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A FRAUDSTER who had a string of aliases has been jailed for three-and-a-half-years for his part in a £380,000 mortgage swindle.

Conman Simon Clive Davies, 46, of Birchbank Gardens, Blackburn, was sentenced at Leeds Crown Court after pleading guilty to three offences of deception, one of which involved a mortgage application at a time when he was financially blacklisted.

Government investigators who led the probe claimed the sentence showed they would come down hard on any one who flouted bankruptcy rules.

Davies, who also went by the names Clive Thomas-Smith and Clive Emmanuel Smith and is understood to have created several other identities, was arrested at an address in Padiham in September last year.

He sealed his downfall when he applied for a £379,952 mortgage on a house in Darwen in November 2006.

According to the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (DBERR), which led the prosecution, Davies applied for a mortgage on the cottage and failed to declare a county court a judgement against him. He also declared incorrectly that he was a first time buyer.

The lender released the money to Davies' solicitors, but the sale did not go ahead and the money was repaid when the offence was detected.

According to DBERR, Davies' previous offences related back to 2005 when he persuaded an investor to hand over £30,000 to help him start a new mobile phone business called Callfree.net Ltd, which specialised in mobile phones.

The issue stems from the fact that a year before, one of his former companies had gone in to liquidation with debts of nearly £200,000. Following this financial collapse, Davies was banned from being a director from May 2004 to 2010 under a bankruptcy guideline known as a disqualification undertaking.

Two years later, a bankruptcy order was made against him in the name of Clive Smith, which again disqualified him from acting as a company director.

Despite this, he went on to act as director of property company Safe as Houses Ltd under a different identity from February to September last year and attempted to buy a number of expensive properties, including the one in Darwen.

DBERR head Pat McFadden said: "We are determined to crack down on cheats like these who profit by deception.

"When someone acts in this way they are effectively stealing from honest creditors who are owed money and can suffer as a result. "

7:58pm Friday 9th May 2008

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