Conman forced to pay back £12,000

A Hull man who masterminded a £1.7m mortgage scam has been ordered to repay his ill-gotten gains.

Former financial adviser Richard Mackenzie was jailed for six years in January after being found guilty of orchestrating the fraud, which allowed his clients to live a life of luxury.

Mackenzie, a former Hull City councillor, has now been ordered to pay back more than £12,000 after police used proceeds of crime legislation to strip him of his assets.

Hull Crown Court heard Mackenzie, 59, of Kirkham Drive, had helped clients to apply for mortgages using false details which allowed them to live a life of luxury.

Mackenzie will now have to pay £12,622 after the court determined that was how much he had benefited from his crime.

The scam allowed two of his clients to live in Swanland Hall, a Georgian mansion in the village, where Mackenzie also had an apartment.

They were only caught because of an anonymous tip-off that one of them, Martin White, who was driving a Lamborghini, was fraudulently claiming state benefits.

White, 59, of Leeds, was jailed for five years for his part in the fraud.

At a court hearing in April, he was ordered to pay a nominal fine of £1, but the amount he had profited from the crime was assessed as being £169,299.

The police may decide to go after this amount in the future if he gains any substantial assets.

Anthony Walsh, 53, of Leeds, Simon Woolston, 48 of Marfleet Lane, east Hull, and Jeffrey Pinder, 48, of Market Rasen, were also involved in the scam.

The police were unable to retrieve much of the money as it had been squandered by the fraudsters.

Lorraine Baines, senior financial investigator for Humberside Police, said: "This was an organised abuse of mortgage applications, involving a number of people who fraudulently raised money they otherwise would not have had access to.

"They squandered the money on high living and fast cars over a period of time and they let the properties they bought deteriorate, leaving very little in the form of assets."

The men were all clients of Mackenzie, who described himself as a "legal and financial practitioner".

Using false information, the men applied for mortgages with a number of companies, netting £1,788,470 between 1998 and 2003.