Mortgage scammer denied Supreme Court bid

Former real estate agent Raghu Aryasomayajula. Photo / Michael Craig

A former Auckland real estate agent jailed over a $13 million property fraud has been denied a late bid to take his case to the Supreme Court - five years after he was convicted.

Raghu Aryasomayajula, now in his 40s, was found guilty in 2010 of two charges for deceiving banks into lending him money.

Aryasomayajula and his business partner Phil Cavanagh bought properties that could be subdivided and would then on-sell them to friends at inflated prices.

But the properties never really changed hands.

Through an elaborate scheme, the pair added their friends' and colleagues' names to sale-and-purchase agreements and used the mortgage money from the bank to develop the property.

They also agreed to meet mortgage payments.

The friends and associates who agreed to participate were promised a cut of the profit or cash.

But the scam collapsed and many were left owning properties with mortgages hanging over their heads which were for more than the property was worth.

Aryasomayajula and Cavanagh were real estate agents with Barfoot & Thompson, as were some of their victims.

Cavanagh pleaded guilty in 2009 to three charges and was jailed for two years and five months.

His sentence was reduced after he agreed to give evidence against Aryasomayajula, who in 2011 was jailed for four and a half years.

That year Aryasomayajula appealed both his conviction and sentence but failed on both fronts.

He then made a bid to take his case to the Supreme Court but abandoned it in March 2012.

Some three and a half years' later, Aryasomayajula filed an application with the Supreme Court to withdraw his notice of abandonment.

He said he was coerced into withdrawing his appeal after a fellow inmate told him there would be further implications for him if he continued with it.

"Without giving further detail as to who coerced him and on whose behalf that person was acting, it was difficult to give any meaningful evaluation to the allegations," Justice Terence Arnold, William Young and Mark O'Regan said earlier this month.

But the trio still went on to consider Aryasomayajula's grounds for seeking leave to appeal.

"Although the grounds are not entirely clear, the proposed grounds of appeal appear to be that the co-offender and another information...committed perjury, that other witnesses associated with banks which were the victims of the offences gave colluded evidence, that witnesses from the real estate firm for whom the applicant previously worked gave colluded evidence to 'cover their own end for bringing in real estate law changes in the country in 2008' and that there was a conspiracy of these witnesses and others to implicate him," the judges said.

"The allegations made by the applicant are unsubstantiated and extravagant...the applicant does not give an adequate reason justifying the grant of leave to withdraw his notice of abandonment of his application for leave to appeal. In any event, even if we were to grant leave to withdraw the notice of abandonment and consider the application for leave to appeal on its merits, we would not grant leave to appeal," they said.

They dismissed his application.