Crooked solicitor jailed for mortgage fraud

Monday 20th February 2012

A conman who bombarded banks with fraudulent mortgage applications has been jailed for seven years.

Bent solicitor Mohammed Asif Younas was at the helm of a criminal gang that defrauded high street banks out of almost £8m by taking out mortgages on properties they didn’t own.

Younas, 50, was sentenced last week at Southwark Crown Court. Last November, he had pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud and conspiracy to money-launder.

Younas, operating under the alias Mahmood Ali, was director of law firm Montague Mason Solicitors.

As Mahmood Ali, he was struck off by the Solicitors Regulation Authority in April 2010, whilst his whereabouts were unknown, after the rest of the gang had been rounded up and sentenced. Montague Mason Solicitors was also closed down.

He submitted false paperwork to Birmingham Midshires and Abbey banks in connection with 33 fraudulent mortgage applications in a two-month period in 2008.

His fellow gang members had previously identified suitable properties across the south-east to use for false mortgage applications – with the home owners unaware of the crime.

The fraudulent mortgages were finalised when false paperwork was completed by Montague Mason and signed by Younas, including the Certificates of Title requesting the banks release the funds.

Once the deals were signed off and the funds transferred, the stolen money was quickly transferred from the solicitor’s account into a network of bank accounts controlled by Younas and the rest of the gang. The money was then withdrawn in cash.

Det Supt Bob Wishart, of the City of London Police, said: “Younas is a sophisticated fraudster who hid behind an alias to con banks and evade police.”

The fraud had started to unravel in March 2009 when Abbey and HBOS asked the City of London Police to look into the activities of Montague Mason Solicitors, based in Essex.

Working in collaboration with the two banks, detectives uncovered an extensive criminal network that led them to execute search warrants at addresses across the UK in June 2009.

Four men – Khawar Khan, Imran Mirza, Nadeem Mirza and Farhan Khan – all part of the same gang as Younas, were arrested during the warrants. They were subsequently jailed, having pleaded guilty to numerous fraud-related offences in December 2009.

But ‘Mahmood Ali’ remained elusive, until detectives working with the DVLA were able to match ‘Ali’s’ driving licence image to one with the name of Mohammed Asif Younas.

That licence provided legitimate. Detectives now had Younas’ home address in Croydon and he was quickly arrested.

At Younas’ home, detectives recovered more false documents and items linking him to his alias and as a result he was charged with numerous fraud offences.

Younas was sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment for conspiracy to defraud and four and a half years for conspiracy to money launder, to run concurrently.