Why was Mr Comiskey (solicitor) suspended ?

L

LouisCribben

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The following article explains why Mr Comiskey was suspended as a solicitor

http://www.independent.ie/national-...d-following-probe-into-mortgages-1859841.html

Could someone please explain exactly what he did wrong and how he benefitted from the fraud (if it was a fraud)

What I don't understand specifically is the line

"
Yesterday the Law Society claimed that Mr Comiskey had been giving the sale proceeds of properties to the vendors, and leaving the buyer with an undischarged mortgage on the title."

What does this mean ? How did Mr Comiskey benefit, did he end up profiting from the transaction, I assume so, but how ?

How does it affect the buyers, will they be out of pocket ?
 
Sounds to me like his books are a complete mess , and no one knows what he was up to.
 
Its probably best not to say very much on a board like this. But I was puzzled as well by the wording of the newspaper report and I'd wonder in general terms what did happen.

It could be that when a sale was closed that a vendor received all of the closing funds with no deduction for the outstanding mortgage but surely vendors would have known enough to know that this was an issue. Or the vendor was paid the closing figures less the figure for the outstanding mortgage and that mortgage was not in fact redeemed. That is a real issue because the new purchaser will still have the old mortgage on title. It would become very obvious very quickly though as the vendors would find that the mortgage payments continued to be debited from their accounts.

The question then is what became of the money - the newspaper report says that funds did not appear to be going through the client account which would seem to indicate that funds were going elsewhere.

By and large, the systems in place for solicitors make it ( in one way) easy to decide to do something wrong with clients funds ( if you are so inclined) because you have control of clients funds for a certain period of time. However, because of the fairly immediate repercussions, it should be very clear to anyone in the profession that playing with clients funds will be discovered in jig time. With the consequent fall out.

mf
 
mf1 said:
It could be that when a sale was closed that a vendor received all of the closing funds with no deduction for the outstanding mortgage but surely vendors would have known enough to know that this was an issue. Or the vendor was paid the closing figures less the figure for the outstanding mortgage and that mortgage was not in fact redeemed. That is a real issue because the new purchaser will still have the old mortgage on title. It would become very obvious very quickly though as the vendors would find that the mortgage payments continued to be debited from their accounts.
Click to expand...
Not if there was a new DD set up to pay the mortgage. Wasn't this one of the wheezes one of the other property related fraudulent conveyances is alleged to have used to avoid discovery? (apologies for the tortuous naming no names sentence).
 
Umm. But the purchasers solicitor would still be chasing the vacated mortgage so it would only be a matter of a fairly short time?

I'm just thinking of the reality of any "wheeze" from the perspective of being found out and I have not yet come up with one. Which I think is a good thing!


mf
 
Yeah, it's probably a good thing it isn't easy!

Some more details of the wheeze I read about - the solicitor in question transferred the mortgage into his name so the original mortgage was vacated, but the property was still mortgaged. The new owners only found out about it when they started getting demands from the bank after the solicitor defaulted. Sorry, can't remember the specific case.
 
yoganmahew said:
Yeah, it's probably a good thing it isn't easy!

Some more details of the wheeze I read about - the solicitor in question transferred the mortgage into his name so the original mortgage was vacated, but the property was still mortgaged. The new owners only found out about it when they started getting demands from the bank after the solicitor defaulted. Sorry, can't remember the specific case.
Click to expand...

Just don't get that - I think a lender would be so suspicious if a solicitor wanted to take over a mortgage. So the only way would be for the solicitor to apply for a mortgage in their own name on the property and raise funds that way. But that only means that ultimate responsibility for the loan rests with the solicitor. That does not seem terribly bright. But then maybe its not so much a question of being bright as hoping to put sufficient distance between the problem and the solution in the hope that you win the lotto and can pay everyone off!

mf
 
Certainly there were solicitors who put multiple mortgages on properties they owned and could use these funds to discharge the repayments. They bought other properties and made other investments hoping to make money and clear the whole lot but we saw what happened in the end.

It would also have been possible for a solicitor if they were very dishonest to tell the bank he owned a client's house and re-mortgage it and keep the proceeds himself. No-one would know if the replayments were kept up.
 
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