Property buyers who have been conned into parting with thousands of rands in a housing scam have been advised by the Attorneys Fidelity Fund to submit claims directly to the fund after reporting the law firm involved to the Cape Law Society.

Weekend Argus notes it exposed the property scam three weeks ago after a Bellville teacher who thought she was buying a house for cash realised she had been defrauded when the owner of the property she was buying disappeared and the lawyers involved in the transaction blocked her calls and failed to transfer the property into her name.

Pamela Tsengiwe and Kwezi Canca, of Tsengiwe Mbeleni Attorneys, who oversaw the transaction and many others, have denied any wrongdoing, says the report. However, it points out, many more people have come forward claiming to have been similarly scammed.

Last week a Delft woman said she last month paid R90 000 into an account which she believed belonged to the owner of the house she was buying. She said she’d met Canca at a coffee shop in the CBD where the lawyer had drafted the sale agreement and paid him R5 300 on the spot.

A woman, known as Noxolo or Nolutho, was with Canca, and purported to be a relative of the owner of the house supposed to be on sale.

But it later transpired that the house neither belonged to her family, nor was it on the market.

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