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1. The real estate industry is in a downturn, and fraudulent loans are prevalent in the property market. Some students and unemployed people with cerebral infarctions have revealed that their work certificates were forged and they were inexplicably saddled with hundreds of thousands of mortgages. The bank's property appraisal value and loan amount of the houses they took out were far higher than the actual value of the houses.

2. At least four borrowers involved in the loan fraud were handled by the same loan officer of the same bank. The complainant said that the bank's punishment was to transfer the loan officer from the branch to the local branch.

3. Owning an apartment is only the starting point for real estate loan fraud. If the person is a professional debtor, he or she will apply for a renovation loan under the arrangement of the loan fraud intermediary, and then forge a business license to apply for a corporate loan, a tax loan, etc. A loan fraud intermediary said that the most successful person with no money, no property, and no credit card who had been involved in his case defrauded a total of 6 million yuan from the bank.

4. The above-mentioned loan fraud intermediary said that in order to successfully defraud loans, the support of internal bank employees is the key. The loan amount is divided among professional debtors, loan intermediaries, and bank employees.

5. The fraudulent loan methods for new and second-hand houses are different, but both require the cooperation of the developer or the original owner. The above-mentioned fraudulent loan intermediary revealed that in a certain place in Guangdong, 50 houses on the 18th floor of a new building were sold, of which 35 were defaulted on, and the developer was therefore blacklisted by the bank.

01 Real estate loan fraud: A student made a mysterious friend and took out a 310,000 yuan mortgage

At the beginning of 2023, Li Yang, who was studying at a technical school in Jilin, made a mysterious new friend.

The new friend was very generous and took him and his childhood friends to the Internet cafe, covering all the expenses for more than 20 people, spending tens of thousands of yuan a day, which seemed to have a high social status. The other party said that he wanted to buy a house, but he had to find someone to hold it for him. During this period, the loan would be paid, and the house would be transferred after one year.

Li Yang's childhood friend had known his new friend Wang Peng earlier, and helped to hold the house for four or five months, and indeed paid the mortgage on time. Li Yang also wanted to do a favor, as his family was not well off, and he thought that Wang Peng might introduce him to a job after graduation, so he agreed.

On the day of applying for the loan, Wang Peng did not come, but the real estate agent Pan Qiang came instead.

Li Yang had his suspicions. On the same day, they met at the Construction Bank branch on Lihua Road in Yanji City. He thought that this was a big bank, the staff would not lie, and he did not have to pay for the 80,000 yuan down payment. He followed Pan Qiang's instructions and signed the loan contract. Soon, the house was transferred to Li Yang's name. For nearly a year afterwards, everything was normal. Until January this year, when no one paid the mortgage and no one came to transfer the house, Li Yang realized that he had been cheated and had a loan of 310,000 yuan.

Anger, annoyance, fear, complex emotions surged in his heart, and Li Yang stammered before telling his family.

In the eyes of his father, Li Fajun, Li Yang was not obedient, but he was not a bad person. He was eager to protect his rights. He found that this was not a simple fraud and found several victims with the same experience. Li Yang's childhood friend took out a loan of 450,000 yuan and was deceived into taking out a car loan, with monthly payments of 6,000 to 7,000 yuan, which he has now stopped paying. Another victim lost his job after suffering a stroke and was deceived into taking out a 390,000 yuan mortgage, which he has also stopped paying.

What made Li Fajun even more frightened was that he learned from the police that Wang Peng had a criminal record and had returned from Myanmar. During that time, Wang Peng wanted to introduce Li Yang and his childhood friend to work abroad. Later, Li Yang's childhood friend went abroad, but was deceived into Laos for fraud and spent 50,000 yuan to be redeemed.

Li Yang and others are involved in the currently popular real estate loan fraud scheme.

In recent years, the relationship between supply and demand has changed, housing prices have fallen, and real estate transaction data has fallen to a low point. According to data from real estate professional monitoring agencies, in 2023, the transaction area of ​​new commercial housing in the 100 key cities fell by about 6% year-on-year, and the absolute scale was the lowest level since 2016. A large number of unsold properties have provided a breeding ground for loan fraud.

Whether it is a new house or a second-hand house, on the one hand, developers want to sell houses, second-hand landlords want to get out of the trap, real estate agents want to sell houses, and bank employees want to meet mortgage quotas. Each link is in urgent need of buyers. On the other hand, in the loan fraud business, having a property as an asset can make it easier for loan intermediaries and professional debtors to defraud banks. The popularity of 0 down payment and no purchase restrictions makes it cheaper for them to own a house and commit loan fraud.

