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Broker pleads guilty to house sale fraud
Rebecca Woolley
19 April 2008
A TURKISH-born woman duped two tradesman into a scam to defraud an elderly dementia sufferer of her $1.3million North Avalon estate four days before her death.
Asuman Kilich, 55, was visibly shaken and barely audible when she meekly answered ``guilty'' to the fraud yesterday.
The self-employed mortgage broker admitted forging a contract for the sale of the Barrenjoey Rd property belonging to frail 93-year-old Vera Kerr, the mother of Kilich's ex-boyfriend, Joe.
Mrs Kerr had lived at the property for 60 years, but ill-health forced her into the Ocean View Nursing Home at Mona Vale. The estate which included two adjoining houses was valued at $1,335,000 and had been left to her four children in her will.
Court papers said Kilich, of Avalon, duped tradesmen Halil and Efkan Tarar, who spoke little English, into witnessing the fake contract during a meeting at a northern beaches coffee shop on February 8, 2006.
``They each signed the document without knowing what they were signing,'' the papers said.
The fake document said the property had been sold by Mrs Kerr to Kilich's company Xcelon Solutions Property and Finance for $468,000, although no money ever changed hands. Kilich lodged it with the Land Titles Office four months later.
The scam was not discovered until June by Mrs Kerr's eldest son, Charlie, and her daughter, Lola Henry, who contacted Northern Beaches police.
Yesterday Mr Kerr said it was ``terrific'' Kilich had pleaded guilty.
He said she was a person trusted by the family who had gone through his elderly mother's belongings, which she ``had no right to do''.
Kilich also faces a further three charges, to which she is yet to enter a plea, relating to making and using a false contract for the sale of land.
The matter was adjourned to June 27 and a pre-sentence report was ordered.
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