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Fraud
Stories
From
Patrick
Crowley
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Fraud
News Wire
| Last Updated |
Friday, March 16,
2007, |
04:49
PM |
Texas
Time |
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Crooked Lawyers
A former Kansas elected official who is in trouble along with her
attorney husband for alleged mortgage fraud highlights the latest edition
of Lawyers Gone Wild.
Katheryn Shields, 60, the former Jackson County executive and her
husband, attorney Philip Cardarella, 59, have been indicted along with
nine other people on federal charges of "conspiracy and wire fraud for
their role in a scheme to engage in mortgage fraud," according to a
statement from U.S. Attorney Bradley Schlozman.
"This case represents another tragic example of intelligent individuals
-- including lawyers and prominent elected officials -- thumbing their
noses at the law in the pursuit of quick and easy cash," said Schlozman,
the U.S. Attorney for the Western District if Missouri in Kansas
City.
The couple could not be reached to comment, but they have maintained
their innocence in published reports.
MortgageDaily.com
subscribers read Patrick's full story
Legislator
Accused of Foreclosure Fraud
The Maryland Attorney General is looking
into claims
that a state legislator duped a woman into
selling
her home to him.
In a lawsuit filed in Anne Arundel County
Circuit
Court, Teresa Milligan accuses Maryland
State Delegate
William "Tony" McConkey, a Republican and a
real
estate broker, of foreclosure rescue
fraud.
McConkey has denied Milligan's claims that
he somehow
tricked Milligan into singing over her
house to
him.
Kevin Enright, a spokesman for Maryland
Attorney
General J. Joseph Curran, confirmed to
MortgageDaily.com
that the attorney general's office is
"looking into
the matter."
MortgageDaily.com
subscribers read Patrick's full
story
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March 16, 2007
Shredder
Fights Tax Season Fraud
Shred Nations offers tips to help protect yourself
from identity thieves in the tax season
FBI
Releases Web Fraud Stats
2006 Internet Fraud Crime Report shows widespread
crime
Rent-to-Buy Scam Evicts
Leaseholders
Raymond Zwego, a co-defendant in the alleged
mortgage fraud case involving former Jackson
County Executive Katheryn Shields, is being
investigated for any link to a mortgage scam
that led renters to believe they were leasing
homes with an option to buy, but at the failure
of mortgage payments by property owners, are
instead being evicted.
read story from KMBC-TV
Title Agent Faces New Trial
A jury acquitted Anita Peterson, a title agent
and former owner of Mountain Valley Abstract,
on two charges but must proceed with a new trial
as it couldn't decide on six other counts that
include tampering with home closing documents.
read story from the Pocono Record
4 Face Mortgage Fraud Charges
Sammy Quick and Brian Cicerchi, doing business
as First Primary Mortgage Inc., are being accused
of deceiving a woman out of her home, an associate,
Leslie Looney, faces similar charges, and Willard
Horne Jr. is being accused of stealing a elderly
woman's home while she was in a nursing home.
read story from the Plain Dealer
Judgement Favoring Housing
Agency Upheld
A judge upheld a $7 million judgement against
Robert L. McWhirk, an outside counsel for the
California Housing and Finance Agency, and John
G. Schienle, the agency director in the mid-90s,
for bilking the agency through a company they
set up to process mortgage insurance premium
payments under a contract that allowed the firm
to keep large portions of the collections.
read story from the Denver Post
March 15, 2007
Government Combats ID,
Mortgage Fraud
To combat the chances of local business owners
being one of 10 million annual victims of identity
theft and sharing some of the $48 billion out-of-pocket
losses businesses incur due to such fraud, the
Olney & the Greater Richland County Chamber
of Commerce sponsored a free seminar on ID theft
and fraud.
read story from the Olney Daily Mail
Developer Guilty of Mortgage
Fraud
In the grandest mortgage fraud case ever tried
in the U.S. Northern District of Georgia, Phillip
Hill, a real estate developer and owner of Pinnacle
Development Partners, was among the 10 individuals
who were found guilty of a $41 million Ponzi
scheme that used unsuspecting investors information
to obtain loans for inflated-value properties
that were never paid and left investors with
the debt.
