The FSA has banned five mortgage intermediaries as well as fining one of them £104,000. Most of the individuals have been banned because they are not fit and proper to work in regulated financial services through failings that led to mortgage fraud.
This brings the total number of mortgage intermediaries banned since December 2006 to 101.
Mark Thorogood, the owner of Property Park Mortgages, has been fined £104,294 and banned from working in regulated financial services. The FSA found that Thorogood had knowingly submitted fraudulent mortgage applications for himself and his wife, inflating his income from £22,950 to £120,000 and her income from £8,832 to £95,000.
In addition, Thorogood submitted two mortgage applications containing fraudulent information on behalf of a family member. In the first application he stated the family member’s income was £85,000 and in the second he stated that it was £130,000 the actual income was £17,610.90.
Thorogood also failed to have a documented system for supervising the activities of advisers at the firm. Some of the files reviewed by the FSA showed record keeping failures and a lack of evidence to support the income stated on the mortgage applications.
The FSA has also prohibited Darren Button, a former adviser at the firm, for deliberately entering false income and employment information in mortgage applications which he then submitted to lenders. Button also attempted to conceal a customer’s true income on a payslip with correction fluid because he knew the lender would reject the application if they saw the genuine income.
Button was also aware of other fraudulent applications but took no action to prevent this as he thought “it didn’t seem to be a huge problem””.
