Ryde, Wow, I am astonished that Parliament had heard this very accurate evidence about the sheer criminality of the sub-prime mortgage market and I have never seen any publicity quoting this report or heard about Parliament doing anything about it. It seems to have been 'buried' somehow. Do you have other information about this select committee to enable me to get more information about it from the Parliament website. So far there is no information in your post that I can use to identify the report and search for it. I would like to see the whole report from that sub committee and exactly what happened to the report and what effect it had/didn't have and what publlicity it received

I think the problem is that it needs the brains of a lawyer. In fact I'm certain of it. The problem is simple to state: 1 - All these people want legal redress (& lots of publicity directed against the fraudulent lenders) 2 - how do we all go about it 3 - answer employ a lawyer to articulate the whole process of bringing one separate case after another, or putting several together in a class action, whichever is more appropriate. We are all floundering because we lack the lawyer's knowledge to put it into the form of a case - the whys and wherefores of the actual law in each separate case. This is why lawyers exist. If we had the ability to get hold of the right type of lawyer (i.e had the dosh to pay him) we would not have a problem getting on with this. So, everyone, what we need to do is find a way of getting proper legal advice. It might only be needed for one case, whatever, a conversation with a lawyer is definitely the next step, I think.

So what happened to all this effort then ?

Well, yes, it does give lots more detailed 'background'. I can't argue with that. But I thought that by leaving behind all that 'muddle' and starting over in that more focussed way, it would be better, and more probably be easier for other people to get to grips with. I would still have to produce all the stuff from previous posts anyway, but re-written in a more focussed way. It needs to be taken one step at a time. The first step being the simple explanation of how the mortgage was taken out under obviously fraudulent circumstances. Further down the line comes the question of the mortgage rescue - which turned out (it seems) to be a bizarre Government fraud (the reasons completely escaping me). But many, many people had exactly the same experience as me with fictitious & inflated estimates for non-existent repairs thus giving housing asscociations the excuse not to complete and the government simply not being able to spend the available fund for mortgage rescue !!!

So, what is the point you are making ? As you can see from the previous threads, I have got absolutely nowhere with actually being able to get anything done. All previous threads centre around the same things that I refer to today. Being a bit older & wiser, and having learned a bit more about this whole evil business of the fraud within the financial industry I have to find a way of doing something about it as it cannot be just left for them to get away with it. My life has been ruined by fraud & theft & bureaucratic abuse on an epic scale. I thought the best way to deal with it was to start over from scratch in a more focussed way. My thread about mis-selling seems to describe in a pretty focussed way what happened & seems to be to be absolutely clear it describes mis-selling. If that is the case, it would be helpful if other people were of the same opinion. If that was the case I undoubtedly need help to bring a case before a court and bring it to a successful conclusion. I cannot do it by myself. That is why I have so far failed to actually get anywhere. Any attempt I have made to do anything has completely failed for exactly the reason lawyers exist - to do what non-lawyers cannot - i.e. brings cases to court successfully ! I imagined the CAG group was about helping people with problems, not simply carping, sniping, Trolling and trying to score points off other people.

I can't. Time has moved on. I've been evicted and become ill over an extended period of time and unable to deal with much as a result. Although this makes things slightly more difficult, of course that evidence can be found. I know perfectly well that I have a case against the housing association for what is actually blatant fraud, malfeasance in public office and probably other things as well. But I have absolutely no money to pay for a lawyer & all my efforts to get legal aid have been a sick joke.

