Seven men appeared in court yesterday to deny a multi-million pound fraud scheme involving false paperwork in property deals dating back to 1998.
Another man and a woman also face separate fraud charges. The nine, appearing in open court for the first time, denied all the charges.
Lawyers at the High Court in Edinburgh told judge Lord Menzies they were still wading through "a room full" of documents held at an Aberdeen police station, which one lawyer said it had taken 20 days to read.
A date for trial is expected to be set at a further hearing in May. The fraud scheme is said to be linked to the offices of solicitors' firms, development and investment companies as well as a mortgage adviser and a chartered surveyor.
It is alleged David Pocock, 47, Russell Taylor, 42, Alastair Walker, 61, David Ramage, 52, David Pocock, 30, Frank Pocock, 49, and Patrick Pocock, 46, obtained money, mortgages and property by completing mortgage application forms giving false purchase prices and using false valuation reports.
The total obtained by the seven is supposed to be more than £4.6m. Also in the dock were Mark Mackie, 41, who denies playing a part in a £2.2m scheme linked to a property deal in Aberdeen and Arlyn Cran, 40, who denies helping to obtain a bank overdraft by fraud.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article