# Letter of mortgage offer forged by the bank



## Finance12345 (13 Apr 2017)

Hi,

I bought a property in 2007 and I got a mortgage on tracker for 650k. After a few years I asked to see my mortgage documentation as I had heard of discrepancies in mortgage applications. To my shock I found that the mortgage loan offer letter was forged. Completely nothing like my signature. Also, it claimed that my father Michael gave me 50k to purchase the property. Father name is not Michael. Then in 2011 they forced me off the tracker because I couldn't afford full repayments. That said get off the tracker or we will repossess the home. 

I have a tracker mortgage redress application in. I am 150 k in negative equity and want to sell the property. I am thinking because of irregularities in the documentation of asking the bank to write off the rest. Any ideas


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## Brendan Burgess (13 Apr 2017)

Hi Finance

Was it your family home?

Did you borrow €650k?  Did you know you were borrowing €650k?

Did you receive a letter of offer?

How much was the house and how did you fund the deposit?

Brendan


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## Gordon Gekko (13 Apr 2017)

I hate to have to ask this question, but did you go through a broker?


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## thedaddyman (13 Apr 2017)

It is possible that you were given the wrong letter, banks filing systems are not always the best. Secondly, if the letter had turned out to be genuine, would you still be in the same financial position. ? I assume in all of this you didn't retain any paperwork yourself

If you are 100% satisfied that the letter is indeed a forgery and that you are at a financial loss as a result then you should probably be going to the Gardai


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## emeralds (13 Apr 2017)

Did you take the €650,000?


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## Mauritius (13 Apr 2017)

What an extraordinary situation. I don't know how some one could suggest the letter is mixed up from another customer. Isn't it clearly addressed to this client with an attempt to do the client's signature? I too was forced off the tracker rate (in Jan 2009) because I couldn't make the full repayments. It was a case of:  we will give you another 12 months of interest only payments but we are taking the tracker, even though the documentation doesn't make it clear the tracks rate is being permanently taken, and not just for the 12 month period the document refers to.  That was KBC bank. I've no problem telling people what bank is involved.


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## Danny Boy (13 Apr 2017)

Finance 12345, but sure you signed the loan offer in front of your solicitor who witnessed same. You would have also received a copy of the loan offer from the bank so if there was a discrepancy with a name either you or your solicitor should have drawn it to the banks attention. 
The more important point is that you actually drew down the mortgage & went through with the purchase so you must have signed something. Your father must have signed a waiver also if he was giving you a gift. 

You should contact your solicitors & ask them for a copy of what you & your father signed.


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## Steven Barrett (13 Apr 2017)

Danny Boy said:


> Your father must have signed a waiver also if he was giving you a gift.



Very unlikely that was requested in 2007. Banks didn't care where the deposit money was coming from or if it had to be paid back. 


Steven 
www.bluewaterfp.ie


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## Monbretia (13 Apr 2017)

Not so sure about that Steven, depending on the bank I suppose, I left banking in 2009 and that get a letter from parents bit if they were providing a 'gift' of money was a requirement for a long long time before I left.


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## Finance12345 (13 Apr 2017)

Hi all,

Many thanks for your replies. I did the mortgage through a broker. I never met the broker to fill the application he just told me that it was all sorted and the money can be drawn down. ( I know how stupid was I). I just didn't see anything wrong with it all. The broker was my friend. Every letter was forged and I did not have documentation because I never signed it. 

On the other hand I did take the money and pay for the house. The money just arrived in my current account. And I paid  the developer. There is a problem with the deeds as well. I could go on. Basically a total mess. 

My father never signed anything and never gave me a gift of any money. I can't blame the broker either because there is no proof of him doing wrong and the bank are blaming the broker. This was in 2007. 

I had a house in Limerick as well and did an equity release to fund the purchase of the house. Looking back it was complete madness. I was young and stupid.


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## Monbretia (13 Apr 2017)

How did the money arrive in your current account?  Usually the funds are released to a solicitor who pays the developer.   A solicitor will have provided an undertaking to the bank before draw down so who or why would the funds be released directly to you, makes no sense.

Was the solicitor in on it too?


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## Finance12345 (13 Apr 2017)

No. The money was transferred to my account because the developer was looking for the money asap. The mortgage from start to finish was a disaster.


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## Monbretia (14 Apr 2017)

Still makes no sense, it's the solicitor that transfers the money to the vendor, not the client.   It doesn't make it any quicker if you do it as the bank sends the money to the solicitor in the first place and not directly to you so it's actually adding on an extra transfer to then route it through you and not straight to vendor from solicitor.

Have you checked with your solicitor what happened at the time?


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## Suebee (14 Apr 2017)

I don't understand this either? I've never ever heard of a bank transferring  money directly to the client the whole point of sending it to the solicitor is the solicitor has a legal obligation to the bank to ensure the money is paid to the vendor of the agreed property.  

If they transferred it directly to you  the client you could have skipped off in to the sunset with 650k not bought any house and never be seen again!!

No offence but I'm struggling to believe your post.


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## Brendan Burgess (14 Apr 2017)

Suebee said:


> No offence but I'm struggling to believe your post.



Banks did extraordinary things during the period, but I think it's probably a faulty memory on his part rather than any efforts to mislead us. 

At the end of the day, Finance, you borrowed the money so you have to pay it back. 

Brendan


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## mf1 (14 Apr 2017)

I'm a solicitor and I've seen it happen - but very rarely. 

