Three mortgage brokers have been banned by the Financial Services Authority from working in the industry and a fourth has been fined £17,500. Jason Phillips, of Colne in Lancashire, and a former partner of Lancaster House Mortgages, was banned after submitting nine mortgage applications using false employment information and inflated salaries.

Ashok Sharma, of Ash Commercials (UK) Ltd in Uxbridge, Middlesex, was also banned. He submitted two mortgage applications that had obvious discrepancies which the FSA said should have alerted him to the risk of mortgage fraud.

The FSA’s investigation also revealed that Sharma had provided mortgage advice when not qualified and that he failed to comply with a legal requirement to provide the FSA with an independent report on the quality of the advice he gave.

John Apicella was banned for lack of competency by leaving his business open to the risk of involvement in financial crime. Apicella was a sole trader at Mortgages 4 You, a firm in Newbury, Berkshire.

The FSA said that Apicella failed to meet the minimum standards required of a mortgage broker by not always completing a ‘fact find’ document for new customers or researching their attitude to risk.

Apicella had told the FSA during its inquiries that he would accept a self-employed customer’s stated income at face value. Apicella also failed to carry out due diligence on a mortgage introducer from whom he accepted seven mortgage applications. All the applications were fraudulent.

Noel Smith, a director of south London-based Andrew Copeland Mortgages, was fined for a failure of systems and controls which could have exposed his business to being used for financial crime.

The FSA said that Smith’s poor management controls and compliance monitoring led to 224 customers being exposed to the risk of receiving unsuitable advice and left the firm open to mortgage fraud.

Margaret Cole, the FSA’s director of enforcement and financial crime, said: “Mortgage fraud is a crime and we take any failings that put customers or lenders at risk of it very seriously. While the details are different from case to case, all of these individuals failed to demonstrate that they were fit and proper.

“A number of these cases came as a direct result of our Information From Lenders scheme which allows lenders to report suspected cases of fraud to the FSA. To date this has resulted in 700 alerts and numerous fines and bans.”