Poll
Client loses £2.6m mortgage fraud appeal
A client of a jailed financial adviser, who committed a £2.6 million illicit mortgage fraud, has lost her appeal against a confiscation bill.
Interior designer Helen Victoria Chapman was jailed for her part in a £2.6 million mortgage scam, after claiming to be a national sales manager on a £400,000 a year salary on a mortgage application form, when in fact she worked in a mobile phone shop in Bakewell.
Chapman, 51,was sentenced in March 2010 and served a 15 month sentence, for conspiracy to obtain a money transfer by deception.
Chapman had lodged an appeal after being ordered in December 2011 to pay back £152,109 over six months or face two more years behind bars.
The confiscation order was less than a tenth of her assessed benefit from crime.
Chapman appealed against the order but Lord Justice Moore-Bick refused to cut the confiscation bill although he said the crown court judge had wrongly assessed her benefit from the fraud.
The appeal judge said she had benefited by about £1.5 million and not by £2.5 million from the fraud but declined to order a cut in her £152,109 bill.
The designer’s fraud between 2005 and 2006 was discovered after Chapman had actually reported her ex-husband, Anthony Gould, to police after they had bought a £3.8 million home in Spain using documents falsified by their financial adviser Alan Hill.
It became apparent that only one repayment was ever made on the mortgage and an investigation was launched.
When South Yorkshire detectives started looking into Gould’s finances they discovered irregularities which led them to a network of crooked financial advisers, all involved.
Police investigated Hill’s activities as a result of his involvement in the mortgage transaction and unearthed that along with another financial adviser, Mark Bates, the pair had been pocketing fees in a five-year swindle to fund lavish lifestyles.
When the homes of Hill and Bates were searched, investigators uncovered piles of bogus documents, including invoices.
Speaking at the time, Detective Constable Mark Wootton, from South Yorkshire Police’s Money Laundering Team, said: “The criminal investigation was complex and these people’s crimes had implications for businesses and banks in three different countries.”
The pair forged documents used in a series of million pound frauds, by setting up a “small industry for the dishonestly inclined”.
After initially claiming to have been duped into the mortgage fraud scheme, Chapman pleaded guilty.
Hill was convicted of 15 offences - including the creation of forged documents, wage slips and helping to secure false mortgage applications – and was jailed for five-and-a-half years.
Fellow conspirators, financial adviser Mark Bates, of Chesterfield, and Anthony Gould, of Leeds, each received four-year jail sentences.
The appeal judge in the hearing claimed she had benefited by around £1.5 million and not by the alleged £2.5 million from the fraud - however declined to reduce the £152,109 bill bestowed upon her.
Chapman’s lawyers have argued that some of the assets that have been used to assess her liquidity, did in fact not belong to her, including luxury cars and gifts.
Lord Justice Moore said the items were in her name and it was down to her to prove they were not hers. He added: “For these reasons, we do not consider that any of the grounds currently included in the notice of appeal provides an arguable basis for challenging the judge’s findings or varying the order which he made.”
By Jason McGee-Abe
I well omega replica watches removed them, in I below. Those companions call fake rolex watches sounded like a bird chirp. Squeezed between the fragmentation omega replica of the basalt is cold crunching sound rolex replica watches of quicksand. Flat slopes gradually, I came to the edge of breitling replica watches the crater, a cement embankment covered with dark brown on top. I ran over to cartier replica watches see the cement, the steel roof covering the top: This is the beginning of replica watches the 22 century dome structure. It would appear that we have longines replica watches come to the right place. From my u boat replica watches current position.