This story is from the Seattle Times. A federal indictment has been issued for a Bellevue loan officer and his assistant.
A former loan officer at a Bellevue mortgage company and his assistant have been indicted on a charge of conspiracy to commit wire fraud in a scheme that prosecutors say involved using straw buyers to purchase dozens of homes at inflated prices and siphoning off the extra cash for their own use.
Christopher Brooks and Amani Moss allegedly obtained more than $27 million in fraudulent loans for the purchase of at least 54 homes beginning in 2005, according to an indictment unsealed this morning.
The charges allege that they recruited straw buyers, who would allow the men to falsify loan papers for them. At the same time, Brooks and Moss would use a realtor, who is identified in the indictment by the initials “L.A.,” to find home sellers who were willing to overstate the purchase price of their homes. The straw buyers were paid between $7,000 and $10,000 for each transaction, the indictment says.
Brooks, who worked for America Mortgage in Bellevue, would then prepare and submit the false loan papers to several lenders in the area, according to court papers.
The difference between the inflated price and the actual purchase price of the home ranged from $30,000 to $778,000 per home, and the charges allege that money was funneled through a business owned by Moss, Peachtree Development, and into their pockets..
Home sellers, if your home is not selling and someone from our industry approaches you with an idea to take your home off the market and relist at a much, much higher price, please turn the person in to his or her regulator. If you are not sure who the regulator is, contact one of us and we can point you in the right direction.
The DFI Licensee database shows America Mortgage in Bellevue as a licensed mortgage broker. I wonder how many of these loans went into early payment default and how many the broker was asked to buy back from the lender.
In order to commit fraud at this level, the Realtor and mortgage broker would have had some help from an appraiser as well as an escrow closer.
It really pays to do your homework as a consumer to not get into this type of situation. I can see how a seller would love to inflate the price of their home for their benefit. However, if the right, (or wrong), person were to come along as the uneducated buyer, this is where the fraud begins. Beware buyers and do your homework!!
The problem with the people that do these types of schemes is that they honestly think they are doing good for the seller and everyone involved. The seller was able to sell his house and walk away with money, the Lo and assistant made money, the realtor made money, the appraiser. I am not so sure that escrow knows about what is going on, not unless they are using the same escrow company and closer. It really Depends on who is notarizing the documents to know that the buyer is not a real buyer. The buyer has to provide identification that they are the person that is signing loan documents. If they provide proper documentation I am not sure escrow would know. Hopefully they are not notarizing documents where the buyer is not present. That would definately raise a red flag.
I just hope that everyone involved is prosecuted and that the guilty do not go free.
The biggest problem with stories like this is that it makes it hard on Thanksgiving to be the one to tell your family that you’re a Loan Officer. In this particular case you have a lot of collusion because once you see a pattern of parties involved in this type of scenario you can only imagine that everyone has been enticed by easy money.
In my mind even if they get prosecuted to the full extent of the law, it’s the rest of us that will have to continue to pay in the eyes of a skeptical public.
Thats the unwritte part of our job; to rebuild an industry and reshape the value we create.
well I hope theysaved there fraud money because you will need this to pay as an example F.Lee Bailey? Greed prevails, no Ethics, temptation, these types of people think that the rest of us as the late Paul Harvey would say, were’s here’s the rest of the story, YOU BUSTED enjoy the view they deserve it. There is a correct way toearn your income, these people had to know that but decided to make up there own drive through lane and it ends up in prision?