Mary E. Bolan, 46, former mortgage broker, Brandeton, Florida, was sentenced to 6 months in prison, six months home detention, three years supervised release and was ordered to pay restitution of $1,782,019.47, jointly and severally with other defendants. Bolan pled guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud and 20 counts of mail and wire fraud. Bolan was indicted on August 11, 2006 along with Kelly Abercrombie, Todd Kerber (later dismissed) and Taya Parodo. Todd Kolbe, Kirk McVey and Amy Samuelson were indicted on October 14, 2004 in a related case.
n her Motion for Downward Departurefrom the sentencing guidelines, Bolan sought leniency in part because she is a recently divorced custodial mother of two minor children. She began her career in real estate in 1992 and focused her practice to helping first time home buyers of low income. In 1996, she obtained her broker’s license and in September of 2000, formed her own real estate company, Mary Bolan and Associates. According to the motion, she currently operates Quest Real Estate, which she owns with her daughter.
The Motion also describes her involvement in the fraud scheme, stating that Bolan had developed close friends in the mortgage industry who oftentimes financed the properties she sold - one of those friends being Kelly Abercrombie. Abercrombie introduced Bolan to Todd Kolbe - described by Abercrombie as a very wealthy, successful, real estate investor and owner of a successful mortgage company - and suggested that Bolan assist Kolbe in finding properties for sale for his investment portfolio.
Kolbe met with Bolan and advised her of his business plan to purchase, renovate and rent a portfolio of real estate as investments. Kolbe wanted Bolan to find suitable properties for his company to purchase and rent with her incentive being commissions as buyer’s agent and potential further commissions if she rented the properties. Bolan was requested to locate properties for sale in particular subdivisions and to submit their listing price and particulars to Kolbe who made all decisions on properties to pursue for purchase, offers to be made and accepted, financing and closing.
Prior to the first group of closings of Lakewood Properties, Kolbe proposed to Bolan that she sign all closing documents on behalf of Lakewood Properties – telling her that he was too busy to attend closings and sign real estate documents. The residential properties that Bolan located for Kolbe were purchased by Lakewood Properties for a fair market price and Bolan split the standard broker listing commission with the listing broker on each of the initial sales of the properties. Bolan was not paid any commission on the “flip sales” or resales from Lakewood properties to the straw purchasers.
Bolan’s only error in judgment, according to the Motion, was agreeing to the perfunctory signing of closing documents on “flipped properties” for Lakewood Properties once she suspected that the resale price of these properties were unusually high.
Bolan‘s Motion further claims that Kolbe was the mastermind of the scheme to defraud Home Star Mortgage Services. Kolbe was the loan officer on these loans, so his manipulation of the application documents was totally controlled by him and he personally and exclusively created and submitted to Home Star Mortgage Services all the false loan applications. He calculated the necessary false appraised value needed to support the inflated loan, drafted and supplied all counterfeit appraisals, created the false desktop Underwriter loan approval analysis, falsified the income and credit worthiness of his straw purchasers, falsified the income, assets, and real estate owned by his companion, Kirk McVey, and family, and lied in hundreds of documents and conversations with Home Star Mortgage Services employees concerning the loans, according to the Motion.
Further, the application states that the “cash out” proceeds of the loans were made payable to Kolbe and/or the companies he owned, such as Kolbe Construction Services, Kolbe Development Corporation, Lakewood Partnership/Lakewood Properties. The application further states: “It is undersign’s understanding that Mr. Kolbe and various family members have also engaged in a number of additional fraudulent loan transactions in Florida and Utah for which Mr. Kolbe has never been charged.”
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