SCAM WARNING: notaries in chile do not exchange dollars

[admin]

Do you know why this sign is now showing up at every notary in the country?

[admin]

O.k., so here is the story.

My wife zandra was at a notary that we have been working with for years in santiago. She spotted this sign and sent me the photo. The secretary told her the story.

Seems two gringos and a chilean walked in to the notary, and asked to use one of the signing rooms. For those that don't know, most notaries in chile have private conference rooms, that clients and their atorneys to use for doing things like signing property sales, wills, etc. Deals that are fairly complex, and often take a lot of time. Sometimes all day, and often hours.

Well, come closing time, they were locking up. The two gringos were still sitting in the conference room. They asked them what they were doing there. They said they were waiting for the chilean to come back from exchanging dollars with the notary.

Notaries in chile do not exchange dollars!!!!

Most do not even recieve cash beyond small change for say paying for a signature or something.

Seems this is not the first time this scam has been run.

[nwdiver]

Rule #1.........NEVER EVER let your money out of your sight.........if told wait here a minute while I change this, refer to rule #1.......

[eeuunikkeiexpat]

Watch out Argies, the Chileans are catching up in the Art of the (Gringo) Steal!!!

[admin]

It is not all that unusual to say buy a property or a car, and hand over cash at a notary to the seller. Not ideal, but sometimes just easier. Typically however it is say something under 10 million pesos.

We have however done bigger cash transactions at notaries.

The irony is, the largest cash dollar purchases of properties or buisness we have ever done were in a notary ($100,000,$50,000 u.s., few others) and we were handing the money over to an argentinan.

Argentinans insist on dollars, so they don't have to pay taxes. Those were extrordinary situations, where only cash would solve the problem (i.e. make argentinan go away). As expensive and time consuming as it is to legally put together $100,000 u.s., it is still not as expensive as having an argentinan mixed up in your buisness.

Again those were extrordinary circumstance, we know what we are doing, and i would not recommend anyone try that at home, in chile, or anywhere else. If you got $100,000 in cash in a notary, you got big problems. You got a $100,000 cash and an argentinan in a notary, you got really really big problems and that $100,000 is the least of them.

Still, that is not the same as trying to have the notary exchange money like they were a casa de cambio or a bank. We were buying or selling something, and the notary had nothing to do with the payment directly or indirectly.

Over the years i have heard all sorts of strange ideas about what notaries do and don't do from gringos. My favorite is the gringos that call us up, say to fix a legal problem with a property title. I ask them if they did a title search before buying, and they say "yea, the notary did title search" (or the real estate agent, or the property registery, or their cousin, or their dog, etc).

[admin]

I was told a funny / sad story about an argentinan. He was taking $10,000 u.s. in cash over the boarder to argentina, when his car started on fire. It consumed the car so fast, that he just had to stand on the side of the road and watch the cash and the car burn.

[HybridAmbassador]

I was told a funny / sad story about an argentinan. He was taking $10,000 u.s. in cash over the boarder to argentina, when his car started on fire. It consumed the car so fast, that he just had to stand on the side of the road and watch the cash and the car burn.

Wow, and the Argentinean, was he standing there watching his beloved Green Dollars burn? If I would be that Argentinean, would be cringing in agony and hitting the dirt on my ass! Ha,ha,haaa