The instigator of a $52.5 million mortgage fraud scheme has been sent to jail for four years and seven months.
Kang (Thomas) Huang, otherwise known as Gang Wang, was today sentenced in the Auckland High Court, having on December 21 admitted to eight charges of ‘Obtaining by Deception’, one of ‘Corruptly Giving Consideration to an Agent’, and one of ‘Dishonest Use of a Document’.
Huang set up a scheme whereby he used the names of his friends and family, as well as fake names, to secure mortgages from ANZ, BNZ and another bank that has name suppression.
The idea behind Huang's offending was to secure funds for his property development business. If he could get others to unwittingly take out mortgages on his behalf from banks, he could pay lower interest rates than if his company took out loans from finance companies.
In using what was essentially an illegal cost cutting strategy, Huang provided banks with false information, including fake employment letters and overseas bank statements.
He also bribed a bank employee responsible for processing loan applications, by paying them $7000.
Altogether Huang obtained $52.5 million through 57 separate loan applications. The scheme involved 75 properties in Auckland and Hamilton.
The offending occurred between 2011 and 2015, mainly over a two-year period.
Of the $52.5 million of loans taken out, only $394,000 is still outstanding. ANZ is pursuing this shortfall between the mortgage taken out over a property and the amount the property was sold for at a mortgagee sale.
At sentencing, Justice Graham Lang said the fact more money wasn't lost in the saga was "fortuitous".
He noted Huang's offending occurred during a time properties could almost certainly have been sold for more than they were bought.
Yet at any stage the housing market could have fallen, exposing the borrowers to claims from the lenders.
Far-reaching effects
Justice Lang said: “The overall effect of the offending goes far greater than the financial loss that might be suffered by any individual financial institution…
“Banks in this country deal with customers on the basis that customers are being honest with them. Once that proves not to be the case, there is a significant flow-on effect.
“Banks will inevitably tighten their controls and take steps to ensure that the customers with whom they deal have provided correct and genuine financial information…
“The end result of all this is that the criteria for honest home buyers will be tighten and they will find it more difficult to obtain loans.”
ANZ confirmed this in its victim impact statement read out it court.
Meanwhile Serious Fraud Office CEO, Julie Read, in a statement said the cost of additional checks introduced by banks could be passed on to borrowers.
ANZ also noted the impact Huang's offending had on the reputation of the bank and its staff.
Justice Lang concluded: “Customers may grow concerned at whether the bank is safely looking after their money, which can impact on trust and the banking system and the economy as a whole...
“The ripples of offending such as this travel well beyond the financial institutions directly involved.
"If it should be known overseas that New Zealand financial institutions are… unable to counter offending such as this, then the damage to our international commercial reputation will be enormous.”
Huang is a Chinese national who has lived in New Zealand for more than 20 years.
He will be eligible to apply for parole in two years and three months' time.
Others involved in the case - Huang's wife, Kang Xu (also known as Yan (Jenny) Zhang), lawyer Gang (Richard) Chen and former banker Zongliang (Charly) Jiang - are due to go on trial on February 26. The trial is expected to take 12 weeks.
A fifth defendant - the banker who received the $7000 kickback - is believed to have fled to China.
60 Comments
In which time he gets 4 years 7 months worth of free accommodation and meals, paid for by the people he's just been ripping off....in the same time period, many younger kiwis will pay $100,000 (or more...) in rent, potentially to people operating in a similar fashion (and taxes to pay for the prison time)..what a fine society we've created. Congratulations to those who have been running this circus the last 10 years. Lets reward greed and selfishness because that always works out well...
During which time he also loses any ability to earn, and a severe loss of freedom. Sure things seem to be getting worse for the younger generation in some ways but I don't think it's worse than being in prison. What do you want the result here to be? 20 years of "free accommodation and meals"?
Of course we all know without even reading the article who is behind the fraud. Kiwi so dumb lah.
