The Block winners lose their $1m prize as buyer fails to pay
Winners of The Block 2020 Jimmy and Tam Wilkins have lost their $1million prize after their buyer failed to pay for their property.
The couple has been forced to put their home back on the market after cyber security specialist Emese Fajk, 28, failed to pay Channel Nine for the property.
Ms Fajk had reportedly shown Channel Nine receipts of bank transfers, indicating the money had gone through, however it was never received.
The settlement period for the $4.256 million property has now passed, meaning Ms Fajk's contract is void and the couple has lost their $966,000 profit.
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Jimmy and Tam choked back tears as they spoke about the shocking turn while on A Current Affair.
"Here we are now not knowing what's going to happen. It's something no one ever saw coming, no one ever expected, but it's something we now have to deal with," Jimmy said.
Tam said Ms Fajk even watched the show's finale at their house with the trio celebrating with a bottle of wine.
"She actually cried with us when the result came over, it was like we knew her as a friend and we welcomed her into our family as a friend," she said.
"This was meant to be something huge for us and now it's just horrible."
"Why us? Why did she choose us to do this to? I honestly have no idea, I don't get it. It's really bizarre," she added.
Jimmy said, "[There were] no signs whatsoever that she was not going to buy the house."
Ms Fajk, however, insists she has "paid for everything" and doesn't know what happened.
Speaking to Nine's Alison Piotrowski, she said she had receipts to prove she had made payments, claiming she was "trying to find out what's going on".
She then took to social media to claim she'd been "thrown under the bus".
"I didn't get forms in time that I needed to sign, I had to find crucial information on my own, even though I paid someone else to make sure there are no hiccups," she said.
"I still believe there is a happy ending here somewhere for everyone involved."
On Wednesday, Ms Fajk took to Instagram, sharing a photo of a form she apparently received from a property company saying she owed $4,072,950 on December 16, but was date at the top stated the form wasn't even created until December 17.
"I'm not a magician. If things are due after I get a form, I can't make them happen," she said.
She then shared some mistakes she'd made in an Instagram Story, saying one mistake was that she'd hired a conveyancer not a solicitor and that they made her "work out" her own stamp duty.
"Mistake number two - going with [the conveyancer's] super slow process, where I had to chase things up constantly," she explained.
"I didn't get really important pieces of info until they were overdue. Whenever I had a question or an issue it took days to get an answer. Everything just took too long and I didn't know the process myself."
She added that she should have turned to another property professional, but just wanted to get it all over and done with so didn't.
"Also, we were at the halfway point to settlement and it just wasn't possible to get someone new on board," she explained.
"I looked into it and it just was not feasible. I reached out to people behind The Block and we agreed we would do our best to work it out."
"I spent a day trying to fix mistakes caused by other peoples' incompetence, throughout the day I spoke to multiple people and did my best to keep things peaceful and get everything sorted and settled."
She added that she never would have appeared on the show on the auction day if she never planned on actually spending the money she bid.
Host of The Block Scott Cam told ACA the whole situation was "disappointing", adding, "We trusted her to have that sort of coin... Stuff happens, and it's happened to us... It's about human nature, it's about honestly. I suppose."
The house will now go on the market with Scott believing it'll now fetch even more than it did last month as the market is going up.
The couple will also still keep their $100,000 prize money.
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