Mis-sold Mortgage CAG I think my mortgage might have been mis-sold. Was it ? And can I do anything about it ? The core essence of the mis-selling is this: I was desperate to pay back an existing mortgage & needed to re-mortgage to avoid re-possession so I phoned up my credit card, Capital One to ask about their advertised Mortgage Broking service. I specifically explained my mortgage history to them which included me explaining I had mortgaged with SPML in about 2002, paid an early redemption charge and moved the mortgage to Birmingham Midshires in 2003, on the basis of being promised it would be ‘cheaper’. Midshires were now engaged in re-possesion proceedings. I explained the underlying cause of my financial problems was that I was a single parent entirely reliant on State Benefits. I further explained I was now expecting to be able to start working again as my child was becoming sufficiently older and more independent to allow this. I was expecting to work as a freelance, although this would take considerable time to build up an adequate income as it was a poorly paid and unreliable market. I explained quite explicitly that I was currently in receipt of state benefits only and that I had contacted the benefits agency to ask them if I could pay freelance earnings into a Ltd company to build up a capital sum, and still claim benefits until the capital sum was large enough to take an income & come off benefits entirely. The Benefits Agency had agreed with this. The Capital One broking company said that would all be OK. They were specialists, they said, in providing mortgages for people on State benefits. Specifically, when I filled in the mortgage application form and filled in a box which asked what an expected average year’s income was likely to be I put in a figure of about £55 000 ( I think). I sent the signed application off and then received a phone call from Capital One Brokers. They said in more or less exactly these words, “the expected salary figure seems a bit high and it might encourage the underwriters to want to make more detailed enquiries and so they wanted to advise me to reduce this earnings figure to a lower, ordinary level of earnings so as not to provoke further detailed investigation which might mean I would not be offered a mortgage. As things stood right now the Captial One broker said, I would definitely get the mortgage approved if I just adjusted the earning figure down a bit.’ Could I just alter this earnings figure downwards, they told me. I said yes, I would if that was their advice and I suggested they sent the mortgage application form back to me for me to alter it. They if it was OK by me they would be quite happy to alter the figure themselves so they would have no need to send the application form back to me for altferation and initialling. They would make then alteration themselves and initial it themselves ? It was duly done. I was awarded the mortgage which my calculations showed I could afford even while on benefits. However, the benefits system frequently failed to pay what is should have done and often benefits were withheld (entirely unlawfully I have discovered). So I soon got into financial difficulties and SPML were soon extremely aggressive in implementing extra charges and re-possession proceedings. I was eventually evicted at only 24 hours notice after an appeal failed and I was ‘stitched up’ by the mortgage rescue scheme telling me I had been ‘rescued’, only to be told at the last minute by the housing association they would not have enough money to do repairs which did not, in fact, actually exist anyway. That was just a ploy many housing associations were using on many people to refuse to take on mortgage rescue properties, for some reason that is quite beyond me. I was rapidly approaching the official retirement age of 65 a the time the mortgage was arranged by Capital One. Does this look like mis-selling ?

do you mean this section here : http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/forumdisplay.php?197-Home-Repossessions

I did challenge it. I made an official complaint, but was completely fobbed off. I even rang them, but they were very unpleasant & made it plain they couldn't care less.

I mean mis-selling of the actual mortgage

I was accepted on the government mortgage rescue scheme & all the paperwork & surveys etc completed & I was accepted. But at the last minute the Housing Association taking on the house produced a completely fictitious list of repairs with obviously inflated costs as well, and said they could not take on the house on the basis the repairs would cost too much (£27k) and the maximum budget they had was (£20k) Did anyone else have similar experiences with the Mortgage Rescue Scheme ? I am just wondering if we could do something about it as it appears to be completely ridiculous.

