Solicitor is jailed after mortgage frauds

A solicitor who once worked for an estate agent has been jailed for two years for her part in a £1.3m mortgage fraud.

She was also ordered to repay £108,405 within 12 months or serve an additional two years.

The mother of two, Elena Quinlivan, 35, who was a criminal defence lawyer, planned to build a rental property empire using forged identity documents, bank statements and payslips which massively exaggerated her income.

Southwark Crown Court heard that, hoping to cash in on rising prices around the Olympics site, she amassed a portfolio in and around the Stratford area in east London after being introduced to a document forger in 2003.

At the time, she was working part-time as an admin clerk at an estate agents, helping to support her husband while he completed a PhD.

With help from a financial adviser, Quinlivan obtained mortgages for six properties over the next two years.  

She pleaded guilty to seven counts of conspiring with others to obtain money transfers. Her total benefit was calculated at £905,000.

Judge Nicholas Loraine-Smith told her: “The housing market was promising and your head was turned by the fraudulent success of an associate, with his expensive home and car.

“You are an intelligent solicitor, who also once worked for an estate agent, and cannot be called naive.”

He added: “These were multiple frauds over a long period of time and were professionally planed. These offences deserve a long prison sentence.”

The University of Manchester graduate qualified as a solicitor in 2008 and was employed for three years by human rights solicitor Imran Khan, who represented her in court.

He said: “There was a culture at that time that mortgages were given out left, right and centre.

“She saw her financial adviser making a large amount of money. She was bedazzled by him and taken in by his talk and ability to make money very quickly. She fell for it and admits it was stupidity in the extreme.”

He added: “Not all lawyers are intelligent. This is not some scheme hatched by a master criminal, but one person, rather clueless.”

Prosecutor Stuart Biggs described the financial adviser as a ‘one-stop fraudulent shop’, which provided the defendant with bogus documents including passports, driving licences and references, as well as national insurance numbers in various identities.

The court heard that after her final fraudulent mortgage application in 2005, she had thrown herself into her legal career. She and her family had recently moved to Atlanta, Georgia, where her husband, Dr Mark Quinlivan, works at the US National Centre for Infectious Diseases.