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

A federal grand jury here has indicted six members of a family and one of their employees charging them with operating a mortgage fraud conspiracy between 2004 and 2009. Carter M. Stewart, United States Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio, Keith L. Bennett, Special Agent in Charge, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Jose A. Gonzalez, Special Agent in Charge, Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation, and Gerald A. O’Farrell, Assistant Inspector in Charge, announced the indictment returned against the following individuals:Read more

Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray has announced a lawsuit filed against Barclays Capital Real Estate d/b/a HomEq Servicing, headquartered in New York, for issuing unfair loan modification agreements and providing inadequate, incompetent customer service to Ohioans who were at risk of losing their homes to foreclosure. HomEq is a participant in the federal Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP).Read more

Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray has filed a lawsuit against Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s and Fitch, three national agencies that are responsible for providing accurate credit ratings of investments. The lawsuit, filed in United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio on behalf of five Ohio public employee retirement and pension funds, charges the rating agencies with wreaking havoc on U.S. financial markets by providing unjustified and inflated ratings of mortgage-backed securities in exchange for lucrative fees from securities issuers.Read more

Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray has filed a lawsuit against American Home Mortgage Servicing Inc. (AHMSI), a Texas-based company servicing more than 12,000 sub-prime and prime mortgage loans in Ohio. The lawsuit alleges numerous violations of the Ohio Consumer Sales Practices Act including but not limited to: Incompetent and inadequate customer service, failure to respond to requests for assistance, failure to offer timely or affordable loss mitigation options to borrowers and unfair and deceptive loan modification terms.Read more

Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray and Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Bill Mason have announced the details of an 18-month investigation that led to indictments against 41 people and four companies. The defendants are alleged to have engaged in real estate transactions to purchase 453 homes with fraudulent loans totaling $44 million. The indictments are the result of work done by the Cuyahoga County Mortgage Fraud Task Force operating under the authority of the Ohio Organized Crime Investigations Commission.Read more