A Kelbrook man is set to be sentenced in September after being found guilty of his role in a £20m. property fraud case.
Property surveyor Frank Darlington (60), of Vicarage Road, Kelbrook, has been bailed to an address in Chester after being found guilty of conspiracy to defraud and conspiracy to falsify documents between May 2003 and June 2008.
Darlington has been told to remain at his home, surrender his passport and is on a tagged curfew along with four other defendants found guilty.
He was convicted last Thursday along with two defendants, property speculator Antony Lowry-Huws (63), of Parc Tudur, Kinmel Bay, and his business partner Sheila Rose Whalley (66), of Tai Duon Bach, Llanfairtalhaearn.
Nicholas Jones, a solicitor, from Flintshire and a financial advisor, Susan Lowry-Huws, wife of Antony, were found guilty on Friday.
Antony Lowry-Huws, a former North Wales police constable, was said to be the driving force behind the conspiracy alongside business partner Whalley.
Mrs Lowry-Huws was said to be on the periphery and plainly acting very much under the influence of her husband, according to Judge Rhys Rowlands.
A sixth defendant, George Walker (58), of Coed Pella Road, Colwyn Bay, was found not guilty.
The jury had seen 50,000 items of evidence throughout the five-month trial at Mold Crown Court in what Judge Rowlands described as “clearly a lengthy and complex case”.
He told the first three defendants to be convicted that their offending was born out of “pure greed and nothing more”.
He said pre-sentence reports would be needed, but he warned that they should understand that there could only be one sentence and that was imprisonment – “and a fairly significant one”.
All defendants denied conspiring to defraud and conspiring to falsify documents between May 2003 and June 2008 to induce false finance and mortgage payments.
The jury heard that mortgage lenders were duped into lending thousands of pounds on properties across North Wales, Cheshire and the North West.
The case involved 189 separate mortgage applications with a value of about £20 million.
The prosecution said that the deceit was achieved by inflating the actual value of the property used as security, hiding the fact that in some cases no deposit was put down or inflating the rental income potential to make the mortgage rate more acceptable.
In some cases the apartments on which mortgages were advanced simply did not exist.
A second linked trial involving other defendants is due to start in October and could last between six and eight weeks.