2005-09-07 19:31 A 41-year-old man was sentenced at the District Court today (September 7) to 18 months' imprisonment upon his earlier conviction of obtaining pecuniary advantage by deception and conspiracy to defraud. The court heard that in February 2003, the man filed a mortgage application to a bank for an amount of about $1.95 million in order to finance the purchase of a residential property in North Point for a price of $ 2.1 million. The man later paid $20,000 as a deposit and in return received cash rebates totalling $500,000 from the developer. In support of his mortgage loan application, the defendant submitted a letter of employment and four Mandatory Provident Fund (MPF) records to the bank, showing that he had been employed since September 2001 as a senior consultant with a monthly salary of about $30,000. Enquiries revealed that the MPF records provided by the defendant were false as he had never registered in the MPF scheme and made payment to the MPF provider. In March 2003, the mortgage from the bank was drawn down. In addition, the defendant received a cash rebate of about $146,000 from the bank. The defendant defaulted repayment after making five monthly instalments to the bank. The actual loss of the bank, after repossessing and selling the property, was about $818,000. The man was subsequently arrested by officers of Commercial Crime Bureau and charged with one count of obtaining pecuniary advantage by deception and one count of conspiracy to defraud on August 19, 2004. He pleaded guilty to the charges and was sentenced to 18 months' imprisonment in the District Court today. |