Newlyweds lose £45k deposit for three-bedroom home in cruel scam
Computer hacker monitors emails between buyer and solicitor
Hackers send buyers fraudulent emails purporting to be from solicitor
Buyers send cash to hackers rather than solicitors, losing thousand
Newlyweds Sarah and Ritchie Tough knew the moment they stepped inside the three-bedroom house in a quiet street of an historic market town that this was where they wanted to settle down and raise a family.
But today, the dream of these first-time buyers is in tatters.
The £45,000 deposit they spent almost a decade building up was snatched in a cruel new scam that targets homebuyers.
Sarah, 28, says: ‘It makes me sick to my stomach that someone could even think of doing something like this. It was our money for our future, we had been saving for ages — and now it is gone.’