FAKE occupations and incomes were made up during an alleged £4 million mortgage fraud, a court was told.

A total of 11 people including mortgage brokers, property buyers, a conveyancing clerk and the wife of a broker stand accused of 19 charges of fraud and all deny the allegations. One other broker is being charged in his absence.

David Bartlett, prosecuting at Bournemouth Crown Court, told how false accounts and bills were used to defraud lenders of the money.

He said Halifax were fooled into lending £237,450 to defendant Dermot O’Malley-Keyes, 60, of Southbourne Road, Bournemouth, for a flat in Seamoor Road in 2005.

The mortgage application form was accompanied by business accounts for a Dermot O’Malley, trading as O’Malley Developments and earning £115,000 per year, the court heard.

“He had been unemployed since 2000 and had been on benefits since that time,” Mr Bartlett said.

HBOS repossessed the flat, situated in The Pantechnicon in Seamoor Road, but suffered a loss of £57,000, the hearing was told.

Mr Bartlett had told the jury how property prices were inflated and mortgages were requested for higher than the value of the properties using forged documents.

The surplus cash was then kept with lenders losing an average of £100,000 per property, the court heard.

Amanda Powis, 44, of Riggs Gardens, Bournemouth, has been described as “the principal defendant” and faces 17 charges.

She was a conveyancing clerk in the Broadstone office of Harold G Walker solicitors at the time of the alleged offences between 2003 and 2006.

Mr Bartlett said that in the majority of counts she failed to inform lenders of a “builder’s incentive” cash amount being borrowed in excess of the purchase price of a property.

He said: “We say that this was more than negligence, it was deliberately dishonest conduct designed to facilitate the obtaining of funds by people other than borrowers whom she knew were not entitled to them.”

The trial continues.