Isn't it about time the country shut the damn door on these dodgy cultures. If we don't do it soon the country will be entirely colonised. In past centuries a war would be required to take over another peoples' lands. Is it so hard to admit in this PC upside-down world that immigrants from certain countries don't have our interests at heart. Are testosterone levels now so low that people's thoughts can be stopped simply by saying "racist" or "xenophobic"?
We know how it goes. The New Zealanders are priced out to the suburbs or end up flatting for years while incomes go nowhere. Birth rates are nothing as we live like captive Pandas. In time the voting demographics change and New Zealand is gone.
A citizens referendum is in order to change the rules. Raise the points. Cut the family stream grappling hooks. Shut down the pathway from business "schools" to jobs to residency. Grant additional points to people from western backgrounds.
Boomers are so addicted to paper money they'll sell our their own kids. They are not much better than meth addicts.
My wife is Asian, though we met here. She abhors the corruption in her country of origin and admires the comparative lack of corruption in NZ. Life is so much harder for so many more people - especially those at the bottom - when corruption is prevalent and tolerated.
It's great being on the side of money, of course. Everything's easier and rules only matter somewhat if you don't have the right relationships.
And Expat - being a property owner you've likely benefited from the demand this individuals behavior has caused on the market and pushed housing prices even higher - but of course, that wouldn't influence your position because you're unbiased and are a morally well balanced human being who wants the best for the average kiwi....right? Nothing to do with being male, stale and pale at all...
I have one property, my home, that as stated before I hope never to sell nor borrow against. If anything I’m disadvantaged by the increase in property prices as I have to sacrifice some comfort in retirement to ensure that my children can own a home each, eventhough I suspect that they will settle elsewhere in the world.
and it will become more common as the percentage of peoples coming from cultures where corruption is the norm become a bigger population in NZ. it takes a very small number of those people to take advantage of our lax systems and weak laws to go down that route.
same as we are now seeing the number of stories about immigrants getting ripped off for employment growing
i expect to see more of this type of fraud surface as the downturn of housing hits and CG can no loner hide it
unlikely with our society being topped up with all the undesirables that Australia are sending back, i expect to stay around the same even accounting for the increase in population.
You're somewhat correct. Our prisons are 51% Maori, 31% European, 11% Pacific Islander and 4.6% Asian.
Seems to me that two groups here are way over represented. I guess it depends if Labour wants to keep fueling the growth of dysfunctional families with WFF and benefits. And let's be honest we all know the "Asian" category will include a lot of Indian sexual predators.
http://www.corrections.govt.nz/resources/research_and_statistics/quarte…
I think NZers openly discuss the fact NZ has a problem with domestic violence, as an example.
It seems fair to acknowledge that corruption is much more rampant in some countries than in NZ, while acknowledging it's present in all countries.
https://www.transparency.org/news/feature/corruption_perceptions_index_…
NZ declined slightly under Key, Collins etc. but we're still ranked among the least corrupt - vs. China at 79 in the world. It's a bit disingenuous - especially if one has done business in China - to try to pretend corruption is not more widespread in China than in NZ.
And culture is not genetic. It has zilch to do with race.
Good report of the court case but that's all. I would be interested to know how this worked our for his business. Is there a trail of abandoned buildings, or mortgage sales, or citizens damaged in various ways. ?? Or has his 'ownership' prevailed and he continues to profit from it ??
Totally agree Averageman. We need to put more value on our lifestyle and culture. The classic example for me is the Afghan immigrant/refugee who has already raped twice and molested two girls, done jail time, can't speak english and been told that he has to be a good boy for 5yrs or we are sending him home. WTF? he has left a trail of emotional destruction in his wake, cost the taxpayer millions, and immigration give him a 5 yr good behavior bond.
NZ is not short of DNA. We do not need other countries jetsam. The Somali refugee who hijacked a plane can leave on the same flight as well. If Immigrants or refugees are a mistake, Get rid of them, zero tolerence like Ausie has now adopted.
