Fraudsters seem able to mislead lenders with ease

21 June 2010

Everyone has a claim to fame and mine is that I once met Herman Munster.

When I was a student, like many others I hit the trail west in the summer and became a camp counsellor in the US.

I was at Camp Sunapee in glorious New Hampshire, deep in Deliverance country.

One of the kids in my charge was a nice lad called Ewyn Gwynne and his father was Fred Gwynne who starred in the classic television series The Munsters.

In the summer we had an open day for parents during which I met Gwynne, aka Herman Munster, and a nice man he was too, although disappointingly he didn’t have any bolts sticking out of his neck.

But this is small beer compared with Munir Akhtar and Sajid Mahmood who were convicted last week of a multimillion pound mortgage scam.

Their claim to fame is that they managed to con the likes of Northern Rock, Woolwich, HBOS and the Royal Bank of Scotland out of millions of pounds in the good times by using fake payslips and false tax returns.

Nothing much shocks me these days but I have to say it still amazes how easily even big lenders can be duped.

During the proceedings the judge at Sheffield Crown Court said that both men took advantage of the rush to lend in the early part of this decade when banks were “willing to lend money to a monkey or a mushroom”.

It has since occurred to me that if I’d been bent I might now be relaxing in my villa on the Costas with my good friend Rioja - although I might equally be in Pentonville.

And don’t think people haven’t tried to influence me, because they have. Admittedly, nobody has offered me a case stuffed full of fivers but on many occasions sellers have told me how desperate they are for cash and if their property is valued upwards I would be taken care of with a decent drink - nudge nudge, wink wink.

But as Tiger Woods will tell you, you always get found out in the long run, as happened to our two friends from Sheffield who are now residing at Her Majesty’s pleasure.

During my 17-year sentence at Ashdown Lyons - RIP - we once sacked a surveyor for gross incompetence.

When he left he took with him as much company headed paper as he could carry and for months purported to our clients to still be employed by us.

He submitted valuations, surveys, invoices and God knows what else, all without any professional indemnity cover.

Of course, this was fraud and when we found out he was prosecuted and struck off by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.

But it just goes to show that it’s not who you are that counts, it’s who people believe you are.

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