SOMOYE:MUM OF FOUR SENT KIDS TO PUBLIC SCHOOL BY LAUNDERING FRAUD CASH
A chartered accountant who was able to send her four children to public school by laundering the proceeds of a massive ‘ghost’ mortgage fraud walked free from court today (Weds).
Lai Keun Looi-Somoye, 50, allowed huge sums of money to be transferred into two personal bank accounts and a third business account.
The money was then wired out of the country to a business account in Dubai.
Looi-Somoye helped her Nigerian husband Dr Adesina Somoye, 53, by laundering £2,349,424 between November 2007 and September 2008, Southwark Crown Court heard.
The money was the proceeds of nine ghost mortgage applications made over the 11 month period.
The Somoyes only took a small cut from the fraud which they spent on funding their four children’s education and ‘other luxuries’.
Looi-Somoye claimed she had questioned her husband over the money passing through the account but she had been ‘fobbed off’ and had trusted him when he told her they were from legitimate sources.
Dr Somoye was convicted of money laundering and jailed for four years in February.
Sparing Loo-Somoye an immediate jail term today the judge, Mr Recorder Phillip Katz QC, said: ‘It seems to me that the jury were sure that at some point during the series of transactions, which were obviously questionable, you suspected this was the proceeds of crime and you closed your eyes to the obvious and went along with it.
‘You had no other income and you were spending the money on the children’s private education and other luxuries which you could not afford.
‘You were living beyond your means on the proceeds of crime.’
Turning to her barrister the judge said: ‘This is a very difficult case, she has got four children, her life is in ruins, her husband is in jail and she is in danger of losing her home.
‘She richly deserves a custodial sentence but it seems to me there are mitigating factors which allow me to take a course some people might describe as an unjustified and merciful approach.’
The judge sentenced Looi-Somoye to 12 months behind bars suspended for two years and ordered to carry out 100 hours of unpaid work.
In February this year former Leicestershire police race relations adviser Nasser Patel, 45, was jailed for 45 months for laundering £1.6m for the mortgage fraud gang.
Suleiman Hamza, 41, a Dubai-based businessman who laundered £3.5m for the gang by masquerading as a solicitor, was jailed for five years and eight months.
Police are still hunting Victor Ayinde-Azeez, who masterminded the fraud in which more than £8m was extracted from mortgage lenders in just six weeks from October 25, 2007. He is believed to be in Nigeria.
His 27-year-old wife Ruth, a care home assistant, was sentenced alongside Matthews in March last year. She was jailed for laundering £1.25m through her bank accounts.
David Whittaker, prosecuting, had said the business account used by the Somoyes to channel the funds was registered in the name of Faxfields Ltd.
The company, for which Looi-Somoye was listed as the director and chairman, claimed to market and distribute computer hardware, telecoms equipment and electrical goods in West Africa.
Mr Whittaker said that under the fraud nine bogus mortgage applications were made, often relating to properties that were not even for sale.
When the ‘ghost’ loans were received they were diverted in Looi-Somoye’s bank accounts, either immediately or via a number of other accounts, before being transferred to the accounts of Dubai-based company Sles Tradin (corr) which was run by Sulemain Hamza.
‘The fraudulent application was made, the monies were advanced by the lender and were given to a firm of solicitors,’ he said.
‘Those solicitors weren’t then sending it on to the vendor’s solicitors but sending it on to the Somoyes and then the Somoyes were sending it to Sles Tradin.’
Following one successful bogus mortgage application £449,064 was wired to Dubai from one of
Looi-Somoye’s bank accounts.
Juros were told that the couple took a one per cent cut of the money.
Dr Somoye was convicted by a jury in January of acquiring, using or having criminal property and two counts of entering in to an arrangement in relation to criminal proceeds.
Looi-Somoye, of (26) Cheylesmore Drive, Frimley, Camberley, Surrey, was convicted of acquiring, using or having criminal property.
She was cleared of two counts of entering into an arrangement in relation to criminal proceeds.
Patel, of (94) Kedleston Road, Leicester, admits conspiring to acquire criminal property and acquiring criminal property and entering into an arrangement to receive criminal property.
Hamza, who lived in Dubai at the time of the fraud, has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to acquire, use or have criminal property and conspiracy to remove criminal property.
ENDS
