Mr Peter and Mr James were directors of UK Finance House (UKFH) with Mr Peter based in the Poole office and Mr James in the Bournemouth office.
The Financial Services Authority (FSA) found that Mr Peter failed to take reasonable steps to prevent false information being supplied to mortgage lenders by UKFH; take reasonable steps to prevent UKFH from being used to further financial crime; realize that mortgage introducers were acting on behalf of UKFH and arranging regulated mortgage contracts without its authority or permission; and realize that Mr James was signing off regulated mortgage applications as his own work, when they were in fact prepared by a third party.
The FSA also considers that Mr Peter engaged in unauthorized mortgage business by providing a regulated mortgage contract to a client through an unauthorized company of which he was a director.
The FSA has found that Mr James submitted a personal mortgage application containing false information about his employment and earnings; and signed off and submitted to lenders mortgage applications which contained false applicant incomes and false documentation in support of applicants’ identity verifications.
The FSA found that both Mr Peter and Mr James failed to take adequate remedial action in 2006 when they discovered that false information had been supplied to lenders in support of mortgage applications and therefore UKFH might have been used to perpetrate financial crime. The FSA has also cancelled the permission of UKFH.
Georgina Philippou, head of retail enforcement at the FSA, said: The actions of Peter and James Dean posed a serious risk to lenders and consumers. As part of our crackdown on financial crime in the mortgage market we have banned a number of mortgage brokers and others in the last year and we will continue to make examples of people, including by bans and fines, who either commit mortgage fraud or fail to prevent their firm from being used to further financial crime.
