Mortgage adviser’s £1.6m con foiled by bankruptcy

A respected mortgage adviser who was introduced to ‘cherry-picked gullible clients’ by a partner-in crime-has been given a two-year suspended prison sentence when his £1.6 million fraud was uncovered after his bankruptcy sparked an investigation into his affairs.

Wealthy Gott used his mortgage advice company as a cover for the scam. He wore expensive suits and took frequent foreign holidays, boasted that he earned £170,000 a year as Managing Director of Red Brick Mortgage Services, reported the Daily Mail.

His small firm provided loans for a string of friends and acquaintances between 2002 and 2007, conning the banks out of £1.6 million in all.

Anthony Gott, 46, worked with partner-in-crime David Hood, 47, in a jointly run £1 million mortgage scam. Hood would cherry-pick gullible clients to make the applications while the operation was fronted by Gott. But the pair were caught when Gott became greedy and went bankrupt, sparking an investigation into his affairs.

The two men, who dreamed of ‘executive size’ pay packets, conned banks out of £1,034,017 in house loans over five years. The remaining £600,000 attained was presumably of Gott’s own accord.

Customers filled in fake occupations and incomes on mortgage applications to get loans up to six times what they would normally be able to borrow.

The fraudsters used self-certification mortgages open to the self-employed to con High Street banks and loan companies into advancing money for properties.

Gott employed 25 people and lived in a £450,000 converted barn in Rawcliffe with wife Kim and had used some of his £800,000 ill-gotten gains to buy a swimming pool and decorate his home.

The joint fraud operated from Gott’s offices near Goole, but Hood hid vital financial papers in a council lock-up garage.

Hood, from Goole in East Yorkshire, traded in second-hand goods and managed a burger van as a cover for his illegal schemes.

Wheeler-dealer Hood would sign fake mortgage applications and was determined to earn a fortune through his dodgy deals. He even bought five buy-to-let properties of his own.

Hood pleaded guilty at Hull Crown Court to two charges of obtaining £231,000 by deception. His girlfriend Tina Lacy, of Hemmingbrough, pleaded guilty to three charges of obtaining money transfers by deception and one of fraud.

Hood recommended customers to Gott for a commission. Despite being jailed in 1990 for obtaining a mortgage by deception, he took out two false mortgages in 2003 and 2006 on his own home.

Judge James Sampson gave Gott a two-year suspended prison sentence, while Hood and his girlfriend were given 18-month suspended prison sentences and 300 hours community punishment.

Judge Sampson told Gott: “It was dishonesty and greedy behaviour on your part, which took advantage of the greed of lenders.

“What the people who have signed your character references should realise is, you are a thoroughly dishonest man.”

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