A U.S. District Judge sentenced a Mortgage Broker to three years' imprisonment for his participation in a mortgage fraud scheme. After his release from prison, he will be on supervised probation for four years. He entered a plea of guilty to conspiracy to commit wire and bank fraud on September 24, 2007. At his sentencing, He also was ordered to pay restitution of $1.2 million and to forfeit more than $4 million, jointly and severally with other conspirators.
This is how they said it went down: The Conspirators negotiated to buy residential real estate at a given price. A conspirator who was a licensed real estate appraiser then fraudulently appraised the property for a substantially higher amount than the actual negotiated price. Documents reflecting the inflated appraisal price were submitted to a lender, along with other fraudulent documents, to obtain first and second mortgage loans on the property. The total amount of the loans was at or near the inflated price.
At the closing on the property, the difference between the actual sales price and the inflated appraisal price -- the proceeds of the fraud -- was disbursed to one or more of the conspirators as an "assignment fee" or "payoff of third mortgage" that did not exist. During the course of the scheme, the conspirators obtained a total of about $17.7 million in mortgage loans, which would not have been approved but for the fraudulent documents. The conspirators received approximately $4.024 million in proceeds from the fraudulent transactions.
I am glad to see people like this pay the price for cheating the system. I can not understand why anyone would want to attempt something like this. Is it bad judgment or lack of morales? Probably both!
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