Surveyor found guilty of £10m mortgage scam

A senior surveyor who took gifts worth £1m for her part in a £10m mortgage scam for London properties has been convicted of fraud at the Old Bailey.

Mary-Jane Rathie from Hertfordshire, got money and cars to "inflate" valuations to help secure the loans, reports the BBC.

She was convicted of five counts of fraud between May 2007 and June 2009 and of concealing criminal property.

Her husband, Met Police officer David Rathie, of Cheshunt, has been cleared of a charge of concealing criminal property.

Two luxury cars worth a total of £200,000 - a Bentley Continental and Range Rover Sport - were said to be registered in the name of the officer, who worked with the central London traffic unit, the jury heard.

Judge Timothy Pontius warned Rathie, who denied the charges, that she faced imprisonment "of some length" when she is sentenced on 27 July.

David Durose, prosecuting, told the court that the surveyor, who worked with firm Ashdown Lyons, provided "dishonestly-inflated" valuations for a woman, who used them to secure mortgages from the Bank of Scotland.

The offences relate to a riverside property in Chelsea; a flat in Belgravia and another at Chester Mews, at the back of Buckingham Palace, the jury heard.

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

Rathie's client, known as Joanne Pier, has since left the country and cannot be found, the trial heard.