forged signature on a remortgage

[sirtophamhat]

My sisters ex-husband arranged a remortgage on their jointly owned property without her knowledge. She has copies of the loan agreement and the signature on it is not hers. The mortgage has now been paid off and she owns the property. If she went to the building society with this information what would happen? Are they obliged to investigate it or would they want to ignore it because they have got their money back. If they did investigate it what would be involved?

I would report it to the institution and to the Police.

They'd ignore it. They've lost nothing.

Why would she want it investigating? She owns the property. What is to be gained by this unless she is so vindictive to the ex who presumably helped pay off this mortgage.

I am sure it is illegal to forge a signature, but would it be in the public interest to prosecute? I suspect not.

Sleeping dogs and all that!

I would want it on the record in case he tries anything funny in the future. If he figures he's gotten away with it once, then perhaps he'll give it a go again.

Yes he did pay off the mortgage.

It is not purely vindictive wanting this investigated. This is not the only thing that has been discovered, there are many other financial transaction that have come to light that my sister knew nothing about, bank and share accounts that he denies all knowledge of and several loans. She needs to be sure she is not liabel for anything he is mixed up with.

I'd be concerned about what else her name has been put to without her knowledge. If something else DID come to light and it comes out that she knew about this, she might be on shakey ground... its not just a case of being vindictive, but covering her own back. Her ex has behaved outrageously!

Thanks everyone for your comments, it is giving a broad view of how things could go. This is totally alien territory for us and we have no ideas of what we might be letting ourselves in for. However our only way into all this is through the remortgages as we can access details about this. Many of the other accounts are in his sole name so we cannot get information about them. Very conveniently, just before he left the computer crashed and they lost everything that was on stored on it! At the moment we have found £50k passing through accounts, my sister knows nothing about what the money was used for. I know this is not a massive amount of money to some people but for a man who only earns about 23k a year it is a lot of spare cash. Since all of this has been going on there were no major house improvements, new cars or fancy holidays to account for any of this money. He handled all the finances and when he has been asked to explain some of this he has chosen to say nothing, knowing we don't have anything concrete to go at him with. The best thing we have is the dodgy signature on the remortgage agreement and the fact he paid the cheque from this directly into his personal account eventhough it was in joint names.

Just a thought. Has your sister obtained her credit reference from someone like Experian (it only costs a few quid) just to make sure there is nothing else showing up against her name that she doesn't know about.

Goodness! Maybe it is something like money laundering, I guess you just dont know.

experian very good idea, but I think she needs to talk this through with a solicitor to look at all the implications. At the moment its all the unknown. Maybe the ex would come clean with her if she explained her worries and what course she intended to take?

Has she thought about taking their broken computer to a specialist? He might be able to recover data from the hard drive.

Actually, I am not very computer literate, might be worth posting in geeky stuff and getting acchual professionals like. (Network Guy/More Beta spring to mind).

We will look into doing a credit check. Thanks

I have been back to the place were the computer was repaired. There is no chance of accessing any old history.

How long ago is this. TBH, I doubt there will be a prosecution as no harm has been done & no one has lost out financially or otherwise. The police have a lot to deal with. Only course of action would be for your sister to mount a private prosection (civil case) but would that actually achieve?

We realise that on its own there is not much point to this issue However, as I have explained previously, this is not the only problem and hope this would help to get some other questions answered.

normal computer repair shops won't be able to do it - there are specialist data recovery firms though - not cheap.

If there was a suggestion of money laundering the police computer forensics team might want a go at the laptop...

tbh, the first thing I thought was gambling

Thanks for that. Unfortunately we do not have the money to do this type of thing.
Gambling was never his thing but you never know!
We suspect some of the money has been used to keep up appearances at the golf club.

I'm a new mum and new to this site but given my normal day job have some experience in this area. My first reaction to this is what is it exactly you want to achieve here? If you want to ensure that there is nothing in your 'name' then a credit report from experian and equifax are a good place to start your statutory report from these companies cost £2 each. They can also advise you on how to disassociate yourself from your ex from a credit perspective. You can also, if you are concerned, have a look at the land registry (you can do this online too) which shows any charges against your property although from the sounds of it your house was probably settled with the divorce. If you were to report the loan to your building society given the loan is paid off they are unlikely to do anything in truth they will probably say the account is closed and may question why you didn't open any of the statements which would have been sent to your house and addressed to you both. If the issue is that your husband has funds which you were unaware of and that these should have been included in any divorce settlement then I would get a more firm handle on the information you have here and if you think this is the case then have a word with your solicitor. I hope this helps and good luck.