However, Li Yang and his colleagues are somewhat different from professional debtors who take out loans on their own initiative. At first, Li Yang couldn't figure out how they could make money without paying the 80,000 yuan down payment and having a house for no reason, and taking on a 310,000 yuan mortgage.

02 Owning an apartment is just the starting point for loan fraud, is the support of internal bank employees the key?

What Li Yang's father Li Fajun wondered most was how a student without any financial strength could get a loan from a bank?

He went to the Lihua Road Construction Bank branch in Yanji City to learn that when Li Yang applied for a mortgage, the intermediary made a false work certificate for him. At first, they did not get the real estate certificate. It was only after he found out that he had been cheated that Li Fajun got the real estate certificate from the bank. According to the collection records, the bank did not contact Li Yang and others, and gave the real estate certificate to a person named Qi Lu, who took away the real estate certificates of more than a dozen people in less than a month. When some victims found the house with a mortgage, the house had already been rented out.

The person who processed the loan for Li Yang was Zhou Yong, a credit officer at the Lihua Road Construction Bank branch in Yanji City. Phoenix.com's "Eye of the Storm" learned that among the home loans processed by this officer, there were at least four victims like Li Yang.

During the rights protection process, Li Fajun discovered that when they took out the loan, the appraisal value of their property and the loan amount were far higher than the actual value of the house.

Li Fajun went to the local area to learn that the house under Li Yang's name was worth 190,000 yuan, but the bank assessed it at 390,000 yuan and the loan was 310,000 yuan. Phoenix.com's "Eye of the Storm" consulted a local rental agent, who said that she had seen the house, and that it was on a high floor and had old decoration, and it was not easy to sell even at 160,000 yuan. There was another victim whose house was assessed by the bank at 480,000 yuan and he had a loan of 390,000 yuan, but he contacted the original owner and according to the chat records he provided, the actual selling price of the house was 245,000 yuan.

Why is the house appraisal high when applying for a loan?

"This is very common in the industry," Wen Liujie, a broker who specializes in loan fraud, explained to Phoenix.com's "Eye of the Storm" that this is "high appraisal and high loan". In this type of incident, the broker has real estate resources and knows bank staff. He only needs to find a middleman willing to recruit people to trick others into taking on the debt. The house was actually sold for 245,000 yuan, but the bank could make a high appraisal of 480,000 yuan and actually loaned out 390,000 yuan. After paying the original owner, Pan Qiang's side still had more than 200,000 yuan left, which was the profit of all parties.

What’s even more frightening is that this method can be played indefinitely. Wen Liujie also said that if you are a professional debtor, you can continue to apply for renovation loans, business loans, tax loans, etc. after you have a house, and then divide the loan amount with the loan intermediary and bank employees.

Take business loans as an example. Wen Liujie said that once the house is "bought", the customer has real estate under his name, and then spend a few thousand yuan to register a shell company, and then become a high-quality customer with both a house and a company. They have many customers, and the shell companies under their names can swipe each other's bank accounts, and make six months of bank account data to make it look like a normal operating company, that is, they can choose suitable products in local banks and apply for bank loans. The most successful "three-no" personnel he has worked with have applied for renovation loans, business loans, tax loans, etc., and have successfully borrowed 6 million yuan from banks in total.

Wen Liujie said that unlike Li Yang mentioned above, there are now many professional debtors who actively want to defraud loans. At most, he can receive 20 consultations through Douyin private messages in one day. Developers who can't sell houses are also willing to cooperate. According to him, in a certain place in Guangdong, 50 houses on the 18th floor of a new building were sold, of which 35 were defaulted. After the incident, the developer was blacklisted by the bank.

The key to achieving loan fraud is to have an insider in the bank. This is because the bank's loan approval process is very strict. An old bank employee told Phoenix.com's "Eye of the Storm" that the entire process of accepting loans, investigating and evaluating, reviewing, and handling mortgage registration involves at least five employees who are independent of each other and are not easy to falsify.

According to Wen Liujie's observation, the bank's insiders are very secretive. Although he has been doing this for nearly two years, he has never had direct contact with bank personnel. There is also a supervisor between him and the bank's insiders. Based on experience, he said that at least they need to win over the small leaders of the bank's credit department in order to carry out their loan fraud business.

In order to reduce the risk, the bank will require that the loan be repaid for at least one year after the loan is successfully defrauded. Wen Liujie learned from a friend in the bank that no matter what the loan is, as long as it is repaid for half a year or more, the bank will not classify it as malicious cash withdrawal, so they will repay it for one year as usual to avoid alerting the higher-ups to come for inspection.

