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Loan Originator Pleads Guilty To Mortgage Fraud Scheme

Marlene Dinnall, a/k/a Marlene Henry, Marlene Angela Hall, and Marlene Morris, 48, Miramar, Florida, pled guilty to a 15-count Indictment charging her with conspiracy, mail and wire fraud, bank fraud, and numerous counts of identification document fraud.  Sentencing is scheduled for May 2, 2008.

According to the court documents, Dinnall was a mortgage loan originator with an office in Miami, Florida, who engaged in a scheme to enrich herself by obtaining mortgages from lenders using straw purchasers and through the submission of fraudulent documentation, including false loan applications, false employment verification forms, false salary statements, false IRS W-2s, and false bank account statements reflecting high account balances. Dinnall also used and caused others to use stolen social security numbers as their personal identification at closings, and participated in the sale of fraudulent identification documents and social security numbers and cards. She also provided false financial documents to an individual, who intended to use the documents to obtain an $800,000 line of credit from a federally insured financial institution.

1. That’s an amazing story. With all the small acts of fraud that happened on a daily basis during the real estate boom, it’s amazing that loan originators would even feel the need to resort to this level of fraud. I knew of one insurance agent who did these kinds of acts, but only on a small scale, and even then there were nothing but bad repercussions from this type of business practice.

   Posted by  on  01/23  at  03:30 PM

2. I saw a add in my local newspaper for a 1st deed of trust with a 12% return loan amount, $32,000. My mother and I do “hard money” loans.The real estate broker was licenced, etc...He said this was alittle “different” than the loans I was used to. He saved a guy in foreclosure, etc… He created a “trust” with his own personal attorney as one of the trustees.My mom got $320a mo@12%, the term of the loan 3yrs. When the payments stopped,(approx) 1 year later, he made all kinds of promises to her saying she would NOT loose any money,etc...Next she got a notice he was in default, then filed bankrupcy.When I looked at her documents, It was a 3rd deed of trust, not a 1st!!!!We went to a attorney, he could not figure out the documents either. Said it could be elder abuse, and go to social services, tell them and it would fall under a crimanal act.How do we know what is going on? Haven’t heard from the broker , my mom is out 32,000.Help!

   Posted by  on  01/27  at  02:36 PM

3. Jeniffer Wertz contacted me. I’d written a column that mentioned her suit. In the process of getting back to her, I stumbled on your site. I’ll send you the article free if you send me your email address.

   You can read it on my website. It’s
   #22, as I recall. On appraisals.

   Best,

   Curtis Seltzer

   Posted by  on  02/22  at  10:50 AM

4. I knew this lady, she did my taxes long time ago. I actullay worked with here at this brokers office in coral springs and she always was doing something that the owner didn’t like. She even asked me one time for my password to pull creditand i told her hell no. I see what she was doing!

   Posted by  on  02/28  at  08:29 AM

5. If only the loan originators who were deliberately perpetrating fraud were being swept up in the Justice Department’s crusade that would be fine. If indeed this woman recruited people to pretend to be borrowers, then she deserves to be punished.

   But the crusade isn’t always fastidious about prosecuting only those who were purposely breaking the law.

   Some mortgage brokers have been imprisoned for doing little more than following instructions from “victim” lenders’ loan officers. One broker, for example, was convicted of fraud for omitting source of down payment on no-asset loan apps....just as he was instructed to do by the lender’s loan officer. The officer told the broker only credit scores and debt ratios mattered and other superfluous data might unnecessarily raise red flags in the lender’s computer system.

   In the same year the broker was convicted, it was reported that the victim lender in his case, ABN Amro, paid a token fine after admitting its employees “forged” underwriters’ signatures on thousands of loan docs in at least four states. Neither the lender nor its forgers was criminally prosecuted. And the lender was absolved in the settlement of any similar activities that might have occurred in the other 46 states.

   In the investigation of the broker’s alleged fraud, it was documents showed ABN Amro had routinely upgraded his no-asset loan apps to higher yielding loans, apparently to make them more marketable in the securitization process.

   In another case, a broker was convicted for “inflated appraisals” in transactions when he’d never had any contact with appraisers in the suspect deals. Also, the broker had been closely advised by a property attorney in every loan he submitted, a circumstance that once signaled lack of criminal intent. Yet the feds merely threatened to ratchet up the number of “counts” he’d be charged with if he didn’t sign a plea agreement.

   It appears federal agents sometimes work backward from the notion there’s a bad guy behind every foreclosure. But sometimes the bad guys end up being ordinary business people who at worst were working gray areas or, as in the case mentioned above, following unreliable advice from their attorneys.

   Lots of potential villains in the mortgage lending crisis have emerged in recent months...Alan Greenspan and the fed, Bush Administration “ownership society” policies, new-home builders internally inflating the sale price of homes, lenders shirking underwriting procedures and packaging risky loans to sell to Wall Street, realtors nudging buyers to buy more home than they could realistically afford etc. etc. Yet the government hammer has only come down on loan originators. Why is that?

   Be leary of incendiary boilerplate language in fraud indictments. Much of it boils down to i’s that weren’t dotted and t’s not crossed. Much of what’s occurred in the mortgage fraud crusade is giving the American concept of fairness and justice a big, ugly black eye.

   Posted by  on  04/10  at  11:13 AM