The broker facilitated nearly two dozen fraudulent mortgage applications, said BC's registrar of mortgage brokers
The British Columbia registrar of mortgage brokers has slapped a $15,000 penalty and a lifetime industry ban on Mana Erfani, the spouse of previously censured “shadow broker” Jay Kanth Chaudhary.
The penalty, which will cover the registrar’s investigation costs, came with an order prohibiting Erfani from ever becoming a mortgage or sub-mortgage broker.
As reported by CBC News, Erfani worked as a sub-mortgage broker for Chaudhary’s network from June 2015 to June 2017. Through this vast network, Chaudhary fraudulently arranged $511.6 million in mortgages, investigators said.
According to the BC registrar’s records, Erfani allegedly provided Chaudhary her user credentials, which allowed the latter to submit 20 applications – many of which were found to contain significant chunks of falsified information – in Erfani’s name.
The misrepresentations included an applicant who supposedly had between $144,000 and $150,000 in funds, but who turned out to have a debt of $16 and a balance of $8,000. Another applicant had actual losses of $9,000, but was indicated to have an annual income of $124,000.
“For each of the 18 borrowers and 20 mortgage applications, the income was either overstated, supporting documents were demonstrably altered or not genuine, or other information provided to lenders was false,” according to the registrar’s consent order.
BC authorities said that they are continuing their investigation on Chaudarhy and his accomplices.
“The file really speaks to itself,” said Chris Carter, the province’s deputy registrar of mortgage brokers. “The bottom line is when it comes to facilitating unregistered activity, brokers quite frankly, risk losing their licence if they're found to be supporting and facilitating that activity.”
