Then, as with Lisa and Nicole, the cousins were told that a will had appeared after all, leaving everything to one man – also Hungarian – called Roland Silye.<\/p>\n
The family initially accepted his claim, to have been an old friend of Mr Haxton, but one relation, Barry, obtained a copy of the will and was struck by how odd it looked.<\/p>\n
It left Mr Silye two properties – not only Mr Haxton’s home in London, but also a house in Hertfordshire.<\/p>\n
Together, the two properties would have been worth about \u00a32m. However, Mr Silye listed the value of the estate as \u00a3320,500 \u2013 just \u00a34,500 short of the amount at which inheritance tax kicked in.<\/p>\n
What was even stranger was that Mr Haxton had never owned, and had no connection to, any house in Hertfordshire.<\/p>\n
We visited this property. It was large and dilapidated, and neighbours told us it had been unoccupied for a long time.<\/p>\n
The puzzle of the extra house also caught the attention of Neil Fraser, a partner in another heir-hunting company. He thinks that Mr Silye may have bundled the Hertfordshire property into a will in an attempt to fake ownership.<\/p>\n
“He must have gone past that house and thought, ‘I’ll just take that derelict house. How can I get that house? Well, I can put it inside a will!”<\/p>\n
Crucially, the will was accepted by the probate service, who did not check or raise any questions about the Hertfordshire house.<\/p>\n
We were unable to trace Roland Silye in our investigation, and his motivation remains a mystery.<\/p>\n
The will would not give him possession of the Hertfordshire house – the property registry and the electoral roll name the owner as a woman who would be in her 70s. <\/p>\n
However, Mr Fraser speculates that the will could be used in future as leverage to take ownership when the real owner dies.<\/p>\n
Despite reporting his suspicions to the police and the probate service, he says action was not taken.<\/p>\n
Mr Silye cleared probate not only for Mr Haxton’s estate, but also that of George Woon, an elderly man from Southall, west London.<\/p>\n
Mr Woon also died in 2021, and shortly afterwards, his name appeared on Bona Vacantia. Mr Silye came forward with a will which named him as sole heir. Mr Woon’s house was later sold at auction for \u00a3360,000.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Then, as with Lisa and Nicole, the cousins were told that a will had appeared after all, leaving…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":238971,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3093],"tags":[51,474,2499,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-238970","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-finance","10":"tag-personal-finance","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114798259425291004","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238970"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238970\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/238971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}