A disgraced SNP councillor resigned yesterday just before being warned that he faces a prison term.
Jamie Rae, 32, admitted nine charges of mortage frauds of #151,000 and fiddling #16,500 in housing benefits.
His friend, David Mc-Cabe, admitted being involved in one mortage fraud.
Rae's councillor mo-ther Agnes, 65, and his sister, Margaret Doherty, 39, were cleared of involvement in the fraud.
Co-accused Ray Wy-lie, of Salmon Inn Road, Polmont, was cleared of a mortgage and a housing benefit fraud.
Another friend of the councillor, Thomas Strang, was cleared of a housing benefit fraud.
Charges against Rae and Strang, 31, of Parkhall, Maddiston, Falkirk, of running a mail order business in gay sex videos were dropped.
Falkirk Sheriff Court heard that Rae had carried out an ''extremely complicated and in-volved'' fraud.
Depute fiscal Malcolm Stewart said that the SNP councillor for Falkirk's Laurmont ward helped friends and relatives get mortgages by deception.
The fiscal told the court that Rae gave them false references for building societies and, in some cases, pretended they actually worked for him.
Mr Stewart said that Rae even used his council's official notepaper in some of the frauds.
The fiscal told how Rae, a single man, of Pretoria Place, Bright-ons, Falkirk, helped his friend David McCabe, 25, of Northfield Cottages, West Calder, West Lothian, to get a mortage above his means.
McCabe was a 22-year-old fourth grade clerk with the Royal Bank in Broxburn, West Lothian, earning #8000.
Rae used notepaper from the Crosbie Motor Company in Grahams Road, Falkirk, to give him a ''glowing reference'' as a mechanic to the Abbey National Building Society, which gave McCabe a #36,000 mortgage.
But the fiscal rev-ealed that the bank clerk was later sacked after an internal investigation by senior auditors at the Broxburn branch. McCabe is now a business student at Stirling University.
Mr Stewart said the building societies had not lost out financially.
He said that, while Rae was working on an ice cream van, he used a man's house for ''letter drops'' to pick up mail.
The fiscal said that Rae received housing benefit of #110 a fortnight, paid to two names for the one address. He said Rae got away with that fiddle because council staff had not ''cross-matched'' the applications.
The offences happened between 1990 and 1994. Rae was an ice cream salesman when he started his series of frauds. He was elected as a SNP councillor in 1992 to the then Falkirk District Council.
Rae was re-elected to the new unitary authority of Falkirk Council.
The fiscal said the offences came to light when ''information began to circulate locally that something was not quite right as to how Rae was living''.
The councillor quit the SNP last year when the charges against him became public.
Rae's lawyer, Mr Alastair Duff, told Sheriff Andrew Murphy that Rae had quit as a councillor before he came to court yesterday.
He said: ''He has taken responsibility for his actions. He thought this was appropriate.''
Sheriff Murphy noted that Rae had previous convictions in the 1980s.
He deferred sentence on Rae and McCabe un-til next month.
The sheriff told the councillor: ''The court will be considering a period of imprisonment.''
He said he was concerned that Rae had continued his criminal activity after his election as a councillor.
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