Has anyone been tried a miss-selling case against spml

Robinhood2013  CAG http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?419241-Lenders-may-be-hiding-incriminating-data-for-years-2006-2007-2008&p=4504483#post4504483 Hi, No need to apologise for your dyslexia. Your copy has less mistakes in it than most people without dyslexia. I’m likely to make far more mistakes and even when I spend time correcting one or two always seem to slip through. And that’s me spending years as a journalist & even doing a job as a sub-editor for Reuters where I sat correcting other people’s copy for eight hours every day. When I say lawyer I mean both solicitors & barristers but I agree completely with you that the real lawyers are really the barristers. In my experience this has always caused a problem because the first port of call when you deal with a legal issue is with the solicitor. They generally haven’t a clue about whether you have a case or what rule of law applies to the issue etc & so they often tell you that you can’t bring a case & they just fob you off because they have plenty of simple pen pushing business to earn a good living from. They just can’t be bothered to use their brains to make the mental effort to think their way through many legal issues. I have some stunning experiences of that. Here’s just one example of many. Recently I went to a legal aid lawyer, very nice young black lady from Nigeria or somewhere like that, seemed very bright & pleasant, she spent two hours with me ‘taking my brief’ so to speak which was ‘my local council had a duty to house me & my son as we became homeless which they said they were legally allowed to not do because in their view I had made myself deliberately homeless by virtue of obtaining a mortgage about eight years prior to that’. The council housing person had told me ’they were gobsmacked that I had spent the £80 000 left over from the sale of the previous house to buy another house with a mortgage when I should have realised that as a single parent with an infant, and at my age (50’s) I was unlikely to ever work again’ Instead, they said, I should have spent the £80 k on renting accommodation & then when it ran out I would be able to claim housing benefit for the rent & that way I would never have become homeless. Because of that I was legally at fault & they had a getout”. Now I don’t have to explain to you how it is, that this matter, correctly brought before a court with proper legal representation should result in a big kick in the teeth to the council & HUGE damages to me, particularly when some other connected issues are considered ( I’d have to write a novel here to explain !) So that was the nature of the brief I gave this lovely nice black lady..... Then I got a letter from her which made no reference to any part of anything I had said at all & merely referred to the possibility of me becoming homeless now, in the near future & what are the standard things I might be able to do about it ! ( I was now renting a house and was not homeless & there was no threat of homelessness) & I had not gone to her about that kind of issue but to sue my previous local council for breaching their statutory legal duty in a totally corrupt manner etc as above. (Many councils are doing this to other people I discovered - so I really, really want to bring this case). I can only imagine this black solicitor had just forgotten everything said in the two hour interview and just remembered it was something about homelessness and just sent a standard computer generated letter to me accordingly, containing the standard basic ‘compterised’ CAB type basic advice designed for people with no more than one brain cell who are made homeless. This seems to be, from my experience, the standard level of intellect solicitors usually demonstrate. They are pathologically useless ! I also have some breathtakingly awful council tax experiences to take to court. Mostly my council tax ‘benefit’ being stopped and the council forcibly removing the money from my benefits as a single parent on the basis they had obviously trawled around things like the internet and found I had just appointed myself as a ‘company director’ & therefore must be earning money and fraudulently claiming benefits. Actually, I had just spent £20 to fill in a form to form a Ltd company at companies house with a view to starting work at some point in the future. I had discussed this company forming lark at great length with the DHSS people paying me benefits as I had asked them if I could use this mechanism of putting earned money into a Ltd company until it became sufficient to let me stop claiming benefits. They had said it was OK to do what I outlined but of course that was the future. The fact I had spent £20 forming a Ltd company that wasn’t doing anything at all, was meaningless and did not mean I should have any type of benefits like the council tax one stopped and for me to be accused of fraud etc. Oh they didn’t ever actually accuse me of fraud though, which only goes to show their own mindset was one of pure fraud on their part. But, curiously, they didn’t bring any threat of prosecution, or inform the benefits department paying me the other benefits I was living on, or demand any proper financial investigation. So that makes it obvious they were just dreaming up the whole thing to use as an excuse because they knew they could increase their income by corruptly using their powers to milk money from me they were not entitled to under the law of the land, but that I would be able to do nothing about it without a lawyer and that I would not be able to get hold of a lawyer. So far they were right; and the actually owe me several thousand pounds. I live in Tunbridge Wells, 30 miles south of you. I no longer deal with Arsenden as they repossessed. It’s a very long story ! But, I want to take them to court & I think I might be able to retrieve lots of money from them. Anyway, below is my blog which might interest you and in which you can see a number of posts about banks, spml etc. I wanted to direct to the post which I remember as being titled Amany Attia is a liar and thief which was on my blog for at least three years and I can’t find it at all. I think it must have been slyly removed & Wordpress have never told me. Have a look at the latest post about my idea of organising a new model of home buying etc & tell me what you think about it . http://rocketspage.wordpress.com/