read story from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution
2 LOs Indicted for Fraud
Following Jill Lehn confessed she prepared fraudulent
loan documents to flip properties that bilked
lenders out of $3 million, and, indictments
were given Tuesday to two LHS Mortgage Inc.
loan officer employees who allegedly participated
in the scheme, Ronald Joseph and Mario Lewis,
who allegedly pocketed nearly $400,000 from
the scheme.
read story from the Pioneer Press
Prison Sought for Developer
Prosecutors want Douglas Jemal, owner of Douglas
Development Corp., to serve prison time because
probation would be too soft for the developer,
who is accused of using a phony invoice to get
a $430,000 mortgage to buy a property different
than the one covered by the loan.
read story from the Washington Post
Broker Accused of Mortgage
Fraud
Mortgage broker Ronald Joseph is charged with
devising scheme to conceal $2.5 million in payments
to himself, real estate buyers and others through
40 mortgages that involved applications with
overstated home sales prices and false settlement
statements.
read story from the Star Tribune
Couple Arrested for False
Liens
A husband and wife who failed to pay property
taxes were arrested for filing false liens against
employees of the Bank of Poynette, which was
foreclosing on their property, and public officials
involved in previous criminal cases of the couple,
who claims the individuals owe them up to $2.1
million for unauthorized use of their names
on documents.
read story from the Wisconsin State Journal
8 Accused of Fraudulent
Flipping
Daniel J. Sattizhan, a co-owner and operator
of Benchmark Mortgage and First Capital Investments,
and Catherine L. Dike, an escrow officer, and
six others have been charged with collaborating
in a $14 million scheme that recruited "straw
buyers" to obtain mortgages through fraudulent
loan applications showing inflated sales prices
and false repairs for properties.
read story from the Plano Courier Star
10 Guilty of Flipping Scheme
Robert Power was among the 10 people a jury
found guilty of flipping over 300 residential
properties with the assistance of fraudulent
appraisers and loan officers who also were charged
-- a scheme authorities said involved more than
$41 million.
read story from Access North Georgia
March 14, 2007
Attorney Testifies on Home
Sale
In a case involving Ronald Sollitto, who received
a will signed by his elderly female neighbor
that left Sollito with her estate and on the
same day had a deed transfer of ownership, Thomas
F.X. Foley, an attorney who prepared the contract
of the sale, testified that he advised Sollitto
to have the woman undergo a psychiatric exam
prior to closing on the property.
read story from the Asbury Park Press
Appraiser Admits Fraud
Michael Meehan has surrendered his appraisal
license and faces up to five years in prison
after admitting he would include renovations
on his appraisals as part of an alleged mortgage
fraud and Ponzi scheme by NJ Affordable Homes,
which involved falsified loan applications with
photographs that were altered to show non-existent
improvements.
read story from the Star-Ledger
SC Wants Originators Licensed
Within a potential bill for tougher regulations
on mortgage fraud, South Carolina regulators
seek for mortgage brokers and lenders to be
licensed, as the lending industry is currently
essentially unregulated in the state.
read story from The State
March 12, 2007
Mortgage
Fraud Eventually Hurts
Neighborhoods
Some loan originators encourage
borrowers to
lie on mortgage applications, a move
that qualifies
as mortgage fraud and eventually causes
neighborhoods
to pay high taxes when loans on homes
with inflated
sales prices end up in
foreclosure.
read
story from the Orlando
Sentinel
Mortgage
Broker Opts for Trial
Nelson Miller, sole proprietor of
Freedom Financial,
has decided to withdraw his guilty plea
to have
a federal jury decide whether he
defrauded lenders
through dozens of loans that were
polished to
look more creditworthy.
read
story from the Arkansas Business
SC
Seeks Fraud Prevention Law
The South Carolina Department of
Consumer Affairs
is seeking for the state to make a
mortgage
fraud prevention law after the state
was named
a "hot spot" for fraud by the
Federal
Bureau of Investigation.
