Idiot really.

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A former contestant in Lord Sugar's hit show The Apprentice has admitted fraud.


http://uk.news.yahoo.com/21/20101222...d-6323e80.html

Oh dear.

But not the first candidate ever to have a dodgy past.

Ok, this bit is really bizarre :


So he wants more charges piled on top of what he's already got ??

he is screwed anyway, might as well get everything out of the way now and start fresh, rather than having something that might blow up in your face later. and it paints him as someone who will admit his faults, so in the end a minor win in the whole mess.

Well it is Christmas time - the season of goodwill to all men and Apprentice candidates - so maybe he won't get life imprisonment.

No, but the fact that the magistrates though that they did not have sufficient sentencing powers suggests that they think he should serve more than six months.

What exactly are sales of more than £5000 a month.
He was selling mortgages, does anyone take out a mortgage for less than that these days.
Even insurance comes to more than that.
Does it mean where people were paying off monthly more than that. I dont know house prices there, but it surely didnt need many.
Most mortgages are at least £100000 these days. Where does the £5000 figure come in.

it's probably his commission

I think they've missed out some commas - it's the commission that would be £5,000 a month if he made enough sales.

There are very strict regulatory laws around financial services and what he did wasn't minor.

Presumably this means there are a load of folk out there who got mortgages who shouldn't have and who are likely to be facing financial difficulties in repaying them, especially of the interest rates go up. So fairly serious stuff Chris 'sleazeball' has done. Went right off him during the series, especially after the ad episode.

Why should anyone go to a mortgage broker instead of straight to a building society or bank.
They only exist for people who cant really afford the mortgage, and perhaps let out part of it.

Banks and building societies have some weird and wonderful policies on who to lend to which change all the time and a mortgage broker can keep tabs of who's offering what.

As an example, many years ago, a business colleague of mine who, with his wife, had been saving with a building society for some time applied to that society for a loan because they were starting a family and wanted to buy a house.

He was told that they couldn't offer him a loan as they were reserving their funds for people who already borrowed from them.

This was many years ago when they were short of funds. That is not the reality today. I think you will find the truth is what I say. the banks, societies have to go by rules which cant be broken. The brokers (what a good name for them) break all the rules. Its just unlucky he was caught doing what everyone else is doing.

Who really knows, notary, but it does seem clear that brokers get good commission rates for selling us stuff. I re-mortgaged last year and the broker was apparently required by law to give me details of his commission from the bank in writing (not sure if it's the same in other parts of the UK, but I imagine it would be). The person I used got about 2% of my mortgage, so I can see how a commission of £5,000 would mount up.......... mortgages totalling £2.5 million would give someone a commission of £5,000 at 2%.

That's not to say that I find Chris' reported shenanigans acceptable, but I just wanted to say that a commission of £5,000 would be believable.

£50,000.

But I don't think the commission is on the entire mortgage.

To carolineglasgow.
Perhaps you can tell us. Why couldnt you go to the bank direct. I get almost daily letters asking me to remortgage.

If he doesn't he can face prosecution later on those offences too. Better to take a longer sentence for multiple offences at once then a much longer one for four crimes treated and sentenced separately. Also it helps anyone injured by those crimes as they are recognised by the system.

Ah, I see. Thanks for that, sanderton.

Yes, if you go to prison and other crimes are then detected you are liable to be arrested as you finish your sentence and put on remand while you wait for another trial.

It's much better to own up to everything you've done and get it all bundled into the same trial. It also helps police clear up rates and saves them time looking into each separate crime.

Or not comit the crime in the first place.

What a random comment! We're talking about someone who HAS committed a crime and why they have asked for other crimes to be taken into consideration! No approval of crime is implied!

"The clients had no knowledge of what he did," Mr Gittins said.



I seriously find this hard to believe.

They must know what their salary is and approximately how much of a mortgage they should be offered.

I can imagine they would know this tbh.

Not necessarily.

Mortgage brokers often know about unusual deals such as lenders that will offer a particularly high mortgage/earnings ratio.

And, anyway, most people would probably get the information about typical ratios from the mortgage broker in the first place.

Really silly thing to do, and quite out of character given how well he came across on the show.

This story doesn't make sense. If he was sacked in 2009 for fraud, why did it take a whole year for him to be arrested? How did he manage to get on the programme with something like this on his record? I'm sure the programme researchers do detailed background checks on the contestants

I'm really surprised at this. I thought Chris was made of better stuff than that.