real-estate fraud australia victoria
Is this fraud in Victoria?
<p>A person knocked my neighbours house, an old lady who has been living there for many years. The person was a draughtsman representing the owner of an adjacent property.</p>
<p>He claimed that he was designing some town houses for the adjacent property and asked for permission to remove a tree on the old ladies property. She said that she would get back to him and wanted to look at his designs.</p>
<p>I studied the designs and in my opinion, the problem with this tree, which he called a weed, was pretty much 100mm inside the the garage that he wanted to build and had been there for over 20 years. This is Victoria so the tree may have encroached on the neighbous property, but the designs that he provided were, in my opinion, misleading in that the placement of the tree was not in the actual place.</p>
<p>Is it fraud asking for someone to give up their right to keep an encroachment by, in my opinion, to lie and/or use deception?</p>

<h2>Dishonesty is a required element of fraud in all Australian jurisdictions</h2>
<p>Being wrong is not the same as being dishonest. So, absent evidence that the person knew the tree was incorrectly shown and knowingly used that to achieve their objective, this isn’t fraud.</p>
<p>There may be civil remedies (if harm actually happened) but no crime.</p>