Odd that you should mention the Afghan refugee in your comment
Published in Stuff just 2 hours ago is a case of a Ugandan refugee who came to NZ as a young child. Now aged 23 he has today been sentenced in the High Court to 11 years imprisonment for committing 2 rapes. He doesn't accept he has done anything wrong. He has been in NZ long enough to learn our laws and ways of behaving, yet a court appointed psychologist commented on his belief that women should not dress provocatively or walk home alone. So after at least 10 years or longer living here and being supported by our system he has not assimilated or accepted our ways. Now aged 23 he is to be a guest at great expense in our prison system. With such a conviction and a jail record, on release, he will never be a contributing member of our society. What should he do?
The prosecutor said specialist medical reports thought there was a high risk of reoffending because he did not recognise he did anything wrong
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/101277939/man-raped-two-teenager…
The pattern is, that if they don't appreciate our society. Who cares where they came from, who cares if they were loved as a child, who cares if they say sorry, who cares if they didn't like where they came from, the pattern is; Get rid of them, send them home, free ticket.
Also on Stuff an article saying unconscious bias is the cause for too many Maori in prison and that we have to alter our system to solve it somehow. Now I can understand conscious bias is racism and that should be condemned but the problem is how to handle the bias that puts too few in prison. Despite this mortgage fraudster, Chinese are under-represented in our prisons and of course women massively under-represented - do we change the rules for imprisonment so a Maori burglar can have 100 convictions before incarceration while a Chinese woman is sent to prison for her first parking infringement?
In NZ we have 6919 male sentenced prisoners and 564 female which is 0.16% of our population. Lets suppose for the sake of argument that one ethnic group commits double the crimes of another. It doesn't make one group twice as dishonest; if you meet a random person from either ethnic group they are both over 99% likely to be honest.
However disparate your perception maybe of a particular culture as regards their ways of doing business (and granted, there are differences) NZ will continue to go through the teething process regardless unless we decide to opt out and return to the good old isolationist days where we can moan about being the ass end of the world. If anything these high profile cases suggest that we have a particular appetite for fraud, where countless cases of relatively minor fraud are simply part and parcel of the way we have always done things. The fact that we now are addressing AML at this very late stage is a clear indication that we, have for a very long time been naive in the extreme and operated with a blind conceit that we are Kiwis and somehow more honest than others. That has never been true. It was simply a matter of scale, opportunity and tolerance. We are learning now, and should have much earlier, that we are all equally able to pull a fast one albeit on a slightly more modest scale compared to our more widely publicised more recent residents. This is a time to get to grips with the fact the we don’t any longer live in relative isolation, the gates were opened and the clock cant be turned back. We can blame others but ultimately it is us who share responsibility so take this as a wake up call. Our regulatory process against fraud is not as woeful as one might think, but our implementation and the effectiveness of front line staff to work within its scope is. As said NZers are often quite good at assauging any culpability by either looking at themselves and/or others through rose tinted spectacles or simply keeping the curtains drawn.
Fake documents are common in China and at least that's my experiences living more than a decade over there. Married couples used to generate fake divorce certificates in order to be eligible to purchase multiple properties. There is no morality or shared values those westerners consider valuable; however not in China. Bank system over there even does not allow to open a shared account for the couples due to the risks of uncertainty and big dogs are those, who can exploit the system and society. Therefore, punishment most of the time is death penalty. I know we have a leeway here in NZ in considering the humanity. "I would say I have learnt how to make money using fake document now and see you after 5 years." In this case, deporting the criminals with the whole family to the country of origin could be a better solution. This would save our tax-payers' money and we could truely use those for humanity. We know hundreds of native children will pass tonight with poverty.
On top of all my concerns is not losing the kiwi wealth and getting poorer and poorer considering humanity. Rather end of the day we shall also potentially loose our morality and for next generations too. Perhaps that's the conspiracy and plan for now from Chinese government to rein the world in next 10 years. The earlier we would understand and take action to save our own values and nurture as well as protect our own innovations, still there is a way. At the same time the weakest point for China is to manage the disrupted innovation and diversity.You have your say.
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