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The Australian arm of a global bank handed out a $720,000 home loan without seeing the applicant's driver's licence or checking other documents - which turned out to be fakes - according to News Ltd.
HSBC made the loan to conwoman Rose Marie Lo-Giudice so she could buy a property in Gladesville, Sydney, after she provided a copy of an expired passport, fake payslips and a false deposit certificate from another bank.
The 41-year-old mother has been sentenced to three-and-a-half years' jail after pleading guilty to two charges of dishonestly obtaining financial advantage by deception and one of using a false document by deception.
When Lo-Giudice applied for the ‘Premier Residential’ loan she told a mortgage specialist she had ‘left her wallet at work’.
The staffer told her she could bring her identification in at a later date.
Two weeks later, Lo-Giudice returned to the bank with a certified copy of an expired passport, which had been altered to look valid. She also provided a fake Bendigo Bank term deposit certificate and doctored pay slips from her employer, Allianz Australia.
Lo-Giudice provided the bank with a contract for the sale of the property and HSBC issued a letter of offer to her for the loan, which she signed on December 14, 2010. She defaulted on the mortgage four months later.
A "subsequent investigation" revealed the documents supplied by Lo-Giudice were fraudulent. The Bendigo Bank account number had never existed and the payslips were fake.