read
story from The
State
Trusting
Increases Chances of Fraud
"Trust me" are two words a
mortgage
broker allegedly copiously used to
defraud investors
and should raise red flags for
consumers to
thoroughly read documents when signing
a mortgage
to avoid mortgage fraud, which has been
on the
rise -- the FBI handled 818 cases of
mortgage
fraud in 2006 or nearly double the
amount three
years earlier.
read
story from The
Californian
3
Sentenced for Fraud
Stacey L. Shefton and Michael D. Dunn
were sentenced
to prison and Willie J. Anderson was
sentenced
to five year of probation for causing
losses
of $316,000 to a lender by arranging
for a loan
to be made on a property that had
already been
sold.
read
story from NBC
Augusta
Ex-Lawyer
Gets Prison Time
A five-year sentence was given to John
M. Claydon,
a former closing attorney, for
defrauding People's
Bank by converting, for his own use,
over $1.2
million from checks he received for
refinances
on two loans rather than repaying the
underlying
loans.
read
story from the Connecticut Post
SC
Advises How to Avoid Fraud
South Carolina regulators have released
a report
on mortgage fraud and tips on how to
avoid being
duped in hopes that consumers can be
more educated
on the subject and make more informed
decisions.
read
story from WIS 10
RE
Finance Industry Fights Fraud
Due to the growth in mortgage fraud,
several
real estate, escrow and mortgage firms
are having
fraud-savvy individuals speak to there
employees
and those of other firms on how to
detect fraud
and avoid fraudulent deals.
read
story from the Arizona
Republic
Ex-mortgage
Employee Gets Sentence
Carl Wesley Ragland received a prison
sentence
of four years and nine months for
defrauding
his former employer, C&F Mortgage
Co., out
of $2.3 million by drawing checks
against a
corporate account and wire transfers to
his
personal accounts.
read
story from the Daily
Press
March
9, 2007
5
Indicted for Pre-foreclosure Scam
Accusations of running a
pre-foreclosure scam
that defrauded HUD from $1.9 million
resulted
in indictments for Trudy Peters, a
former American
Title Insurance Agency escrow officer;
John
Soto and Larry Smith, ex-Wells Fargo
Home Mortgage
loan officers; and Maria Felix and Tony
Vasquez,
respectively former housing counselors
for ACORN
Housing and Chicanos Por La
Causa.
read
story from The Arizona
Republic
Title
Co. Raided for Suspected Fraud
The Federal Bureau of Investigation
carried
out a search warrant for Alyeska Title,
looking
for financial documents that could
trace possible
mortgage fraud.
read
story from KTVA
11
7
Indicted for Bogus Mortgages
An alleged $14 million scheme that used
straw
buyers to obtain purchase-money loans
for amounts
higher than homes were actually worth
landed
indictments for Donald L. Jones, Joseph
B. Jackson,
Donald Matthew Jones, Daniel J.
Sattizahn, Catherine
L. Dike, William Barnes, and Foday S.
Fofanah.
read
story from the Dallas Business
Journal
Mortgage
Cheaters Beware
Due to the pervasiveness and growth in
mortgage
fraud, the Federal Bureau of
Investigation has
set out to notify loan prospects and
potential
insider perpetrators of the fines and
prison
time that can result from cheating for
mortgages.
read
story from CNN Money
Judge
Honors Mortgage Fraudster's Deal
Because Corey M. Hazel showed up to
court the
day of his sentencing, after admitting
to charges
that he led a scheme that bilked up to
$2 million
from mortgage lenders through inflated
property
appraisals and other false information,
a judge
honored the six-year sentence offer he
had previously
made to the man.
read story from The Columbus Dispatch
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Patrick
Crowley is fraud journalist for MortgageDaily.com
and a reporter and columnist
for The Cincinnati Enquirer.
Email Patrick at: PatCrowl
ey@FraudBlogger.com |
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