Realty fraud in cyberland

Realty fraud in cyberland

Crooks Put Hoax Order On Web To Cheat B’lore Landowners
Times News Network

(TOI/Mumbai/12th April 2006/pg13)

Bangalore: Gone are the days of lathi-wielding middlemen threatening land owners to give in to realty sharks. The real estate boom in the Rs 30,000-crore industry in Bangalore has spawned a new trend with crooks taking the cyber route to frighten gullible owners into selling cheap. A private developer recently put up a hoax BDA notification on a website to instil fear in the landowners. The resulting rumours ultimately put pressure on owners to put the property on sale for a meagre amount, even though it is worth hundreds of crores. A website with the address www.probleminproperty.com has put up BDA notifications spanning areas of north and south of Bangalore. The hoax notification lists hundreds of survey numbers across the city as notified areas and mentions 330-odd entire villages as notified areas. The realty scene in the areas mentioned in website has created more than a stir. While the land prices have crashed, the innocent landowners are being victimised by middlemen. BDA commissioner M N Vidyashankar said: The information regarding the notification is wrong and the BDA strongly objects to this. We have been receiving queries and complaints about this website. Since it comes under the purview of the cyber crime division of the police department, we are consulting our SP and the legal section. We will be lodging a criminal case against the people involved in this. We have information that some real estate agents are going around the mentioned areas with printouts of the website contents. They are promising to get the areas de-notified for some money. Some agents have gone to the extent of offering to buy the property at a better price, after pointing out that the owners would stand to lose land when BDA acquires it. Clarifying the issue, the commissioner said: We have set procedures that we follow before we notify any land. We first issue individual notices to the landowners and give them a hearing, then we issue a gazette notification followed by preliminary notification and final notification in the newspapers. We request landowners in the city not to be perturbed by such hoax information and not to pay heed to such rumours. The BDA further said that only information published on its official website www.bdabangalore.org is authentic and official. The site is updated periodically and all acquisition and tender details is available on the site.