Three men claiming to be from the Middle East have been arrested and charged with attempted fraud.
They approached Masthaven Bridging Finance for a bridging loan of £1.5m on a property in West London with a value of £5m. But as part of Masthaven’s underwriting policy, when the loan amount is over a certain figure they ask to meet the clients in person. As soon as the fraudsters were made aware of this, they reduced the loan size to £925,000. The managing director of Masthaven, Andrew Bloom, still considered the loan to be a high amount and insisted on a meeting.
The underwriting team then discovered the borrowers’ ID, utility bills & passports did not match up. The police were called and confirmed that the utility bills were in fact fraudulent and that one of the passports belonged to an 11 year old boy.
Andrew Bloom called the broker informing him that until he had met with the clients, Masthaven was not able to complete on the loan. At a following meeting Three Asian men were arrested. Two have been remanded and refused bail whilst one has been given bail but with very strict conditions.
