A senior surveyor who accepted gifts worth £1m for her part in a £10m mortgage scam has been found guilty of fraud at the Old Bailey.
Mary-Jane Rathie, from Hertfordshire, received the gifts in return for inflating valuations on five London properties on behalf of a client who has since disappeared.
The client, Joanne Pier, had first offered Rathie a wedding present of £100,000 in 2007, but Rathie refused and reported it to her employers.
However, she went on to receive £900,000 in cheques and money transfers, plus two cars worth around £200,000.
Pier used the fraudulent valuations to secure mortgages from the Bank of Scotland. Altogether, she obtained £10m of mortgages, of which £9.5m relied on Rathie’s valuations.
Rathie valued one property in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, at £4.2m, which was nearly twice the £2.35m value given by an independent surveyor later instructed by the Bank of Scotland to investigate the fraud
Rathie was convicted of five counts of fraud between May 2007 and June 2009 and of concealing criminal property. She had denied the charges.
Her husband, Metropolitan Police officer David Rathie, 47, was cleared of a charge of concealing criminal property.
Two luxury cars – 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 Mary-Jane Rathie, who denied the charges, that she faces imprisonment ‘of some length’ when she is sentenced on July 27.
Rathie worked for Ashdown Lyons in Finchley, north London. Her RICS membership was suspended for one year last November.
Comments
Speaking as a surveyor myself, people like Mary-Jane Rathie make me sick. They should lock her up and throw away the key.
It took me eight years of hard work to qualify, and I use the fact that we are 'regulated by RICS' to stand out from the competition, and position ourselves as a company with ethical and moral standards which are beyond reproach.
The behaviour of this individual and other rotten apples like her undermines our position and the credibility of the rest of us law-abiding professionals, who would never dream of behaving in such a way.
As Rathie has now been convicted I trust RICS will now do more than merely suspend her membership for one year?
have a look at this:
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Well said Peebee
Okay. Today, we find THREE stories on EAT relating directly to the RICS.
The two 'official' ones are flogging their new Report.
YET - there is headline news regarding the illegal actions of one of their Members - the SECOND in as many weeks.
On these - the silence from their official body is deafening...
As this case is no longer sub-judice, comments can be made.
Rosalind...
Can we comment now?
As a surveyor, I am pleased to see this decision but it (and others) have resulted in a doubling of my PII cover.
When will the RICS pull its finger out and start weeding out bad practice in our industry, and stop persecuting the small practice with the ridiculous and unfair costs of compliance.
Anti bribery law has just come in to force.
Those little brown envelopes that estate agents get donated by property developers definitely fall into that category.
The SFO will probably be watching us all quite hard.
Apparently even £50 as a facilitation payment qualifies!
A grand in £20 notes is a 10 year sentence.
And as a boss, you are liable for those little miscreants you employ.
Each one you sell now you would be wise to document that the buyer could not bribe you because ...
When they say Kermit you say "JUMP!"