Robinhood, Thanks for the offer. That makes two of us - now we need to get more, add them to a visible list and call their bluff by setting out specific objectives for us to achieve and to get all the members on the list to pull their weight and actually DO what is needed to make this work. Unfortunately, people tend to say one thing but do another and what they do is make wild offers and then do absolutely nothing. Loads of people are on record on CAG threads over years with astonishing tales about SPML and other filthy fraudsters but it seems they have all tried to fight their battles alone and people have just not got together to do things in a coherent or organised way because it requires long term commitment and leadership. A news item this week mentioned the case of one Richard Durkin who was conned by a bank and Durkin couldn't get a mortgage etc. So Durkin took legal action and demanded damages for the damage to his credit record etc. He won & was awarded over £100 000 but Durkin, quite rightly, didn't think that was enough so appealed to a higher court. Eventually, this week he won his case - but it had taken him about 16 years AND it was cocked up because the precise legal rules of pursuing the matter were incorrectly applied. This meant the poor sod won his case but lost nearly all the damages and did not get more money at all and under the odd legal circumstances he would have been better off financially if he had accepted the earlier court ruling which had given him about £100 000. However, the ruling in the Supreme Court is very good news for every other consumer & might even be of help to us in our slightly different context. Google the Durkin case to see what I mean. Our very first objective is to find lawyers who have experience of things like 'constructive fraud' and 'conversion' and then see if they can link things like that to the behaviour of SPML and similar lenders which us lot with our various experiences will have the evidence of. Once we can define the exact legal basis of the legal issue we think has occurred which can be brought before a court, then the next step is to gather the evidence from all our various experiences- much of which is documented on various CAG threads. I started studying for a legal degree recently because it is impossible to obtain legal proper representation unless you are a squillionaire & I really, really need to pursue some issues like SPML. My eyes were very rapidly opened about how 'the Law’ works. Previously I had thought that when I went to court as a litigant in person and tried to present a case, that the relevant people in the court would know the law, know what I was on about - particularly the judge - and as the ignorant layman and non-lawyer that I am, I expected the judge to know the law, see my predicament and be of help. Particularly by adjourning the case and ordering that I have access to proper legal representation because no layman can properly bring his case in a court as you simply need various bits of legal experience & knowledge of court procedures and then about the particular rules of law you have to use to build your case. I was in court to appeal an eviction by SPML. I was invited by the judge to present my case. I then started telling the 'back story' and said SPML had been fraudulent and I mentioned various 'points of law' that I had picked up & quoted them to the judge as reasons why the judge should decide SPML had broken these 'rules of law' I was mentioning and find the case in my favour. The judge interrupted me, sounding sympathetic and supportive and all sweetness and light and reasonable thus: his exact words were: ‘Mr .... stop. Do not spoil what is a very good case by making allegations of fraud’. The judge then suddenly went red in the face as he realised he had made a statement of pre-judgement which the other side could easily use to wreck any judgement then made. It was a silly legal error the judge had made by saying the case is a good case when it had barely started. He was showing a bias. So, he corrected himself by suddenly covering up his embarrassment by being aggressive towards me and repeating what he previously said but saying ’I mean to say do not spoil what may be a very good case by making allegations of fraud, you cannot make allegations of fraud in this court’. So, I said yes I understand your Honour, not actually understanding at all as I thought if you can’t make allegations of fraud in a court where can you make them ? And I began to realise I was going to be just steamrollered over by an arrogant judge who has nothing but instant contempt for litigants in person. As I tried to carry on this pompous judge deliberately interrupted me twice more because I was obviously unable to present my case in the manner a lawyer does. On the last occasion he impatiently said ‘Get to the point, get to the point’. I had been speaking for no more than about five minutes, so he was being ridiculous. I stopped in midflow as the judge’s constant & quite deliberate interruptions had addled my brain and I was struggling to hang on to the presentation of my case which this judge was systematically and deliberately destroying. I paused, trying to collect my wits and work out exactly what on earth I was allowed to say in this court. The judged hurled ‘Well - go on’ at me. And because by now he had completely trashed the contents of my brain in terms of me trying to organise the presentation of my case by effectively repeatedly telling me that I should be saying