Two estate agents were jailed today (Friday) for a

Two estate agents were jailed today (Friday) for an attempt to cash in on a rising property market through a back-to-back sale of a plush London flat.

Paul Savill and Peter Hagan, effectively partners in Savill and Co, of West Kensington, London, stood to secretly take a slice of pnds stlng 85,000 in illicit profits.

An Australian company Austral Development put 4, Laurie House, Airlie Gardens, Kensington, on the market in January 1999.

The company planned to use upmarket estate agency FPD Savills, however, an ‘error’ led to a representative of the firm contacting completely ‘unrelated’ firm Sa
vill and Co in North End Parade, West Kensington.

The property went on the market at pnds stlng 399,950.

But an interested property investor who spotted an advert in the Times in April that year was told the asking price had risen to pnds stlng 485,000.

Using an accomplice, the two defendants interposed their panned coup.

Austral would sell to a Henry Wood and on the same day Wood would sell to property magnate Peter Diamond.

London’s Southwark Crown Court heard the double sale never went through after sharp-eyed solicitors noticed problems with the property’s title and began making inquiries.

It led to the gang taking the property off the market in a failed bid to prevent the fraud being detected.

Ironically, in the meantime, 59-year-old Savill was out of pocket to the tune of pnds stlng 40,000 – Mr Diamond had ‘categorically’ refused to pay a non-refundable deposit to the Australian company, the defendant handing over the money.

Savill, 59, of Fordwych Road, Cricklewood, nw London, and who also owns a home in Portcarne Road, Usk, Gwent; and Hagan, 40, of Mallory Street, St John’s Wood, London; admitted conspiracy to defraud on or before July 1, 1999.

The court heard that Wood has since fled the country and is thought to be in Ghana.

Sentencing both defendants to eight months prison, Judge Geoffrey Rivlin, QC, said: ‘You have both pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud, the offence being a type which is by no means unknown, where estate agents in charge of the sale of a property offer it at a price but are actually able to sell it at a higher price.

‘They then contrive to cream off a secret profit for themselves.

‘

He said Savill and Hagan hoped for a share in a dishonest profit of pnds stlng 85,000.

‘The buyers sought pnds stlng 395,950 as advised by you, but as a result in the change in the market, you were able within a short space of time, to find a purchaser at a much higher price.

‘

He said Savill willingly went along with the scheme and was prepared to fund it, while Hagan ran the ‘mechanics’ and the day to day operation of the scam.

‘This was on any view a blatant and very deliberate offence of dishonesty on a substantial scale by two men in a position of trust,’ said the judge.

‘It was an offence too easy to commit and which could so easily have gone undetected.

‘

Jocelyn Sparks, prosecuting, said the fraud involved an attempt to defraud the ‘true vendor’ Austral and the ‘true purchaser’ Mr Diamond of pnds stlng 85,000.

She said the defendants ‘lied’ to both parties over their role in the scheme ‘and indeed the true seller and buyer.

‘

Miss Sparks said a director of Austral asked his personal assistant ‘to make contact with a large firm of estate agents FPD Savills to deal with the transaction.

‘In error, that lady contacted Savill and Co, an unrelated company in which the active participants were Hagan and Savill.

‘

She said both defendants were to claim there had been an ‘administrative mistake’ when first called to account for the back-to-back sale.

The court heard Savill believed the deal was honest – although ‘wrong’ and ‘immoral.

‘ It was claimed Hagan thought the scheme could arouse suspicion but was not against the law.

Savill and Co was founded in 1997, Savill, a former journalist and PR agency chief, providing the finance, Hagan the experience of the property market.

ends