Six charged in £50m mortgage fraud scam
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Six individuals have been charged with offences in connection with a series of high value commercial mortgage frauds.
Following a hearing today at City of London Magistrates Court the case has been sent to Southwark Crown Court for a preliminary hearing on January 4 2010.
The investigation was referred to the Serious Fraud Office in March 2006 by West Midlands Police following a complaint from the Cheshire Building Society.
It is alleged that the defendants participated in a series of frauds whereby they dishonestly obtained loans from banks or building societies that were secured on six commercial investment properties.
Each property was transferred between companies controlled by one of the defendants and his associates at highly inflated prices in a series of back to back transactions. On the basis of the grossly inflated prices, fraudulent valuations and forged leases, the defendants applied for and obtained mortgage advances totalling nearly £50m.
The mortgages were quickly defaulted on and the lenders suffered significant losses.
Five individuals, Ian McGarry, Hardeep Sodhi, Fatema Patwa, Saghir Afzal and Laurence Ferrigan have been charged with offences of conspiracy to obtain a money transfer by deception and dishonestly obtaining a money transfer. Simon Lawrence has been charged with conspiracy to obtain a money transfer by deception.
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Readers' comments (5)
Anonymous | 18 Dec 2009 4:54 pm
The law on fraud should be more stringent as they culprits will get few years and walk away with millions which lauging where in reality they should be made pay every penny back or rot in jail.
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BALJINDER BENNY SINGH JOHAL | 18 Dec 2009 10:33 pm
naughty naughty
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Anonymous | 19 Dec 2009 7:07 am
I think you will find that Asset Recovery will have a field day once they are convicted as the financial gains made were the proceeds of crime. So, hopefully they will NOT walk away with a penny!
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Graham Kennedy | 19 Dec 2009 10:42 am
Another example of a Building Society having its fingers burnt when straying from their core business of lending on houses!
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Graham Griffin | 4 Jan 2010 9:37 am
I would have thought the building society would have picked this up earlier from careful scrutiny of the accounts including checking on directors names at Companies House. Also, presumably there would have been the same surveyors and solicitors used which should have raised suspicions.
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