North East Property Buyers and Newcastle Home Loans arrests, yesterday arrested three women and two men, from addresses in Newcastle and Washington.The Chronicle understands them to include Grace and David Purdie, of Darras Hall, Northumberland, who are each a director of one of the companies, and Grace Purdie’s business partner, Michael Foster, of Houghton-le-Spring.The women, aged 24, 46 and 51, and men, 51 and 36, have been questioned on suspicion of money laundering and conspiracy to defraud, and released on bail.All their financial assets have now been frozen.
It is alleged that the two Gateshead-based property firms, which offer people suffering from financial difficulties the chance to stay in their own homes by buying the properties and then renting them back to their former owners, defaulted on mortgages secured on the properties.And many of the tenants living in some of the 2,000 homes in the companies’ portfolio have already been evicted after mortgage lenders repossessed homes in an attempt to claw back the money they are allegedly owed.DCI Jim McAll, from Northumbria Police’s economic crime unit, today said that, if proven, this could be the biggest property scam the country has ever seen.
“What is alleged is a very serious and complex fraud,” he said. “If proven and if it is on the scale that is alleged it will probably be one of the biggest property frauds in the country. It is certainly the biggest one we have ever dealt with.”DCI McAll said the investigation could take many months, or even years, as detectives have to plough through thousands of documents connected to the companies’ mortgage deals. We want to get to the end of the case as quickly as possible, but it is a massive case.“We are going through mortgages and paperwork and trying to find a representative sample of cases which show what has been going on. We will be talking to tenants but we are advising them to wait until we get in touch with them.”
North East Property Buyers and Newcastle Home Loans are understood to own around 2,000 properties across the North East, Humberside and Lancashire.Police are still advising concerned tenants to contact a solicitor.The Chronicle has featured dozens of families who contacted us after we first revealed the scam earlier this year.
Detectives launched a major fraud probe in March after raiding homes and offices connected to North East Property Buyers and Newcastle Home Loans.The matter was referred to Northumbria Police’s economic crime unit following an investigation by the Financial Services Authority.http://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/north-east-news/todays-evening-chronicle/2009/06/12/five-arrested-in-alleged-mortgage-fraud-probe-72703-23862163/