That's easy, he had no money to pay it back, ergo it's fair to conclude he had no intention of paying it back.
It's one thing to go a couple of thousand overdrawn, quite another to spend $2 million when you have no source of income.
It's one thing to go a couple of thousand overdrawn, quite another to spend $2 million when you have no source of income.
i don't think that would stand in any court. the former doesn't imply the latter by necessity.
If I have a say $50k/year job and borrow say $200k I could reasonably have expected to pay it back, if I then lose my job I could say I had intended to do so but circumstances changed.
if I have $0/year as a job and borrow $2 million, you're not seriously suggesting that any reasonable person would buy "oh I totally was going to pay it back" are you?
My point is that if I didn't actually do anything to deceive you into giving me money (like, I didn't claim that I have a millionaire father who's going to give you the money in case I lose at blackjack) - then it's not really deception on my part; it's just error and/or poor judgement on your part for handing me the money.
Many companies also spend money they lent on frivolous stuff (end of year parties, football tables, etc) that doesn't obviously contribute to the bottom line, so buying some booze and spending some money on strippers, in itself, isn't fraud.
Back to this case: I can see how this would be "obtaining financial advantage by deception and knowingly dealing with the proceeds of crime", just as taking money from someone's open purse would be.
The question isn't whether the loan was paid back, it's whether there was an intent to pay it back at the time the loan was taken out. Many of those homeowners foolishly believed their house would appreciate at 20% per year indefinitely (and many lenders were telling people this to convince them to take out loans).
If this guy had actually said to the bank "hey I want to borrow $2 million, I have no income and no collatoral" do you think they would have accepted the loan?
He took advantage of a mistake made by an automated system from the bank, there was no human going "gee the guy with no income wants another $1000 to add to his massive overdraft, sure why not".
I can see how a guy could just overdraw his account and wait for the bank to tell him to pay some of it back. Maybe he thougt that when the bank will request some money back he can always sell cars or celebriy memorabilia and make the ends meet.
He didn't cocieve a plan to buy a helicopter or luxury yaht. He was just living little bit above his means for a while.
Fraud is a bit strong name when you are just doing someting noone forbid you to do.
"I went to strip clubs and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on girls, alcohol, cocaine and whatever else."
that's not the actions of someone who just overdrew his account a bit, or is a bit bad with money.