Preet Bharara, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, has announced that Ravi Persaud, a real estate attorney, and George Esso, a former loan officer, were found guilty of participating in a multi-million-dollar mortgage fraud scheme through GuyAmerican Funding Corporation, a mortgage brokerage located in Queens, N.Y. The scheme involved the use of numerous fraudulent loan applications designed to trick banks into lending money to unqualified borrowers for the purchase of residential properties in the New York City area.Read more

Wifredo A. Ferrer, United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida; Henry Gutierrez, Postal Inspector in Charge, U.S. Postal Inspection Service; John V. Gillies, Special Agent in Charge, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Miami Field Office; and J. Thomas Cardwell, Commissioner, State of Florida Office of Financial Regulation, have announced that defendant John Fisher of Jupiter, Fla., has plead guilty in federal court to one count of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud and to one count of substantive mail fraud.Read more

Preet Bharara, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, has announced that David Ramnauth, former president of GuyAmerican Funding Corporation, a mortgage brokerage firm in Queens, N.Y., has pled guilty to conspiracy to commit bank and wire fraud. Ramnauth was charged in a Superseding Indictment along with eight other defendants for their participation in a scheme that defrauded banks out of more than $23 million in home mortgage loans.Read more

Patricia Morgen, the founder and head of Chicago Development and Planning was sentence to 15 years and eight months in prison, and ordered to pay more than $9 million in restitution for wire fraud, mail fraud, and money laundering, U.S. Attorney Joseph P. Russoniello announced. According to the plea agreement, she admitted creating a scheme to solicit investors for a company called Chicago Development and Planning, with the promise of substantial guaranteed return profit payments.Read more

The former president of Mortgage One Corporation in Hesperia, Calif. was sentenced to 13 years in federal prison for defrauding the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development (HUD) and private lenders by fraudulently obtaining hundreds of federally insured loans and selling those mortgages to private lenders in a scheme that caused tens of millions of dollars in losses to the federal housing agency.Read more

A two-year investigation by the Greater Cincinnati Mortgage Fraud Task Force has resulted in a seven-count indictment charging two Cincinnati area home builders, a former Huntington National Bank vice president, and a self-employed tax preparer and interior designer with participating in a mortgage fraud scheme to sell four high-end luxury properties to “straw buyers.” A straw buyer is someone who is listed as the owner of a house, but is not really the one buying the house.Read more

Preet Bhara, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Joseph M. DeMarest Jr., the Assistant Director-in-Charge of the New York Field Division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and Richard H.Read more

U.S. District Judge Roger W. Titus has sentenced the president of the Metropolitan Money Store, Joy Jackson, age 41, of Fort Washington, Md., to 151 months in prison followed by five years of supervised release for conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud in connection with a mortgage fraud scheme that falsely promised to help homeowners facing foreclosure keep their homes and repair their damaged credit, announced United States Attorney for the District of Maryland Rod J. Rosenstein.Read more

U.S. District Judge Alexander Williams Jr. has sentenced Sidney Okosun, age 41, a Nigerian national residing in Washington, D.C., to 18 months in prison followed by five years of supervised release for bank fraud in connection with a scheme to defraud mortgage lenders, announced United States Attorney for the District of Maryland Rod J. Rosenstein. Judge Williams also ordered Okosun to pay restitution of $2,165,191. Okosun was formerly licensed as a mortgage originator by the state of Maryland.Read more