something different, something that he might choose to say in this presentation rather that what I wished to say, I was lost for words and said in reply ‘I am lost for words, your Honour’. At which point he stared intently at me for a while and then suddenly whisked his head around towards the barrister for the other side and invited her to present her defence. I had not even actually managed to present my case at all. It was a ridiculous stitch up. But it got worse and even more blatant. The barrister for the other side was woffling her way through the mechanics of her backstory without interruption and when she was waving the mortgage contract I had signed I interrupted to say I had not been sent this or any other documents in evidence which the other side are obliged to send before a case. This was important because I needed that document to show just why there was evidence of fraud because I knew that my handwriting had been altered by the mortgage broker who had telephoned me to suggest alterations to the mortgage application which I should should have made& countersigned if I agreed with them (which I didn’t really). The broker then crossed out what I had written and replaced it with something he then wrote and was telling me about this in this ‘phone call to me. He presumably had also forged my signatures on the alterations. Importance evidence, you see. That’s why I really needed that document. The judge should have adjourned the case & ordered the other side to send me this evidence, but he just asked the other side if they had sent it and they xxxxxxxxx said yes and so he ignored me and the case carried on and within about two minutes it was over and I didn’t even ever get a copy of the judgement - which I would have needed to try and appeal or complain about the behaviour of the judge. So, me doing a legal degree still does not enable me to know quite how to assemble a case. But it has so far taught me some valuable lessons about how to go about it and at this stage I still need a lawyer with experience in the particular area we need to bring a case and we always will need that lawyer because that is how the law works. The reasons is this. The law is a vast collection of rules which have recorded in different ways for many centuries. When anyone brings any case to court the process is that you first need an awareness of what ALL of those rules are to be able to find out if you think someone has broken a particular rule. When you have found that rule of law, that legal point, you then compare it with your own issue to see if it fits and then you gather sufficient evidence to go to court to, prove it. You then have to quote that specific rule of law to the judge and show it to him. It might be an old and hidden act of Parliament or a very old bit of case law where a judge made a judgement about something which exactly matches your own case. The point about all this is that you have to argue to the judge, a case that means the judge is persuaded by you that he has an obligation to follow the precedents of law that you are pointing out to him because the judge can see for himself now that you have pointed out the previous case law, act of parliament or whatever which says what the rule about this issue is and that your evidence clearly shows the opposition has not obeyed the rules of law you are pointing out. Nobody, even judges, can be expected to know all the law which is why you are obliged to find it for yourself and then point it out to the judge. That is the process of bringing a case. And that is why you need that expert in that particular area of law. And even that expert will start off by only having a vague idea of possibly being able to bring a case and he will have to delve into endless previous cases and acts of parliament etc to find out how to build the appropriate case which is going to be winnable. This is exactly why the phrase ’constructive fraud’ and ‘conversion’ occurred to me as they might be the basis for a case when those rules are looked at. Which is exactly why you always need a lawyer who knows the particular area of law which will enable you to bring a case. In this case we might go to one such lawyer who might actually say (because he knows more about that area of law than any old lawyer) no you do not have a case for conversion or constructive fraud but actually you do have an entirely different case based on a completely different legal principle and you do have the evidence and let’s go for it because I think we’ve got the bastards by the short & curlies. So, there you have it. Meanwhile you and me need to find a lawyer and more people and more of that evidence from those people.

While everyone is going on about trying to do something about their problems with these questionable mortgage lenders, everyone is carrying on about very technical legal/financial issues and so far describing how these organisations like SPML just swat every borrower aside like flies, often with the connivance of the courts. I wonder if it might be productive to cut across all this by being able to bring a case (in a class action) on the basis on 'constructive fraud' or 'conversion' or some other legal concept which is not all about complex financial stuff no courts or anyone else either ever seem to understand. There always seems to be a distinct lack of legal expertise that would be able to point straight away at retrieving loans and other losses via a legal concept such as constructive fraud' or 'conversion. Any thoughts anyone ?