I can recall one instance where there was a tax driven incentive to close a transaction before April 5th, back in the days - I was not involved but several days later, I was presented with sets of title deeds,   a fait accompli, a request by the clients to set up the mortgage paperwork (!)  and bizarrely, a request by the bank, who had issued funds to three clients for three properties in a development for which they had released funds to the clients directly, to certify a title that I had not investigated. 

Stubbornly, I declined - although I could have certified the title - on the grounds that there is a reason why things happen in a particular way. 

mf


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## Suebee (14 Apr 2017)

Oh wow I take my comment back then!! I am genuinely  shocked by such practices though!


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## Gerry Canning (14 Apr 2017)

Suebee said:


> Oh wow I take my comment back then!! I am genuinely  shocked by such practices though!


Suebee,

Back in the (fluffy) times , mortgage lenders frequently ignored all sensible rules .
Reps/managers/brokers were measured mostly on volume , and old finance saying {volume for vanity , profit for sanity } was sidelined.

Frequently Brokers were (incentivised) to get stuff in , the same accounts were used for different clients, the same employer miraculously employed half the town .
The Bank Officials knew this shuffling was happening , the Brokers complied with the rush.

I have yet to see One Bank Employee done for {fraud} and I do not expect to !


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## Suebee (14 Apr 2017)

Well if that was the case then it was illegal lending and I think banks and brokers should be held accountable! 

It makes my blood boil that the tax payer bailed out the banks and people lost their houses as a result of pay cuts,increased taxes as they couldn't fulfil  mortgages that probably should never have been given to them in the first place!!!

When I purchased my first property  in 2005  we were given a 100% mortgage and they lent us 22k over what we should have been able to borrow as prices increased between application and approval....the bank didn't bat an eyelid! They also asked if we needed a car loan while there!!! 

Granted we took the money but had they have said no we wouldn't have been able to buy at that time and would have had to save. 

They really should be held accountable  for the mess they facilitated


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## postman pat (14 Apr 2017)

aah the banks.. the common thread in everything..


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## Monbretia (14 Apr 2017)

God Gerry you really knew some bad bankers!  

As a mortgage advisor at the time I never knowingly let through anything I thought was dodgy, I did come across some doubtful stuff with brokers when we dealt with them and as a result we wouldn't deal with them (by the way there were good brokers too).   Then all the broker stuff was rerouted direct through HO, I don't doubt for a minute that strange things went on but not everyone was at it!   

I spent a day in HO at the time, looking at the lending route, at the just before loan offer issue stage the guy double checking and sending out the loan offers was telling me he had to double check details by ringing client etc before issue.  He showed me one example of a loan application and offer where the young applicant had submitted an accountant's report with 3 years figures in self employment despite being only about 21, nice figures too, he was living in a Dublin suburb but was buying somewhere in the middle of the country and when he rang the only contact number which was a mobile it was an inactive number.   He said when he questioned it with his superiors he was told send out the loan offer and if he didn't like it he knew where the door was!


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## Bronte (18 Apr 2017)

Monbretia said:


> He showed me one example of a loan application and offer where the young applicant had submitted an accountant's report with 3 years figures in self employment despite being only about 21, nice figures too, he was living in a Dublin suburb but was buying somewhere in the middle of the country and when he rang the only contact number which was a mobile it was an inactive number.   He said when he questioned it with his superiors he was told send out the loan offer and if he didn't like it he knew where the door was!



People were also able to use false P60's. 

One 'mortgage' the bank gave me they were in such a hurry to shovel out the money they decided that it was easier to give me a loan instead of a mortgage.  I was told the paperwork was easier.  Funnily enough a couple of years ago I fixed the rate and it's tied to money markets or something and it was harder to fix than it was to get the original loan.  The bank had to telephone me and my husband at the moment of fixing.  And a few years before that a guy rang me from the bank and told me they'd overcharged me about 10K and he'd only noticed because I had been talking to him that week about something else and they were having a monthly meeting about customers and he noticed my name and that brought it to his attention.  That loan is cheaper than a mortgage too because my 'margin' was low.


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## Setanta12 (18 Apr 2017)

Takes two to tango.  I am a finance professional and I bumped into an old school friend in early-2008 (maybe before).  He was in a no-great-shakes job (like the rest of us then/now) but he requested I draw up a few P60s for him for his next few investments.

Until then I  - naivety personified - had never thought of this practice. 

Luckily I made the point of ensuring we wouldn't bump into each other again to avoid awkward requests/refusals and I haven't seen him since.

I did hear through the grapevine that life treated him harshly in the round, and the undoubted collapse in value of his investments could only have hit him harder. When he had enough to be dealing with.

A few prison sentences for white-collar crime wouldn't go astray in this country.  Inventing P60s and finding willing-accomplices is not something which a non-Finance person can do for themselves.


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## dokhtor (18 Apr 2017)

Mobretia, thanks for the info. I do not know about the timing of issuing new traker loan offers. Maybe, maybe not. 

In their response the BOI complaints department confirmed to me that the tracker was indeed available to me in mid July and that they pulled the product in early October. They could have said, like you explained, that new tracker loan offers were not issued in July. end of story. Instead they first argued that I never applied, and when I showed them in the application that I did, they argued that it was broker who amended the application. But if the broker did not get paid extra for signing customers to inferior products, it is hard to explain then. Then the only explanation is that the bank may have asked brokers to steer customers away from trackers as a favour, after all, they get paid and have a relationship with the bank, 100s of loans.


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## elcato (13 Feb 2020)

Suebee said:


> They really should be held accountable for the mess they facilitated


It takes two to tango as this thread and a few thousand others have shown but blame should only be one way .....


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