My usual interaction with people not telling the truth is having to listen to things which turn out to not be true (see my last column).
Occasionally though, it’s more serious than just telling porkies to avoid paying a mortgage.
We have come across accounts where one party denies all knowledge of their loan or mortgage, at which point we usually ask for three forms of signature and refer it on to our specialist litigation team.
The genuinely fraudulent ones will normally turn out to have been signed off in the bad old days between 2000 and 2005, when brokers and underwriters cut corners and perhaps didn’t bother being as diligent as they should have been.
Usually, the guilty party will have done a bunk or else already be locked up. The victim then has to negotiate with us to try and resolve the matter – it’s a very long drawn out process.
Alternatively, we might come across cases where coercion has been used.
This sometimes affects customers where English isn’t their first language, making it easy for an unscrupulous individual to hide exactly what is being signed. Sometimes, it’s when one party is elderly and not 100% sure what they are looking at. However, it’s very difficult to prove.
The other types of case we come across are the money launderers – lots of big overpayments made by third parties or else they are well outside the wages of the customer.
“Mr Boggs, you are a roadsweep and you wish to pay £100,000 this month and the next? Excellent.”
Any payments made over the telephone for more than £2,000 are referred to our crime team. If we don’t, we get into trouble.
And if we advise the customer that we can’t take their payment of African blood diamonds or Serbian warlord dollars because we think they might be dodgy?
Well, you can get fined or imprisoned.
They call it tipping off and that’s a fairly big incentive to avoid being an unintentional blabbermouth.
All in all, it’s a fraught, interesting, but shady area. It certainly keeps you on your toes to keep an eye out for the unusual.
From customers’ unexpectedly large salaries to unusual work locations; from third-party payments to never having contact with one particular customer on a mortgage – it pays to be alert.
