A landlord who had to prove to authorities that she was not dead is a strange headline. For anyone who owns, manages, values or lends against property, it should be an uncomfortable one.
Stuff reports that Connor Armstrong, a former real estate company leader, used a forged will claiming the homeowner had died in an attempt to gain control of her property. The coverage does not show that he transferred ownership, sold the house or secured a loan against it. But according to PropertyNoise, a property valuation had been requested for lending purposes before the scheme unravelled.
That detail matters more than the forged will itself. It means a fabricated death made it past the point of being a piece of paper and into the machinery of the lending system.
The failure point sits upstream of settlement
Most property professionals think of fraud protection as something that happens at settlement, when titles change hands and funds move. This case suggests the weak spot is earlier. A valuation instruction for lending is the stage where someone is asserting authority over an asset, and it is exactly where identity and authority checks earn their keep.
Passive owners are the obvious target profile. A landlord with a rental property, an owner who is overseas or unwell, an estate that is slow to be administered. None of them are watching the paperwork day to day, and a death claim can set succession processes moving without the owner’s active involvement.
Amounts and legal proceedings were not disclosed in the initial coverage, which a Chinese-language outlet, AusNZNet, also picked up the same day.
A licence back in the game
The second business question is about vetting. Armstrong went on to set up Silo Real Estate in Melbourne, then returned to New Zealand in May 2025 and opened a local branch, PropertyNoise reports. The Real Estate Authority has been investigating Silo Real Estate.
Armstrong has reportedly expressed regret, said he has made significant personal changes and referred to mental health difficulties. He has also listed a Mercedes on Trade Me for $239,999, with the listing referencing plans to sell assets ahead of a possible overseas move.
Whatever the outcome of the REA’s inquiry, agencies, franchise networks and vendors choosing an agent are entitled to ask how thoroughly a principal’s history is checked before a branch opens its doors. Licensing is supposed to be the industry’s trust signal. It only works if the checks behind it are harder to get around than a forged will.
Compliance can be manufactured
This is not a one-off. In July, barrister Alexandra Low, a member of The Law Association’s Documents & Precedents Committee, dissected a structurally similar scheme in which fraudster Jodie Louise Kitto filed false director and shareholder consents with the Companies Office to seize control of deceased estates held through companies, without company keys, RealMe access or any legitimate authority.
Her warning is blunt. “You cannot assume AML compliance requirements, which can be manufactured, will prevent fraud,” Low writes. Deceased estates, she notes, are a particular risk.
The Financial Markets Authority has also signalled a rising trend in suspected mortgage fraud to deposit takers, and its OIA response on the issue shows the regulator treats it as a growing problem, while cautioning that older cases were not always easy to identify in its systems.
Nor is faking a death to reach someone’s assets a new idea. Back in 2016, the Department of Internal Affairs warned about an inheritance scam in which fraudsters posed as a dying widow and sent letters impersonating the then-Minister of Internal Affairs. By 2023, CERT NZ was recording $4.7 million in losses in a single quarter, up 11%. The playbook has been around for years. What has changed is the target, moving from victims’ bank balances to the title itself.
Cheap fixes worth doing this week
The good news is that the defences are not expensive. Low’s advice is specific: “Preferably always have a natural person as a trustee when a trust has interests in land. If that is not possible, make sure you add any company who has interests in land to your Companies Office watchlist. If changes occur that you or your client did not authorise, immediately contact MBIE and LINZ,” she writes.
For lenders and valuers, the lesson is to treat a death-triggered instruction as a red flag requiring independent confirmation, not a routine file. Property managers should know how to reach the actual owner outside the usual channels. Landlords with entities holding land should set up watchlist alerts now, not after a stranger has filed paperwork in their name.
What happens next
The REA’s investigation into Silo Real Estate will be the first test of whether the industry’s gatekeepers respond with substance. The bigger test is for LINZ, lenders and conveyancers, who have yet to say publicly what has changed since the FMA started warning about mortgage fraud. This landlord caught it in time. The system should not depend on the victim noticing she has been declared dead.
Sources
- Stuff: We thought you were dead – landlord targeted in fake will scam by former real estate boss (2026-11-01)
- PropertyNoise: Fake will scam – real estate boss claimed landlord was dead (2026-11-01)
- AusNZNet: Fake will scam targets landlord, owner forced to prove she is alive (2026-11-01)
- LawNews: Anatomy of a fraud – why companies should not hold interests in land (2026-07-16)
- FMA: Mortgage fraud OIA response
- Department of Internal Affairs: Inheritance fraud scam alert (2016-02-03)
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