A businessman faces years in jail after admitting swindling £280,00 by falsifying mortgage applications.

Gordon Benville, 50, of Wellington Parade, Walmer, was told at Canterbury Crown Court that he didn’t deserve much mercy and to expect a prison sentence of years rather than months.

He pleaded guilty to 16 charges of obtaining money transfers by deception and fraud, between October, 2001, to September 2007.

The court heard that Benville, when making applications by people seeking to re-mortgage properties, inflated earnings figures when he filled in the boxes, resulting in mortgage companies advancing more than the borrowers had wanted.

When they and sought his help in sorting out the overpayments, he diverted substantial amounts of the money to his own purposes and to his own business.

Benville, whose office was in Deal’s Broad Street, will be sentenced at the end of June.

~For full story and an interview with victims, see this week's East Kent Mercury, out on Thursday.