Estate agents could be on the receiving end of a new round of a premium rate call scams where agents pay dearly for sending details of properties to bogus home hunters.

TheMoveChannel.com has seen details of a new outbreak hitting agents Robinson Reade in Fareham. Luckily keen-eyed Jane Earley from the firm's office in the Solent Business Centre noticed something was amiss with the telephone numbers she was given and started to dig deeper.

How it works is like this:

Scamsters target groups of offices in a particular trade culled from the yellow pages or trade directories and ask them to fax back details of whatever the firm deals with. In the case of estate agents it's properties. Faxes are often picked up by an office junior who obligingly faxes back the details requested by return. What often not realised is the return number is a premium rate one where the caller pays over the odds for it and moreover the receiving fax is often on a slow modem making the call last even longer.

Some scamsters are masters of the con and sound very plausible on the telephone. "I'm just relocating to a Fareham accounting firm," The caller claiming to be one David Collins told Jane. "I'm coming down tomorrow and will miss the morning post so could you fax me some details today?"

Jane took the address, telephone and fax numbers but something just didn't add up and then she looked at the numbers and address closely.

Getting into the swing of things, Jane then searched the address given on and found it to be the offices of a company called Dex Trading. She then put their name into google and found that they have just been prosecuted for trade descriptions and fined £25,000! She also found the director had been fined too.

Here is how you can check expensive numbers:

• Premium rate numbers prefixed 09 that are 11 digits in length.
• International numbers prefixed with 00 that provide a product or service.
• Directory Enquiry services prefixed with 118 that are 6 digits in length.
• Mobile phone text shortcodes prefixed with 8 or 2 that are 4 or 5 digits in length.