united-kingdom criminal-law england-and-wales fraud
Is there any criminal implication of falsifying documents demanded by a private party?
<p>I typically imagine fraud as largely a civil affair for which one defrauded party may sue and pursue civil remedies against the fraudulent one.</p>
<p>And obviously falsifying official documents typically issued by the state such as driver licenses or passports is probably criminal everywhere. But is it a crime to forge false documents to submit for example to a private letting agency or landlord, in order to feign compliance with their business's policies?</p>
<p>In the given example of a landlord, of course there are civil remedies like a dedicated ground in section 8 which is statutorily available to the landlord for them to restore the situation so as to be &quot;made whole&quot; (ie regain possession of their property).</p>
<p>But this is still civil, and not a criminal matter, and exemplarily thus, my question.</p>

<h2>All fraud is criminal</h2>
<p>One of the types of <a href="https://www.faradayssolicitors.co.uk/site/our-services/criminal-law-solicitors/fraud-solicitors-in-london/" rel="noreferrer">fraud</a> in the UK is “making a dishonest representation for your own advantage”.</p>
<p>Lying to a prospective landlord in order to secure a lease is fraud.</p>

<p>This depends strongly on what the documents are.  Yes, all fraud is criminal but not all falsified documents are fraud. If you told a friend that a certain person had sent you a birthday card, and when the friend insisted on seeing this card, you created a card yourself, if the purpose was to get money from the friend, yes, that would be fraud and criminal but if the purpose was just to impress the friend, while this would be lying and wrong, it would NOT be 'fraud' or 'criminal.</p>

<p>Fraud in <a href="/questions/tagged/england-and-wales" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;england-and-wales&#39;" rel="tag">england-and-wales</a> is defined within the Fraud Act 2006. The operative type of Fraud in this case is defined by <a href="https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/35/section/2" rel="noreferrer">Fraud Act 2006 section 2</a> (Fraud by False Representation).</p>
<p>This says:</p>
<pre><code>Fraud by false representation
(1)A person is in breach of this section if he—
   (a)dishonestly makes a false representation, and
   (b)intends, by making the representation—
      (i)to make a gain for himself or another, or
      (ii)to cause loss to another or to expose another to a risk of loss.
(2)A representation is false if—
   (a)it is untrue or misleading, and
   (b)the person making it knows that it is, or might be, untrue
      or misleading.
(3)“Representation” means any representation as to fact or law,
   including a representation as to the state of mind of—
   (a)the person making the representation, or
   (b)any other person.
(4)A representation may be express or implied.
(5)For the purposes of this section a representation may be regarded as
   made if it (or anything implying it) is submitted in any form to any
   system or device designed to receive, convey or respond to
   communications (with or without human intervention).
</code></pre>
<p>Prima facie, yes, making any representation (in this case by way of a forged document or lie to the landlord) can be Fraud if it is dishonest, and was intended to make a gain for the person making the representation or a loss for another.</p>
<p>Let's suggest the potential potential lessee said &quot;I earn 100k per year&quot;, but actually only earned 50k per year, and L said that in order to convince the landlord that L was more credit worthy than he actually was, that would (likely) be fraud.</p>
<p>However, there are a number of reasons why the behaviour described might <em>not</em> be caught.</p>
<p>Let us suggest a letting agency requires an unreasonable amount of information to let an apartment, requiring copious identification documents with a large number of arbitrary restrictions (sadly not unusual). The potential lessee (L) is able to provide all but one of these, but is unable to provide (e.g.) a second utility bill as the utilities were in the name of L's housemate. So L takes the PDF of a utility bill, invokes a PDF editor, and changes the name of his housemate to L's own name, thereby satisfying the agency's requirement. Has L committed fraud?</p>
<p>Re s(2), firstly, what is the representation? It might be argued that either the representation is simply that L is who he says he is (which is not a false representation), or that the a third party provided documentation shows that L says he is who he says he is (which is false). But in that case, a L is in fact who L says he is, it's unlikely L will cause loss to another (the letting agent or landlord), or a gain for himself, as the purpose of asking for the representation is presumably to establish that L is who he says he is. It might be argued in the alternative that even if L did make a gain or cause a loss, L did not <em>intend</em> that gain or loss, merely to satisfy the agency's requirements.</p>
<p>We'd also have to prove the representation was dishonest (s(1)(a)) in an <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_v_Ghosh" rel="noreferrer">R v Ghosh</a> sense, meaning:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>... a jury must first of all decide whether according to the ordinary standards of reasonable and honest people what was done was dishonest ... If it was dishonest ... then the jury must consider whether the defendant himself must have realised that what he was doing was by those standards dishonest.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The first leg is self-explanatory; I'd suggest there is a good chance of it failing. Re the second leg, it might be argued that L believed he was avoiding pointless bureaucracy, rather than being dishonest (compared to constructing an instrument to prove he was someone else).</p>
<p>I note in passing that the second leg may have been over-ruled in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivey_v_Genting_Casinos" rel="noreferrer">Ivey v Genting Casinos</a> though it's not obvious to me whether that is just for civil cases given criminal cases normally require <em>mens rea</em>.</p>
<p>Finally, the question was asked in the context of the United Kingdom. The Fraud Act 2006 applies in <a href="/questions/tagged/england-and-wales" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;england-and-wales&#39;" rel="tag">england-and-wales</a> and <a href="/questions/tagged/northern-ireland" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;northern-ireland&#39;" rel="tag">northern-ireland</a>. The law in <a href="/questions/tagged/scotland" class="post-tag" title="show questions tagged &#39;scotland&#39;" rel="tag">scotland</a> is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraud#Scotland" rel="noreferrer">different</a>.</p>
