Property agents, lawyer among 10 to be charged in court for housing loan cashback scam

SINGAPORE — Ten people, including home sellers, property agents and a lawyer, will be charged in court on Tuesday (Dec 3) for their roles in four housing loan cashback scams involving a total of more than S$11 million.

The scams took place in 2014 and 2015, and sale prices of properties were alleged to have been inflated artifically in order to maximise bank borrowings to “reap cashback”, the police said in a press release on Monday.

Cashback schemes were believed to be rampant in the mid-2000s. In April 2005, then National Development Minister Mah Bow Tan announced that resale flat buyers would have to appoint private valuers assigned by the Housing and Development Board to stop people from inflating apartment prices.

HOW THE TRICKERY WORKED

For the recent scams, the facilitators would at first arrange with the sellers and the sellers’ property agents to buy their property at a pre-agreed price.

However, an inflated price was instead used to apply for bank loans.

Upon the completion of the property sale, the sellers would then return to the facilitators any money they had received in excess of the pre-agreed price.

The facilitators would also recruit “nominee buyers” after that and submit forged income documents to the banks to get the loans.

The scam was uncovered when the nominee buyers defaulted on the loans, the police said.

MOUNTING LOSSES FOR BANKS

As a result of the forged income documents, a bank was deceived into disbursing loans amounting to S$8.5 million for three of the four mortgage applications.

The three properties were later sold by the bank at a total loss of more than S$2.9 million, the police said.

CHARGES AGAINST THE SUSPECTS

The three facilitators of the scheme will be charged on Tuesday with cheating and forgery offences.

One of them will also face seven other charges relating to criminal breach of trust, and for using a fake stamp certificate.

The two nominee buyers of the scheme will each be charged with one count of cheating, while two property sellers will face one count of fraudulently executing a deed of transfer.

The two sellers’ property agents will each be charged with one count of conspiring with the sellers to fraudulently execute the deed of transfer, while the conveyancing lawyer will be charged with falsely certifying the correctness of an instrument.