Husband's name used by son to guarantee a loan

Chi326

Hello, looking for help please.
A debt recovery company are chasing my husband for loan repayments totalling £15000. This was apparently a loan taken out by our son in which he used my husband's name as a guarantor.  My son has not paid anything back and now we are being threatened with court proceedings.
We have asked for documentary evidence of signature etc, which they have now supplied, this was an email Docusign done on a mobile device, only showing my husband's initials.  He has never seen this document,  yet alone signed it. He had no knowledge of this at all.
What can we do now? Action Fraud state there is not enough evidence to pursue a case. We have never been in debt and we will not pay this for our son, he has had amounts of financial assistance already and we cannot do this anymore. 
Help appreciated please.

Exodi

Who is the company?

Usually in the case of guarantor loans, the funds are sent to the guarantor as it is them who the loan agreement is effectively with. The guarantor then usually transfer the funds themselves, to prevent a situation like this. There are usually phone calls set up to vet the guarantor and confirm they know what they are getting into.

Did your husband never receive the money? It is hard to understand how your son could not only fake his signature, but also provide an account in your husbands name, and somehow pass vetting as him - unless these checks weren't performed of course, which would work in your favour. We have seen several guarantor loan companies wound up for this sort of thing (e.g. Amigo).

As part of this, you would have to support action against your son, such as a criminal proceedings for fraud. You need to be sure you're willing to do this, because there is unlikely to be a middle-ground where your son gets off scot-free and you're not held liable for the loan.

I guess you also can't rule out that your husband may have agreed to this, but can't admit this to you now the son has reneged on payment.

If adamant it is fraud, I think you'd need to call the police on 101 and reporting it. A sad situation all round, I'd be devastated.

DullGreyGuy

Chi326 said:

Hello, looking for help please.
A debt recovery company are chasing my husband for loan repayments totalling £15000. This was apparently a loan taken out by our son in which he used my husband's name as a guarantor.  My son has not paid anything back and now we are being threatened with court proceedings.
We have asked for documentary evidence of signature etc, which they have now supplied, this was an email Docusign done on a mobile device, only showing my husband's initials.  He has never seen this document,  yet alone signed it. He had no knowledge of this at all.
What can we do now? Action Fraud state there is not enough evidence to pursue a case. We have never been in debt and we will not pay this for our son, he has had amounts of financial assistance already and we cannot do this anymore. 
Help appreciated please.

Why haven't you commented on the obvious bit? What does your son have to say for themselves?

The lender is unlikely to accept that this was fraudulent unless you have reported the matter to the police and gotten a crime reference number. 

Chi326

No monies were received into any of our or my husband's account, your information is incorrect in that funds are transferred to the guarantor. 
In reply to comment 2 my son has admitted to this to my husband and myself but has no money to repay any of this.
This has been reported to Action Fraud England but it would appear the police organisations are only looking into major fraud cases.

Exodi

Chi326 said:

No monies were received into any of our or my husband's account, your information is incorrect in that funds are transferred to the guarantor. 
In reply to comment 2 my son has admitted to this to my husband and myself but has no money to repay any of this.
This has been reported to Action Fraud England but it would appear the police organisations are only looking into major fraud cases.

It is frustrating that you have responded to say I'm explicitly incorrect when we know it to be true for certain lenders, but ignored my specific question (the first sentence of my comment) asking who the lender is.

You also seem to disregard people recommending you contact the police on this, I think it will be hard to help if you're not taking in anything that has been said.

Have you informed the lender that this is fraud and provided evidence? This is not clear. As above, it will be easier to convince them of genuine fraud if you've reported it to the police.

mr_stripey

Chi326 said:

No monies were received into any of our or my husband's account, your information is incorrect in that funds are transferred to the guarantor. 
In reply to comment 2 my son has admitted to this to my husband and myself but has no money to repay any of this.
This has been reported to Action Fraud England but it would appear the police organisations are only looking into major fraud cases.

in fairness, Exodi only replied that "usually" the funds are transferred to the guarantor - so it is unfair to say he is "incorrect". They are one of the most knowledgeable and balanced posters on here and will certainly try to help.

prowla

Exodi said:

Chi326 said:

No monies were received into any of our or my husband's account, your information is incorrect in that funds are transferred to the guarantor. 
In reply to comment 2 my son has admitted to this to my husband and myself but has no money to repay any of this.
This has been reported to Action Fraud England but it would appear the police organisations are only looking into major fraud cases.

It is frustrating that you have responded to say I'm explicitly incorrect when we know it to be true for certain lenders, but ignored my specific question (the first sentence of my comment) asking who the lender is.

You also seem to disregard people recommending you contact the police on this, I think it will be hard to help if you're not taking in anything that has been said.

Have you informed the lender that this is fraud and provided evidence? This is not clear. As above, it will be easier to convince them of genuine fraud if you've reported it to the police.

The OP did say it's been reported to Action Fraud, which is what the police would say anyway.

DullGreyGuy

prowla said:

Exodi said:

Chi326 said:

No monies were received into any of our or my husband's account, your information is incorrect in that funds are transferred to the guarantor. 
In reply to comment 2 my son has admitted to this to my husband and myself but has no money to repay any of this.
This has been reported to Action Fraud England but it would appear the police organisations are only looking into major fraud cases.

It is frustrating that you have responded to say I'm explicitly incorrect when we know it to be true for certain lenders, but ignored my specific question (the first sentence of my comment) asking who the lender is.

You also seem to disregard people recommending you contact the police on this, I think it will be hard to help if you're not taking in anything that has been said.

Have you informed the lender that this is fraud and provided evidence? This is not clear. As above, it will be easier to convince them of genuine fraud if you've reported it to the police.

The OP did say it's been reported to Action Fraud, which is what the police would say anyway.

You need to push harder with the police, they often dont want to bother registering what they consider minor or unsolvable (clear this one is) crimes. 

In my claims days we used to have the same... policyholder says their 16 year old kid took the car without consent and crashed it. Given the circs we'd want a crime reference number as people are less likely to lie to the police than to us and it could be the parents were complicit in them taking the car. Half the time they'd come back saying the police didnt want to know. 

enthusiasticsaver

These docusign documents are usually sent to an email address so did your son manage to intercept your husbands emails?

Certainly I would go back to the company and say that the guarantor document was fraudulent and you have reported it to the police. If you refuse to pay what happens? Presumably there is no security so you would just get a default which unless you need to borrow is not the end of the world. 

Chi326

It appears from the documentation that we have managed to obtain from the lender that our son used a second email address which he had in his name, a different one from which he would normally use. My husband has no sight of this and this was obviously where the copies were sent, the lender would havd sent two sets of everything directly to our son.

From reading previous answers today we have contacted the police directly, explaining that Action Fraud are not prepared to pursue but our local police are making a direct visit to us this weekend.  We are entirely innocent in this and will do all we can to prove it.

Sea_Shell

Has your husband checked to see what, if any, credit checks were made against his name using the credit reference agency records?