Appeals
against sentence by Eli Devoy and her brother Mehrdad Ghorbani for involvement
in a $5.8 million mortgage fraud were dismissed by the Court of Appeal.
Devoy was jailed for
five years and Ghorbani for two years seven months following conviction for a
mortgage fraud spread over three years netting $5.8 million from multiple
banking and lending institutions.
Falsified and forged documents were used to get loans on eleven
properties. The court was told family
members together with other members of Auckland’s Iranian community were used
as dummy purchasers of residential property with a contemporaneous on-sale to
members of the Ghorbani clan at an inflated price. Mortgage finance was raised using figures
generated by the second inflated price and loan documents supported with
falsified employment and income records.
This gave members of the Ghorbani clan each a house to live in with cash
in hand. In some instances the fraud was
recycled when a mortgage fell into arrears; the property was sold cheaply to a
dummy buyer in the face of a likely mortgagee sale and another lending
institution duped with a contemporaneous sale to another family member at an
inflated price.
On appeal, Devoy said
there was a miscarriage of justice because trial counsel failed to properly
cross-examine Barfoot and Thompson real estate agent Zohreh Homei Azimi. Devoy alleges Ms Azimi duped her. Devoy said she was no more than an innocent
conduit acting on behalf of Ms Azumi in submitting forged and falsified
documents to lending institutions.
The Court of Appeal
said trial counsel did not err. Counsel
could not aggressively cross-examine Ms Azumi; that would cause Devoy’s
criminal record for dishonesty being admissible as evidence. Devoy has a number of convictions for
dishonesty, starting with a conviction for benefit fraud in 2003 shortly after arrival
in New Zealand. Devoy’s own shifting
pattern of evidence hampered trial counsel, the Court said. After telling her lawyers she was innocent,
at trial Devoy’s evidence only served to tie her into the fraud. A 2012 Serious Fraud Office search of her Eastern
Beach home uncovered what was described as veritable Aladdin’s cave of
incriminating documents. Devoy refused
to participate in a Serious Fraud Office interview. Prosecutors described Devoy as the mastermind
of the operation.
The Court of Appeal dismissed
Devoy’s appeal against conviction and dismissed both Devoy’s and Ghorbani’s
appeals against sentence.
Devoy
v. R.; Ghorbani v. R – Court of Appeal (25.05.17)
17.053