Surjit K. Chana has collapsed in court after she was jailed for helping a criminal gang make millions of pounds by effectively stealing people's homes.
Surjeet Chana, 64, was among a trio of crooked officials - which also included a solicitor and a bank manager - recruited by the gang to fool developers into buying the properties at knock-down prices.
Chana, a clerk, worked in customer services at the Land Registry headquarters and supplied title deeds and owners' signatures so they could be forged.
Martin Brunt, Life of Crime blogMiss McKendrick is still so traumatised by thetheft of her home that she can’t make up her mind if she wants it back, or would rather have compensation.
Police found £38,000 hidden in the loft of her home in south London and she was sentenced to three years and nine months behind bars.
The trio have been convicted of fraud and money-laundering offences at Southwark Crown Court.
Chana collapsed in the dock as she was sentenced. The judge told her she had committed a serious breach of trust as a Land Registry clerk.
Chana's solicitor Henry Oghoetuoma said: "Mrs Chana is deeply disappointed by the verdict of the jury in this matter and continues to vigorously protest her innocence."
Solicitor Charles Spiropoulos, 48, carried out the conveyancing and collected money from the illegal house sales. He was jailed for four years.
His solicitor Cyrus Mansouri said: "Mr Spiropoulos is innocent and the only evidence against him was circumstantial.
Detective Chief Inspector Jonathan BentonThey (the gang) corrupted three officials, whose roles were crucial in making the fraud work.
"He was simply asked to do conveyancing on four of the properties and after checking the passports of the sellers that's all he did. He has no idea there was anything illegal and we are appealing his conviction."
A 42-year-old Barclays bank manager, who cannot be named for legal reasons, let the gang move its huge profits in and out of accounts without reporting it to money-laundering investigators as he should have done.
He was also sentenced to four years in prison.
In an extraordinary conspiracy, the gang identified homes that were neglected or abandoned, their owners dead or in care.
Then they put up an official-looking board in the garden, with the name of a bogus security firm and a mobile phone number, inviting calls from the house's owners.
If no one called they boarded it up, changed the locks and went ahead and sold the property. They made at least £3.8m, but it may have been much more.
At times conspirators removed £100,000 cash in holdalls from his branch of Barclays in Purley, south London.
Detective Chief Inspector Jonathan Benton, of Scotland Yard's Economic and Specialist Crime Command, said: "They were targeting often old and vulnerable people and literally stealing their homes, as well as flooding London streets with dangerous drugs.
"And they corrupted three officials, whose roles were crucial in making the fraud work."
The gang, which was jailed for a total of 24 years and six months, sold at least seven homes, usually in quick sales to unsuspecting developers who later discovered they were not the real owners.
Anne McKendrick's Croydon home was targeted by the gang after she moved out because she had been traumatised by a burglary.
Told that it was later sold for £140,000, she said: "I've lost my past, much of my identity and reason for existing."
Freda Gallacher inherited a Wimbledon house and found it had been sold for £190,000, leaving her "very confused and in total shock".
The gang leaders were cocaine traffickers James Arthur, 34, and another man who cannot be named for legal reasons. They are already serving long sentences for their drugs offences.
They began to launder their drugs money through their barbers shop in Whyteleafe, Surrey, but when profits soared they began the property scam.
The gang was originally investigated for drugs by Scotland Yard's elite Special Projects Team, but evidence of the house fraud soon emerged.
The gang leader was overheard boasting to one associate: "I am caning the life out of this. No house is safe with me about."
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