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Chinese Buyers Buy Fake Documents, Australian Mortgage Fraud. Dodgy bank statements false pay slips for $200. Crackdown by Australia’s leading banks.

Chinese Buyers Buy Fake Documents in Australian Mortgage Fraud

Foreign Borrowers Buying Fake Bank Statements To Purchase Australian Property

By Phil McCarroll

More light has been shed on the reasons behind the recent crackdown on foreign borrowers by Australian lenders, with reports of the buying and selling of fraudulent documents for the use in mortgage applications. According to the AFR, recent instances of fraud include a “ludicrously obviously” fake loan application from Chinese investors hoping to borrow $960,000 to purchase an apartment in Sydney. The revelation of the black market documents seemingly justifies the recent decisions from a range of Australian lenders to restrict their lending to foreign borrowers or people relying on foreign income or currency. Major lenders ANZ and Westpac, among those who have pulled back their foreign lending, have also announced they are investigating mortgages they have written that were likely backed by fraudulent foreign-income documentation. While the issue of mortgage fraud by foreign borrowers had been in the headlines already, Ken Sayer, chief executive of non-bank Mortgage House, told the AFR the latest developments likely mean the issue is more widespread than many first thought.

“This is huge,” Sayer told the AFR

“It is much bigger than everyone is making it out to be. The numbers could be astronomical,” he told the AFR.