of Moscow notaries and legal articles found on the Internet. People got there by looking for a conveniently located notary office, and they were immediately asked to ask a question in a special pop-up window. A “consultant” entered into the dialogue, who assured that the issue could be resolved in an expedited manner, and requested a certain amount as an advance for the “notary service.” If a citizen paid the required amount, the chat was blocked. There were no other methods of communication on the site. And when a person realized that this was fraud and tried to return the money, the card to which he sent the “advance” was also blocked.
A similar example was also in Omsk. There, a website bot, which pretended to be the website of a notary chamber, asked people to leave their phone number in a special field. Literally a few minutes later, a “consultant” contacted the citizen, who invited him to the office, promising free legal assistance. During a personal meeting, the visitor was asked to sign an agreement for the provision of services. Usually, having trusted the “specialists”, a person signed the document without reading, without noticing that the contract indicated a large amount for a “free consultation”.
People may also end up on dubious aggregators that offer to sign up with notaries, for example, in Moscow, the Moscow region and St. Petersburg. How does everything work? People who plan to contact a notary office and are looking for a convenient option on the Internet turn to an aggregator, which provides a service for selecting a specialist — allows you to choose a convenient area, time, date, etc., and also carries out preliminary acceptance of documents — supposedly for convenience client and reducing time costs.
In addition, the site also offers to pre-calculate the cost of a notarial act. In fact, notaries may not receive information that someone wants to register with them. They also do not receive documents uploaded by users to a dubious site. The option to calculate the tariff also raises doubts and questions: the cost of a notarial act often directly depends on the number of applicants, real estate objects and its value, whether the applicant has grounds for receiving benefits, etc. That is, by naming the amount in advance, the aggregator simply misleads the user.
Ugra notaries have discovered an online information site with the help of which pseudo-lawyers attract clients and impose services on unsuspecting citizens. A resident of Surgut was involved in fraudulent activities. Through a search site, she tried to find contact information about one of the notaries in the city and ended up on an Internet resource where background information about all notaries not only in Surgut, but also in Russia was posted. She didn’t even think about the fact that the site might belong to scammers.
The Surgut woman began to correspond with a virtual assistant, agreed to prepare a donation agreement for a land plot for 10 thousand rubles and sent online all the necessary documents to conclude the deal. She was invited to the office to sign the contract, but was incorrectly advised about obtaining a tax deduction. The woman had doubts, and she turned to a real notary, where the fraud was discovered.
There are several signs to look for to determine whether a notary is reliable or potentially fraudulent.
1. License and order from the Department of Justice to empower the notary: make sure that the notary has a valid license and accreditation with the Ministry of Justice. These documents usually must be posted in the notary's office.
2. Reputation: study the reviews and ratings of the notary. If there are a lot of negative reviews or complaints about its activities, this may be a signal of possible problems.
3. Transparency: A good notary will always be transparent in his actions and procedures. If you have doubts or are denied access to information about the process, you should be vigilant.
4. Offers that are too good to be true: If the terms of the deal seem too good or unusual, it may be a sign of a scam.
5. Advance Payment Required: Be wary if a notary requires full upfront payment for services before work begins. Usually payment is made after completion of all procedures.
6. Lack of official documentation: If the notary does not provide you with official documents or refuses to sign the contract, this may be a cause for concern.
If you have suspicions about the actions of the notary or have encountered any strange situations, it is better to contact to another specialist or to the competent authorities to verify the legality of his activities. It is important to remember that choosing a reliable notary is key to ensuring the legal protection of your interests.