Zhenyu Sun, also known as Sun Sun, pled guilty to two charges of dishonestly using documents to secure loans of $1,588,000 from ANZ, BNZ and ASB banks in the Hamilton District Court this week.
Both Sun and his wife, Jing Lao, worked at BNZ until March this year – when their employment was terminated following an internal investigation.
The investigation was prompted by a string of property loan applications Sun made to ANZ, BNZ and ASB banks from December last year.
To support the loan applications, Sun provided BNZ bank slips and statements which he had altered to inflate the couple’s incomes and reduce their actual mortgage balance to meet the lending criteria.
However, ASB became suspicious and asked BNZ to verify the documents at which point it was discovered they were fraudulent.
BNZ’s subsequent investigation cleared Sun’s mortgage broker of any wrongdoing and eventually led to the charges being laid against Sun.
Following his guilty pleas this week, Sun has been remanded on bail and is due to reappear for sentencing in October.
There have been several mortgage fraud cases in recent years, including the high profile case of Auckland socialite Eli Devoy.
But many of those cases have involved large scale offending involving multiple properties and millions of dollars.
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