Broker jailed after stealing £22k from clients
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A Derbyshire-based self employed mortgage broker has been jailed for 14 months after stealing over £22,000 from his clients.
A report in yesterday’s Derby Telegraph reveals that Jonathon Marsden appeared at Derby Crown Court after taking out a £19,000 loan in a client’s name.
The court heard how Marsden got her to sign the application without knowing what she was signing for, then took the cash for himself.
He then told another six clients to pay over a total of more than £3,000 for unnecessary valuation fees.
Marsden committed the crimes while working for a firm called Mortgage Options despite being sacked from another financial firm for forging documents and writing personal cheques.
Mortgage Options told the newspaper that Marsden was registered with the Financial Services Authority but a check did not flag up any issues.
A spokesman for the FSA is quoted as saying that it is trying to tighten up the regulation of self-employed mortgage brokers.
Readers' comments (8)
Anonymous | 5 Feb 2010 12:48 pm
A bit silly!
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Anonymous | 5 Feb 2010 1:37 pm
What? Your comment?
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Kay | 5 Feb 2010 1:43 pm
How typical of the FSA! No control over the real bad eggs and hammering all the decent hard working brokers!
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John Tidswell | 5 Feb 2010 2:45 pm
I agree, how can someone who has been sacked from one firm within the Financial Services industry for forging documents and personal cheques then be allowed to start with another company. Then for this spokesman to say they are trying to tighten up the regulation, what on earth do these people do all day. Why is there not a centralised register listing each individual advisor whether self employed or employed. It's a disgrace, we use Bankhall for compliance an all get is them moaning that me CPD logg and CPD action plan is not up to date"really!" If you think I'm keeping a log of what journals and financial press I read think again! Sort these idiots our first before you start chasing after me.
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Anonymous | 5 Feb 2010 3:19 pm
Yes, complete nonsense, I expect that a check was not made on him or the previous company did not report his crimes correctly!
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Anonymous | 5 Feb 2010 3:28 pm
I would first have to wonder why this chap was even allowed to still be working within Financial Services, he has clearly commited fraud and theft on a previous occasion and I would have thought that his employers would have contacted the police and through this action the FSA would have been notified. If this normal proper procedure wasn't followed then it is reasonable to assume that the FSA were not aware of any wrongdoing and so why should they flag anything.
If it was the case that the chap was just told to go quietly and nobody else got involved then it is the previous employer who has created the problem by allowing a criminal to carry on unchecked.
While the FSA does keep on slamming us with more and more regulation, checks and procedures it has to be assumed that each and every step they introduce reduces the risk to us genuine advisers and our clients and weeds out another cowboy who ruins it for the rest of us.
Its always bad press when another person is exposed for their crimes but the amount of advisers who were clearly in it for the money has droppeed more than significantly over them last 5-10 years.
I can't say I enjoy all the extra work and compliance but if it keeps my clients safe and assured then I it can't be all that bad
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Anonymous | 5 Feb 2010 3:55 pm
I agree exactly with John Tidswell along most other advisers in this country. The FSA seam to want to dream up anything that makes our job harder than it already is & in doing so overlook things like this!
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Anon | 8 Feb 2010 9:22 am
This does not surprise me!!!
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