Couple on trial for £10m BoS mortgage scam

A policeman’s wife took part in a £10m mortgage scam in exchange for lavish gifts worth £1m, the Old Bailey heard.

Chartered surveyor Mary-Jane Rathie, allegedly overvalued London properties for money and high-end cars, reported the BBC.

Rathie was said to have received £900,000 in cheques and money transfers plus a Bentley Continental and a Range Rover Sport.

The vehicles, together worth nearly £200,000, were both registered in the name of her husband David, a Metropolitan Police officer with the central London traffic unit.

David Durose, prosecuting, said: "This was payment to Rathie for her dishonest valuations."

He said the money was used to pay off a mortgage and to buy a new property.

Rathie denies five allegations of fraud between May 2007 and June 2009, while she and her husband each deny a charge of concealing criminal property.

She is alleged to have provided 'dishonestly-inflated' valuations for a woman known as Joanne Pier, who used them to secure millions of pounds in mortgages from the Bank of Scotland.

The court heard that the false valuations included a riverside property in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea; a flat in Cadogan Gardens, Belgravia, near Sloane Square; and another at Chester Mews, behind Buckingham Palace.

A fourth property was in the Docklands, east London, and a fifth in Pimlico.

Durose said that Pier obtained more than £10m of loans, £9.5m of which relied on valuations by Rathie, who was managing surveyor of a large firm of chartered surveyors Ashdown Lyons.

Pier, who has since left the country and cannot be found, had first been introduced to the firm in early 2007, presenting a list of properties that she owned and wanted valued, the court heard.

According to the BBC, in June 2007, Rathie reported to managers that Pier had offered her £100,000 as a wedding present.

This was twice her annual salary, but she had declined it as "totally inappropriate", Durose said.

He added that Rathie "was able to refuse such an offer, and not only refuse it, but report it. Unfortunately six months later, the position had changed."

He said Rathie valued the Chelsea property at £4.2m. It had been valued at £2.35m by an independent surveyor from the Bank of Scotland.

Durose said the Belgravia flat was valued at £3m by Rathie, twice the figure later reached by the independent surveyor. He told jurors that although different surveyors would give different valuations, the defendant's valuations were outside the range that could be expected.

The trial continues.