Former real estate agent sentenced for doctoring Lim report

PHOTO; Real Estate Agent. FILE

A former real estate agent, now convicted of fraud, once downplayed the charges he faced as a mere “storm in a teacup.” However, the respected 81-year-old businessman is now grappling with the consequences of his deception while serving home detention alongside his elderly wife. Lane Nichols investigates the curious case of the doctored Land Information Memorandum (LIM).

This professional couple, fearing the burden of two mortgages, deliberately altered a Land Information Memorandum (LIM) report to sell their leaky home at full market price. They believed they did so with the “full knowledge” of their real estate agent, as court documents reveal.

The husband, who later became a top-selling agent for the same firm, Barfoot & Thompson, continued to sell houses for a year while facing a fraud charge that could lead to a maximum penalty of 10 years in jail.

However, in 2021, due to the Herald’s involvement, he was compelled to confess to his employer. Consequently, he was terminated by the company, reported to the industry watchdog, and eventually faced justice this week alongside his co-accused wife.

Former Barfoot & Thompson agent Yvonne Wang received an email saying “the nasty thing has been removed”.

During an emotionally charged restorative justice meeting with the victims last year, the wife admitted she had masterminded the deception to avoid financial loss on their old house.

“I was really nervous and didn’t want to end up with two houses, so we had to sell. I wanted to be mortgage-free and thought, ‘I can’t go on like this,'” she confessed. She expressed remorse but couldn’t reimburse the wronged buyers for their substantial lost equity.

The husband and wife both pleaded guilty last year to altering a document with intent to deceive. They were sentenced to four months of home detention and six months of community detention, along with a $55,000 reparation order, despite leaving the buyers nearly $300,000 out of pocket.

Although the couple admitted to deliberately falsifying the LIM for personal gain, their names have been permanently suppressed after the husband successfully argued that public identification could endanger his health.

The fraudsters faced their victims last August during a restorative justice meeting in Glenfield. Court documents reveal that the husband and wife were downsizing to become mortgage-free and had already committed to a new property at the time of their fraudulent act in 2015.

With the settlement approaching, they desperately needed to sell their old home to avoid having two mortgages. However, a historic notification on the LIM report warned of “major moisture-related cladding defects,” which they couldn’t get removed.

So, they hatched a plan to simply erase the moisture reference and replace it with a blank space, forwarding the altered version to their real estate agent, Yvonne Wang, who uploaded it to the company’s website for prospective buyers to see.

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Clough and Dansey, the eventual buyers, viewed the property and relied on the altered LIM report, purchasing the property for $1.19 million. They later discovered the truth and were forced to sell the property at a loss.

The husband and wife were charged and initially denied knowledge of the altered LIM. However, incriminating emails from the couple to their agent were uncovered, revealing their complicity in the deception.

The accused couple has been fighting for suppression since August 2021 when the Herald learned of the case. Initially, the husband argued that naming him could harm the reputation of Barfoot & Thompson. Later, he claimed that stress associated with public exposure could lead to a fatal heart attack.

Despite their suppression, the case underscores the importance of honesty in property transactions and raises questions about legal liability in such situations.

SOURCE: NZHERALD