Welcome! Always nice to see a new poster. It is certainly a crazy world over in the land of the Free folk. As for the Darren Darling story and First Plus, I think we might hear the result of this from Mr Darling, the best he can hope for is that it only costs him the money to open the account and to order the cheque book, otherwise he might be looking at time at her Majesty's pleasure.Alex C. wrote:New poster here (found out about Were bank from MoneySavingExpert and did some research and found here).[...]
The whole thing just fascinates me - thank you for all the insight on here though, it brings me down to earth and makes me feel sane again
I'd be interested to find out the ending to the first plus story but I guess we'll never hear - the fact they've removed the charge is clearly an administrative error, will a court be open to them putting a charge back in place?
As for the mortgage charge, it wouldn't be that tricky to get the charge put back onto the property, it was removed as part of a criminal endeavour and a long running theme of law is that you shouldn't benefit from committing a crime. I would also suggest that the terms of the mortgage may well mean that the fee's the bank incurs in getting the charge restored would be added to the amount Mr Darling owes.
The best Mr Darling can hope for is that the bank wants to keep the mortgage going and is willing to overlook this little bit of fraud. That would, in my opinion, be a very remote hope that is somewhat unlikely.
If the bank has placed in the mortgage a clause allowing them to call in the full amount outstanding in the event of fraudulent activity by Mr Darling. Mr Darling would need to get another mortgage or find some means to fund repaying the amount owed for the property. This would be made more difficult because Mr Darling would have a CIFAS marker against his name and this would make other mortgage providers wary of taking him on. This would likely lead to foreclosure and repossession.
However the bank may choose not to go down this road, Mr Darling now owes them the money he thinks he paid them with a fake cheque. They would have little reason not to send a demand for payment in full. When this is not forthcoming, they would be able to petition for bankruptcy and would be able to force the sale of the house in this manner. This would be even more disastrous for Mr Darling because he would have his assets frozen, the Official Receiver would be involved and he would still lose the house.
Mr Darling has likely lost his house. If he is lucky he will only lose the house, if he is not he may lose his liberty for some time.