In the case of Li Yang, the bank's handling of the case seemed a bit light. After defending his rights everywhere, Li Fajun said that the Yanji Lihua Road Construction Bank branch punished Zhou Yong by transferring him from the branch to a branch. Phoenix.com's "Eye of the Storm" called Zhou Yong, but the call was either hung up or no one answered. Phoenix.com's "Eye of the Storm" contacted the bank's staff responsible for this incident, who said that they had to wait for approval to reply to the media. Three days later, no response was received before press time.

03 Debtors become tools and can be abandoned at any time

Such real estate loan fraud may seem simple, but it is actually very risky. The "debtor" is the one who bears the greatest risk.

"This industry is very chaotic and anything can happen. After the house is transferred and the loan is paid for one or two months, the customer is abandoned," Wen Liujie said. Not to mention that Li Yang and others were deceived into taking on the debt, even if they voluntarily become professional debtors in order to make money, they are very easy to be deceived. He met a young man in his 20s who fraudulently took out a loan of 200,000 yuan. The loan intermediary took 192,000 yuan, leaving only 8,000 yuan for the young man.

Wu Feng, born in the 1980s, also encountered a similar scam.

After his investment went bankrupt and his parents were hospitalized for cancer, Wu Feng was left with a debt of 700,000 yuan. A loan intermediary contacted him to "take on the debt", saying that he could earn 600,000 yuan. But the actual process was not smooth, and the loan amount was lower than expected, with only 250,000 yuan available for sharing. At first, the intermediary received 170,000 yuan, and Wu Feng received about 80,000 yuan. However, there were three intermediaries involved, one of whom claimed that he did not get the money, and seized Wu Feng's real estate certificate, bank card and other documents, and asked him to transfer another 200,000 yuan. He also required Wu Feng to apply for other loans and get another sum of money from the bank.

After all these operations, Wu Feng not only did not get the money, but also had to pay 100,000 yuan to the intermediary and was burdened with a lot of debt.

It is worth noting that real estate loan fraud is prevalent, but it did not appear in recent years.

As early as 2021, financial regulatory authorities in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen conducted special inspections on operating loans and found many violations. According to public reports, the Shenzhen Banking and Insurance Regulatory Bureau investigated a case in which a real estate company in Shenzhen provided "one-stop" services for Zhong to buy a house, set up a company, and provide loan consultation. However, the lending entity, Ping An Bank Shenzhen Branch, did not strictly review the qualifications of operating loan borrowers and did not conduct a thorough check on the flow of loan funds.

In addition, my country has also issued a number of laws and regulations to crack down on illegal financial lending activities.

In the opinion of Jin Zeyu, a senior lawyer at Beijing Wu Shaobo Law Firm, in the real estate loan fraud, professional debtors and loan intermediaries are suspected of the crime of defrauding loans as stipulated in Article 175 of the Criminal Law of the People's Republic of China, and bank employees are suspected of the crime of illegally granting loans as stipulated in Article 186 of the Criminal Law of the People's Republic of China by illegally raising the appraisal price of houses. If a company provides false materials to a lender to apply for a loan, it may be fined between 10,000 yuan and 500,000 yuan, or even have its business license revoked.

Lawyer Nie Chengtao told Phoenix.com's "Eye of the Storm" that deceived "debtors" often find it difficult to protect their rights. They have no money to sue, and the intermediaries they connected with after taking out the loan have scattered and are difficult to contact. In addition, most debtors actively participate in loan fraud, so it is very difficult to protect their rights.

Although Li Yang said he was defrauded of his loan, it was still difficult to defend his rights. His father, Li Fajun, was puzzled. His son was still a student and was less than 21 years old when he took out the loan. Why could the bank lend him money so easily when his qualifications were insufficient? Li Fajun asked the bank for an explanation, but to his frustration, the explanation given by the Yanji Lihua Road Construction Bank branch was simply "one willing to fight, the other willing to suffer."

Li Fajun is a local worker who installs doors and windows. He earns a few thousand yuan a month. The tuition and living expenses of his children, as well as his parents to support, are already making him feel overwhelmed. However, he did not want his son to become a deadbeat before he even entered society, so he took on the 310,000 yuan loan.

In February this year, he was installing windows on a roof three or four meters high on a snowy day. He posted on his Moments and lamented, "The temptation of money is so great. It's so dangerous on a snowy day, but I have to do it."

(At the request of the interviewees, Li Yang, Wu Feng, and Wen Liujie are pseudonyms in this article.)